Other Fantasies for Extinction
Other Fantasies for Extinction (2020) is a deeply researched meditation on Deep Time, Earth’s history of past mass extinctions, and the spreading of modern Homo sapiens across the globe. Through poems and prose, I seek to contextualize this moment of transition, this rapid global warming. How do we understand the present in a world which is every day slipping perilously away? In the era of climate crisis, what new stories can help us process change? What narratives help us weave this notion of transition into the fabric of our day to day reality? And how does living in climate crisis disrupt our culturally understood notions of past, present and future?
I am trying to understand, through history, how it feels at the end of the world.
Listening Party
The manuscript has been adapted into a sound piece in collaboration with composer/producer Michael Simonelli, who has created a richly layered soundscape over my performance of the text. We are presenting the work through public Listening Parties – intimate spaces to listen together, followed by group reflections on change, loss, and engagement. In this moment of crisis, how can we put our bodies together in spaces that promote collective action around energy and environmental justice? My hope is that these Listening Parties can serve as a tool to develop the kinds of habits of civil engagement we need to make meaningful change that ensures a livable future for ourselves and our children.
How to Host a Listening Party
How to Host a Listening Party is a free booklet distributed at public Listening Parties.
Excerpt for Other Fantasies for Extinction
To download the full audio piece, please visit https://www.otherfantasiesforextinction.com/download
Book
Other Fantasies for Extinction (in progress) is designed and illustrated by Madeleine Boucher.
Excerpt from Other Fantasies for Extinction:
It was a thing that happened fast, although we could have seen the signs. After all, there were some who fled. A rumble that started low and deep, that grew from the bottom of the earth up through the mouth of Vesuvius. But we, being so engaged in the tedium of our own eyes, we scarcely saw the coming of the fire. Because there were mouths to feed because there were servants to beat. Because we were so consumed inside of our lives that we didn’t make time to run and then when we wanted to make the time there was no time. There was only the tucking of our breath against days and days and days. And then the days ended and we were stone.
For more excerpt click here
Thanks to Phil Tortoroli / Anica Productions for supporting the project and giving it life in public.
All art presented on this page is by Madeleine Boucher