Experiencing a Lament Performance in a Mire

Abstract

The article addresses the topical issue of environmental emotions from the perspective of individual experiences of environmental art reception. The research focuses on how the audience experienced lament performances by singer and musician Noora Kauppila in natural mires in Finland, and it asks the research question: What kinds of environmental emotions have laments in the mire provoked, and how are emotions contextualised in audience interviews? Art performances in the mire have become part of a growing international mire trend in the 21st century. I understand mires as a living heritage that reflects the diversity and inter-connectedness of heritage elements (e.g. practices and knowledge concerning nature) experienced by community members and individuals. The effectiveness of art (lament performances) is linked to reception research, which has not previously been applied to mire art performances. In the debate on the impact of art, the experiential perspective has been marginal. In the interview material, individuals’ experiences reveal strong emotions about the endangered environment. The lament performance transformed a mire into a culturally appropriated space for the collective and individual processing of emotions regarding a fragile natural environment. The interviewees reported unwanted changes in their own surroundings, and their feelings about the changes were reflected in the observed decline in the habitats of birds and other mire animals. In a broad sense, the article offers insights into the meanings and changes of an individual’s relationship with nature. The research evidence suggests that a communal context is needed to deal with environmental emotions, especially negative emotions like sorrow, hatred and grief. Likewise, the individual accounts reveal a need for a communal change in abandoning unsustainable lifestyles. The article is based on research that has been undertaken as part of the ‘Mire Trend’ research project at the University of Eastern Finland.