Memorials for lost environments: Participatory practice and minimal ethics

Abstract

Participatory performance can respond to differing temporal and spatial perspectives of Anthropogenic climate change as an embodied practice of 'minimal ethics' (Zylinska, 2014). By taking up the theme of 'survival', performatively I explore questions of survival in relation to the individual and larger society through the survival of being-with as a 'new' modality for living on this earth and beyond our selves (Heidegger, 1996). I draw the Poetics of Failure (Bailes, 2011) and Schneider (2011) in the creation of performance rituals that activate presence through absence. This paper discusses the performance walk, Be for barefoot - A survival walk on Ocean Beach in Dunedin, Otago, as a mobile community enacting a memorial emerging from the remains of personal and environmental tragedy. The walking and sharing of stories of survival contributes to rituals of wellbeing as a way to create hope in the face of environmental uncertainty.