Dolly Jørgensen: Extinction Voids – Visualizing the Relational Holes Created by Species Loss

Keynote talk (AGORA) at the ABOAGORA "Void" Symposium on 25 August 2023. We are living through one of the most significant changes to the Earth’s environment: the sixth mass extinction event. The fact that we have now begun the sixth mass extinction event has struck a deep social nerve, precipitating new kinds of thinking about the vast, irrevocable loss that haunts our Anthropocene moment. What kinds of voids are created when species disappear? Should we be focused on the void or what once stood in it? Starting with the artwork RIP Passenger Pigeon, after John James Audubon (2020) by contemporary artist Brandon Ballengée, this talk examines the tension between highlighting the gap created by extinction and ensuring that the lost species is not rendered invisible. Jørgensen discusses artworks and museum displays that grapple with narrating extinction in order to perceive the holes in relationships created by species loss. Dolly Jørgensen is Professor of History at the University of Stavanger (UiS), Norway. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Humanities and co-directs The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at UiS. Her current research agenda focuses on cultural histories of animal extinction and recovery, particularly the implications of extinction for cultural heritage and museum practices. Her book Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging was published by MIT Press in 2019. She is currently writing a book about extinction in museums. ABOAGORA "Void" was organized at the Sibelius Museum in Turku, Finland on 23–25 August 2023.