SOLASTALGIA ECO-ART GALLERY
Solastalgia: "the pain or distress caused by ongoing loss of solace, and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one home and territory."
"To repair a solastalgia-damaged psyche requires participation in Earth repair. Desolated places and psyches are both healed by restoration and repair of that which is causing the problem." - Glenn Albrecht
"To repair a solastalgia-damaged psyche requires participation in Earth repair. Desolated places and psyches are both healed by restoration and repair of that which is causing the problem." - Glenn Albrecht
This experience was part of The Sustainable Living Festival 2021.
You are invited to view this gallery and participate in the Eco-Art experience.
2021 SLF was exploring the SLF theme 'Culture of Care', what solastalgia means and feels like, reflecting and expressing our experience creatively.
The gallery page is best viewed on a large screen.
You are invited to view this gallery and participate in the Eco-Art experience.
2021 SLF was exploring the SLF theme 'Culture of Care', what solastalgia means and feels like, reflecting and expressing our experience creatively.
The gallery page is best viewed on a large screen.
ARTIST STATEMENTS - REFLECTIONS
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Vanessa's Reflection:
'I struggled at first with the idea of consent. I had always imagined that I would know I had consent if I found it easy to connect to the place. The idea that I might have to ask somehow put me into a negative state of feeling that the place might not want me. This played out in relation to mosquitoes. Mosquitoes bite me frequently and I suffer quite a bit of inflammation when they do. When mosquitoes started to bite me during the exercise, I worried that this was a sign of non-consent from the place. Later I realised that the mosquitoes are of course not trying to cause me negative sensation, but simply to feast on me! I am a source of abundance for mosquitoes, and them biting me is a symbol of my welcome in a place. This reminded me that reciprocal relationships with nature don’t always feel elevated and ecstatic…' *** "The Singer of Tree Songs" by Deb Punton Media/Method: wool and natural materials. (Needle-felted Spirit Doll heart) Reflection: I chose a place where I lived and loved the house and garden. When I moved out they bulldozed everything including the beautiful huge old Liquidamber tree in the front garden, my special tree. My feelings of solastalgia included grief, loss, and sadness as an ache in my chest, and frustration, anger and fear in my head. I recognise it is my sense of value, belonging, love and care that are giving me these uncomfortable feelings. I breath through them. What actions do I need to feel more pleasant feelings? I relate it to another place I mourn, and hear; “Talk to me…visit me.” I am drawn to visit this place again, alone and silently converse. I want and need to sustain relationships with the land and beings, I am not alive without these reciprocal relationships. I feeled called to be involved with ecological restoration projects. I see I can care and nurture another part of our world, I can release this place while keeping my memory alive. After the shock of seeing the tree suddenly gone I sensed it saying; “once alive, always alive... " Oh yes! We all transition into some other form so we don’t ever suddenly disappear... My memory and processing this experience manifested as the spirit doll ‘The Singer of Tree Songs.’ *** If you love an artwork and want to know more or purchase it, please contact the eco-artist directly by clicking on their name. |
'Solastalgia' - Poem and Solastalgia Mixed media assemblage by Karen Hopkins
Is this the new dis ease I have to bear? Gutted by a deep grief sickness living in veins of the loss of hopes and dreams. Paralysed by powerlessness I slowly slip into psychoterratic distress… Dear Mother I feel your pain … for part of you your suffering is mine too. Your generous life-giving force abused umbilical threads running through the web of life frayed about to snap. Overwhelmed by forces of destruction My steps seem futile thwarted… Immobilised by confusion, my heart a heavy a stone, drops … Flighty feathers now on fire, I sink a burning bird into a plastic sea… drowning into eco paralysis limb by limb.. An ancestor of a future nightmare abyss I fear for the life I birthed in to this. Desolate with an aching solace agia I crawl in to my cage... my song muted. *** If you love an artwork and want to know more or purchase it, please contact the eco-artist directly by clicking on their name. |
Solastalgia
"Solastalgia occurs with the degradation of our place and a sense of place."
Glenn Albrecht, an Australian environmental researcher and philosopher created the term solastalgia based on the words solace (that which gives comfort) and algos (Greek for pain)
"It is the existential and lived experience of negative environmental change, manifest as an attack on one's sense of place. It is characteristically a chronic condition, tied to the gradual erosion of identity created by the sense of belonging to a particular loved place and a feeling of distress, or psychological desolation, about its unwarranted transformation. In direct contrast to the dislocated spatial dimensions of traditionally defined nostalgia, solastalgia is the homesickness you have when you are still located within your home environment." - Glenn Albrecht (Earth Emotions)
Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects on despair to empowerment has inspired many people around the world for decades. Her work demonstrates that feeling our pain cracks open our love, and when we don’t fear our pain, we are free and more energised to take action in service of our Earth. Often due to cultural conditioning of avoiding pain, we resist feeling discomfort; distract, block and numb ourselves preventing opening to the wider interconnected perspective.
This experience draws on our innate wisdom, our deeper ecological awareness coming through us from this reconnecting practice, reflections, creative expression and human connection. No art experience required to participate. Sharing your artwork for this gallery is optional.
You are invited to join a Kinfolk online gathering to connect with others and share your experience.
You are invited to participate!
This gallery page will remain open to allow anyone interested to experience.
How to particpate:
1. Register by making a donation to Warburton Environment, GECO, Environment East Gippsland, Friends of the Leadbeater's Possum or another local group working to save our national forests from logging.
2. Then email the receipt and you will be emailed a link and password for the self-guided practice details.
Optional: Add your eco-artwork to the gallery and subscribe and join in free Kinfolk online gathering to connect, share, and view galleries together.
This gallery page will remain open to allow anyone interested to experience.
How to particpate:
1. Register by making a donation to Warburton Environment, GECO, Environment East Gippsland, Friends of the Leadbeater's Possum or another local group working to save our national forests from logging.
2. Then email the receipt and you will be emailed a link and password for the self-guided practice details.
Optional: Add your eco-artwork to the gallery and subscribe and join in free Kinfolk online gathering to connect, share, and view galleries together.
More about solastalgia...
- In Glenn Albrechts book Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World we are gifted with a new vocabulary to relate and weave in our feeling states. As we are living in unprecedented times with new felt experiences, it if useful to have words for describing emotional states caused by environmental change. Feelings associated with Solastalgia result from experiencing environmental change which challenges our sense of home, our identity or sense of self. The reason for a person feeling solastalgia may be similar to a nostalgia because the home environmental changes no longer resembles and feels like home, and they can't identify with what they knew and loved about it.
- Glenn Albrecht Tedx Talk: Environment Change, Distress & Human Emotion Solastalgia
- Glenn Albrecht talks about Solastalgia at the 25-min mark of this talk.
- Glenn Albrecht blog"Solastalgia is a relatively new concept for understanding the links between human and ecosystem health, specifically, the cumulative impacts of climatic and environmental change on mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Given the speed and scale of climate change alongside biodiversity loss, pollution, deforestation, unbridled resource extraction, and other environmental challenges, more and more people will experience solastalgia." Research "Solastalgia: Living With the Environmental Damage Caused By Natural Disasters" by Warsini, Sri; Mills, Jane; Usher, Kim (February 2014)
100% of profits from the 2021 event were donated to Warburton Environment protection of native forests.
Participants were invited to the 'Truth about our Forests Tour' See more here on the Lost Species Gallery page.
Hashtags: #ecoarttherapy #NSLFestivalAus #ecopsychology #deepecology
Participants were invited to the 'Truth about our Forests Tour' See more here on the Lost Species Gallery page.
Hashtags: #ecoarttherapy #NSLFestivalAus #ecopsychology #deepecology
WARBURTON ENVIRONMENT is a not-for-profit non-government community organisation dedicated to protecting the forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria. This Lost Species experience will continue year after year to raise funds to support the actions of Warburton Environment protecting the threatened species of flora and fauna in the highlands of Victoria until all native forests in Victoria are free from logging.
Greensong advocates for a just transition. A 'just transition' is about moving away from the economic practices that are causing and perpetuating damage contributing to the climate and ecological emergency towards non-destructive lifestyles, ensuring everyone has a role to play, has work, affordable housing, adequate healthy food and all basic needs are met to create a stronger and more resilient community.
Information: Knowledge is power!
Empowering Actions: Simply taking an action helps us to transition despair and other uncomfortable sensations...
Experience: We are grateful for the opportunity to have experiences, especially with nature...
Greensong advocates for a just transition. A 'just transition' is about moving away from the economic practices that are causing and perpetuating damage contributing to the climate and ecological emergency towards non-destructive lifestyles, ensuring everyone has a role to play, has work, affordable housing, adequate healthy food and all basic needs are met to create a stronger and more resilient community.
Information: Knowledge is power!
- Warburton Environment Website
- Warburton Environment Fact Sheet and other resources (useful for writing letters)
- Vic Forests 2020 Annual report. This year they lost 7.5 million dollars of tax-payers money!!! Ending native forest logging now would save the government $191.9 million dollars by 2030. This saving would include fast-tracking the $120 million industry with a 'just transition' package to ensure loggers and industry were well looked after now and into the future. Non-compliance legal proceedings are on page 20.
- Interactive timber release plan map
- Dr David Lindenmayer, Scientific Lecture about fire risk
- Lidia Thorpe's speech to the senate about logging
- 'Fuel reduction' burning conceals industrial air pollution article
- Around 1.82 million hectares of Victorian native forests are allocated to the government’s logging business. Victorian native forests, industrial scale clearfell logging removes around 40% of the forest biomass for logs fit for sale. The remaining 60% is debris, which is either burned off or decomposes – becoming a major source of greenhouse gas emission.
- Breaking Down: The Wood Pulp Agreement Act
- Threatened with extinction Tree Geebung
Empowering Actions: Simply taking an action helps us to transition despair and other uncomfortable sensations...
- Educate self and others, talk about the forests, logging, beauty, increased fire risk and threat to our water supply.
- Logging is economically unviable: 2020 lost 7.5 million of tax-payers money, infor in annual report.. In the 2018-19 financial year VicForests would have made a loss of almost $7m if it were not for the $11m it received in government handouts (Cox and Butler, Nov 2019). They have no regard for rules and regulations: VicForests continually breaches regulations; it has been found illegally logging in our water catchments, logging state forest it doesn’t own, illegally logging and damaging rainforest, and logging coups before environmental assessments have been carried out (Slezak, 2018, 2019). VicForests has been taken to court numerous times but continues to break the law.
- Write a letter (all info supplied to make it easy) Fact sheet and who to write to list. You may like to include the Vic Forest board members. Why and how to write a letter to your MP.
- Donate to Warburton Environment Fundraising campaign
- Become a member of Warburton Environment and keep up-to-date with happenings.
- WOTCH citizen science volunteer sign up
- Share these resources, your related photos and your experiences here and to Warburton Environment.
- Follow Warburton Environment facebook page, comment and share posts
- Use hashtags #noconsent #transitionnow #greatforestnationalpark #ecotourism #endnativeforestlogging #forestconservation #xrforests #warburtonenvironment #LostSpeciesDay2021 #ecoart #extinctionwitness
Experience: We are grateful for the opportunity to have experiences, especially with nature...
- Book Warburton Environment 'Truth about our Forests Tour' tour
- Take other people to experience this part of the world.
THANK YOU
I acknowledge and pay our respects to the first people of our various countries, their elders, past and present.
I also respect the role our ancestors play in our participation in creating a more just, regenerative culture.
We also gratefully honour the other-than-human entities we share the web of life with.
I also respect the role our ancestors play in our participation in creating a more just, regenerative culture.
We also gratefully honour the other-than-human entities we share the web of life with.
This event is offered as part of the Sustainable Living Festival 2021 and the SOS Eco-Resilience project. (Sustainability of self) focusing on eco-resilience by transitioning uncomfortable sensations related to climate and ecological grief and anxiety.
Crisis management: SOS sessions are not a substitute for any medical care, regular treatments, and medications. If you feel in a crisis state, or feeling intense anxiety/grief, please contact a professional service provider ASAP. It is easier to heal and transition with profesional guided assistance. Please note Deb/Greensong is an ecopsychologist, not a psychologist. Some specialist links are provided at the bottom of the SOS Eco-Resilience project page.
Crisis management: SOS sessions are not a substitute for any medical care, regular treatments, and medications. If you feel in a crisis state, or feeling intense anxiety/grief, please contact a professional service provider ASAP. It is easier to heal and transition with profesional guided assistance. Please note Deb/Greensong is an ecopsychologist, not a psychologist. Some specialist links are provided at the bottom of the SOS Eco-Resilience project page.
