AN intimate screening on Anaiwan Country of The Parallel Effect’s Vigil for the Smooth Handfish. Featuring 27 unique contributions from individuals and communities across the globe including scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate, Dr Vandana Shiva; Aboriginal Australian writer and scholar, Bruce Pascoe; Palestinian artist and conservationist, Vivien Sansour and Canadian cellist Zöe Keating.
Please visit handfishvigil.com for more information or read more below.
5.00pm-5.20pm: Refreshments, meeting others, finding seats
5.20pm-5.30pm: Acknowledgement of Country, Introductions by Sewa Emojong and Jen Hamilton
8pm: Finish
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The Smooth Handfish – a sea dweller with bulging eyes, a distinctive fin on its head, and hand-like fins that allowed it to walk on the seabed – was once so plentiful in the Tasman region, it was one of the first fish species to be documented in ‘Australia’. In July 2020, it was declared extinct. What is known of its collective story – within the limits of human cognition of its existence and loss – feels relevant to where we find ourselves today.
For many people, the last two years in particular, have given multiple pauses to rethink the question, ‘What does it take to survive?’ These are difficult times in the midst of multiple crises, with profound losses occurring each day. The frantic pace of the world and the type of systems that much of humankind are expected to navigate, has meant that over the years many important personal and communal rituals have been misplaced or usurped. Spaces for meaningful philosophical discourse have been lost – as well as spaces for connection with living companions – human, non-human, across earth, ocean, freshwater, ice…
To reckon with this, The Parallel Effect – a collective of creators and thinkers – have curated a Vigil for the Smooth Handfish. Their intention is to provide a space for congregation, to contemplate loss, grief, the parameters of care, the interconnectedness of conservation and radical hope, and “collaborative survival”.
Featuring 27 unique contributions by renowned artists, musicians, scholars, scientists and First Nations speakers from communities across the globe including ‘Australia’, India, Turtle Island, UK, Germany, Morocco, Syria, Afghanistan and Palestine. Contributions take on a multiplicity of forms: music, spoken word, performance, animation, academic papers and video essays. Many have been developed collaboratively between contributors, as the Vigil creates a space to foster reflexive interdisciplinary multimodal works at the nexus of art, politics, science and geography.
Australian First Nations man, Chris Bonney, shares a 130,000 year old Ngarrindjeri Dreaming story about sustainability; biological anthropologist, Dr Barbara J. King presents some of her research documenting grief and bereavement across the animal kingdom; filmmaker Benjamin Gilmour confronts the parameters of care; and Afghan artist Kabir Mokamel — joining us from his home in Kabul — articulates the relationship between time and daily tragedy in a war-zone.
As each uniquely mourns the loss of the Smooth Handfish, in communion they offer a collective expression and reflection of grief and survival in an increasingly complex, and often far too difficult, world.
Accessibility:
The event is captioned and transcripts are available upon request.
Website: The Parallel Effect
Facebook: @TheParallelEffect
Twitter: @effectparallel
The screening is facilitated by the Community Weathering Station (CoWS). CoWS is an initiative started by Jen Hamilton at UNE during the drought, to share ideas and skills for how to better weather climate crisis together. CoWS seeks to facilitate local collaborations to foster environmental justice. This event is operating with support from the Smart Region Incubator.
Community Weathering Station (Cows) 