DOI: 10.34894/khdsle
title: Non-extractivist (future) memorials of a mountain
title: How to bring something from a mountain without literally taking anything?

description: There are three pathways defining ecological grief:

1) Grief associated with physical ecological losses, (…) associated with the physical disappearance, degradation and/or death of species, ecosystems and landscapes, and is driven by climate change in several ways.

2) Grief associated with loss of environmental knowledge, (…) associated with disruptions to environmental knowledge systems and resulting feelings of loss of identity.

3) Grief associated with anticipated future losses, (…) feeling anticipatory grief for ecological changes that had not yet happened. In these cases, grief for anticipated future ecological losses is also tied to grief over future losses to culture, livelihoods and ways of life. (Cunsolo, Ellis, 2018).

Focusing on mountain bodies, this dataset is an expanding collection of memorabilia to cope with (future) ecological grief following a non-extractivist approach. This means memorabilia that are not literal material of a landscape itself but can take the shape of field recordings, invitations, movements and more. All data is brought from Stefan's numerous visits to the “dying” Hochvogel mountain (AU/DE), the remains of Ok-glacier (IS), the “dying” Gurgler Ferler (AU) between 2024-2027. Rooted in the concept of “landscape translation” (Pitches, 2020), the material is meant to be used and adjusted for various contexts, and locations, including but not limited to, audio, performances, installations.

Geophone field recordings:

The recordings are capturing the friction caused by touching rocks and rock material at the instable SE side of the Hochvogel mountain. The Hochvogel is a mountain in the Northern Calcareous Alps and breaking apart above the Austrian-German border. It “consists Hauptdolomit, a brittle, variably bituminous carbonate rock with a pronounced bedding (dm – m) and incidental marly interlayers. The rock mass is tectonically stressed and highly weathered. Pronounced talus material indicates sustained rock fall activity.”3 (Leinauer, Krautblatter, Jacobs, 2020). It will lead to an “imminent large rock slide failure at the Hochvogel summit (possibly 260.000m3)” (Ibid). The part that will break apart is the location of the field recordings. Several stones, rocks and rock formations falling of the summit soon have been gently touched, fostering a
sense of connection in a ritualistic manner. These touch gestures have been recorded using is a Geophone: a contact microphone using seismographic sensors capturing low-frequence vibrations (LeafAudio, 2024). The vibrations have been recorded with a ZOOM H1N handy recorder, the files are WAV-format. The duration of the recordings are between 0:13 - and 4:21 minutes.

All recordings have been made by me (the researcher s†ëf/\n sch/\efer) and the Hochvogel mountain except of four recordings made by participants I met at the summit: Katerina Fillmoreand Thomas Knoll. The files in question include their names in the file-names.

Notes:

This dataset is part of sch/\efer’s Proefsssional Doctorate research “bre/\king /\/p\r† †oge†her. perfor/\/\ing on†ologically-orien†ed-design \/\/i†h dying /\/\oun†/\ins /\nd dead gl/\ciers” at the Lectorate of the Academy of Theatre and Dance.

Funding:

This research is funded by Regieorgaan SIA

References:

Cunsolo, A., Ellis, N.R. Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change 8, 275–281 (2018).

Pitches, Jonathan. (2020). Performing Mountains. 10.1057/978-1-137-55601-1.

Leinauer, J.; Jacobs, B., Krautblatter, M. (2020) Anticipating an imminent large rock slope failure at the Hochvogel (Allgäu Alps). Geomechanics and Tunnelling 13, No. 6, pp. 597–603.

https://www.leaf-audio.com/machines/geophones/ visited 29 October 2025.
description: Hardware that is used for collecting the data: ''Leaf Audio - Geophone S''
description: Dataset is part of the Post Doctoral research project of S†ëfan Schäfer: 
bre/\king /\/p\r† †oge†her. perfor/\/\ing on†ologically-orien†ed-design \/\/i†h dying /\/\oun†/\ins /\nd dead gl/\ciers.

(breaking apart together. performing ontologically-oriented-design with dying mountains and dead glaciers)