A PROJECT BY CAROLINA PINTO

How can shifting to a fictional creature perspective start dialogues between industry and activism, to define and explore the climate crisis?

In the beginning, there was death. The starting point for this research was in fact the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of spells that guide the deceased through the afterlife journey, one filled with multi-species encounters and falucca rides.

In Cairo, my field research was one of wonder and discovery around the rituals around death and the unknown. Both in Ancient times and now, the Egyptian society is filled with magic, storytelling and ways of communicating to the unknown. Carolina brought back sound material, from the Zar to Ahmed cooking in the desert.

Zooming out, this made me wonder: how will the planet’s afterlife be like? When it becomes so unbearable, inhabitable and exhausted, which creatures will thrive?

There is always a life after death: it might just not be for us. As I came back to Amsterdam, my research was an attempt to shift the conversation around climate change from a mea culpa, terrified and human centred discourse. Carolina has looked into what death will bring to the earth and speculated on its after (human) life. In combination with a collaboration with the Climate Institute, TU Delft and Extinction Rebellion NL, fiction plays an essential role in this research, as a means to break free from the polarised conversations we see today around the climate crisis, in which we are either doomed or not at risk at all. Be prepared to travel in time: this project lives in the far future, where no human is in sight…