A Farewell to Lichen
Artistic practices for mourning and attunement – poetry and performance.
When a profound loss occurs, the opportunity to convey a meaningful farewell—to acknowledge the significance of the relationship—may also pass us by. A Farewell to Lichen is an artistic enquiry into loss and imaginative practices of mourning for and with the natural world. Quiet rituals and actions, performed on the streets and in the parks where I live, become speculative rehearsals for the end of humanity as well as gestures of hope for the continuation of life on this planet. My dream is that lichen will prevail.
At this time of ecological devastation and catastrophic species loss the work explores the role of mourning rituals and anticipatory grief as a means of trying to comprehend such losses while also communing tenderly with the earthly places we precariously co-inhabit.
A Farewell to Lichen
I’m not sure where I’ll be
or how you’ll find me
But when the time comes
and my decomposition is compatible
with your liveliness
Please take me
in whatever form that may be
as your dedicated substrate
If I am a rock
find a way to etch my surface
If I am a tree
I will twist my branches to favour
both you and the sun
When the ‘I’s’, ‘Me’s’ and ‘My’s’
have disappeared between us
perhaps a trace of this conversation
will be remembered
encoded at a cellular level
so that we might vibrate together
and cohabitate for ages
in a different time from now.
Performed and filmed on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.
Thank you to Wil Normyle for accompanying me on the readings, for our conversations on life and death, and for filming the performances.