Public Launch, Delfina Foundation, May 2025
After one and a half years of internal brewing and mutual nourishment, Foreshadowing opens its door to public conversations. Initiated by Youngsook Choi, the launch is co-programmed with Chiara Famengo, Jess Wan and Erin Li in support from Necessity, Delfina Foundation and the UAL Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation. A full-day convivial gathering offers rituals, conversations, multi-species listening, collective witnessing with/as rivers, transnational solidarity, eco-grief procession and picnic reflection.
Programme Details:
Welcome and Housekeeping (Erin Li)
Opening up the collective space (Chiara Famengo)
Ecological grief as climate interrogation and interspecies solidarity (Youngsook Choi)
Holding Memories (Khanyisile Mbongwa)
A cleansing ritual for the ground of decolonial gathering in the form of sonic meditation.
River Witnessing (Wen Di Sia and Linh Le)
Wen Di shares ‘When Rivers Get Enclosed’ – endangered spiritual practices around river systems in Peninsular Malaysia’s forests, and Linh shares ‘Remembering through River’- archiving as witnessing the Saigon River.
Grief-themed lunch by Marie Mitchell
Exploring Transnational Solidarity and Activism (Paul Goodwin and Hannah Davey, moderated by Jess Wan)
Hannah shares her transnational experiences supporting artists into activism, and her collaborative climate justice organising as part of Liberate Tate and Greenpeace UK, reflected by Paul through his long-term research on transnational solidarity and the socio-political potential of ‘worlding’.
Let the algae speak (Chiara Famengo)
A listening and tea-tasting session with and for the communities at the lagoon’s edges—algae. A moment to reflect on the role they have played in the Venetian Lagoon, their responses to stillness and change, and the futures they might shape.
Dismantling Total Station (Youngsook Choi and Jess Wan)
Staying close to the stories of the elephant’s diaspora in the ever-shrinking Malaysian rainforest, this session attempts collective poetry reading/writing on interspecies grief with slow reflective sips of Liu Pao, a.k.a. the miner’s tea in Taiping.
Eulogy (Dennis Dizon, moderated by Erin Li)
Reimagining the “interface” between ecological affect and networked media, the mediation invokes a divination ritual, inviting participants to create a eulogy for withdrawing freshwater and its role in powering generative AI.
Listening sticks (Hannah Davey and Emily Gee)
Co-creation workshop exploring intersections between art, activism and climate justice. Wrapping material gathered up by the Foreshadowing members, and reflections from the room via Emily Gee’s third ear, onto a base of hazel cut wooden staffs coppiced from Hannah’s woodland. Hazel is typically used for dowsing, so our carrying of Listening Sticks during the eco-grief procession will pull through the flows of conversation from the day.
Eco-grief procession with Listening Sticks to St. James Park.
A picnic for further informal conversation on how to get involved in eco-grief.
Photos by Ghost Chan
Website designed and built by Ghost Chan
foreshadowing.ecogrief@gmail.com