Songs in the Key of Collaboration: engaging with Anthropocene moments through personal and collaborative songwriting

Developing an artistic research practice the project explores personal and collaborative songwriting to engage with issues of going through ‘Anthropocene moments.’ These moments are characterized by a realization that any perceived trajectory of stability or progress can be hoped for at best, not expected, in the face of the unfolding climate and bio-diversity crises.

Working arts-based the project observes ‘the conscious pursuit of expressive form in the service of understanding’ (Barone & Eisner, 2012:7). In this work I view knowledge as a verb, something we do, and employ personal and collaborative songwriting and stories shared to allow knowledge to emerge in non-rationalist ways (Eisner, 2008), believing that we 'can know more than we can tell' (Polanyi & Sen, 2009).

A point of departure for the work has been the ‘Day Zero’ water crisis in Cape Town and its aftermath (2018-2019). In 2020 and 2021 I have also worked with research participants in Denmark  in relation to Covid-19 and the climate-and biodiversity crises. Some works in progress will continuously be shared online to create engagement with different publics on an ongoing basis.
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Project main supervisor is associate professor, Alan O'Leary, Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Aarhus University. The project is affiliated with the HATA-project - headed by associate professor Nick Shepherd, Dept. of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, who is also a project co-supervisor, as is professor Andreas Roepstorff from the Interacting Minds Center, Aarhus University.