Laments are a musical expression carried by emotion. Laments are a global genre of traditional music that often combines melody, poetry and other artistic expressions that allow for the release of natural tears. 

Lament-singing was used for releasing emotional distress and are found intact in parts of Ireland, Greece, Romania, Karelia, the Middle East and among indigenous cultures from the Amazon to Africa and Papua New Guinea.  

Crying is not forced, but laments are inspired by topics with a strong emotional need, so space is made to experience grief in whatever form it arises.

The workshop includes practical exercises intended to bring forth a hands-on experience about how laments can be done. The workshop is suitable for anyone interested in history, rites of passage, rituals and grief practices, music therapy and other psychological approaches to loss and trauma a well as those seeking a new way with their own feelings about the state of our planet.

Bio: Tuomas Rounakari (Workshop Facilitator)

Musician:
Tuomas Rounakari is an internationally acclaimed violinist, composer, ethnomusicologist and educator from Finland. He is a versatile musician ranging from avantgarde improvisation to folk-metal, from contemporary classical music compositions to film scoring and sound design. His Doctor of Arts thesis, (presently in preliminary examination at the University of Arts in Helsinki), discusses the altered states of consciousness and the ability to engage in dialogue with the more-than-human through music. The case study in his thesis centres around the Bear Feast traditions of Finland, Karelia and the indigenous Khanty and Mansi people in Siberia. 

Lament facilitator: 
Tuomas Rounakari has been a key figure in the revival of the near extinct lament tradition in Finland. He learned the essence of laments from the Karelian elder Martta Kuikka, who was the first to bridge Karelian lament tradition and modern-day Finland. Subsequently, together with Pirkko Fihlman, Tuomas Rounakari developed a model of teaching laments in grief circles that allowed the participants to create their unique laments and be witnessed in their grief. During the past 20 years of workshops and ceremonies, Tuomas has been birthing and witnessing over a thousand individual laments across continents. 

This one-day seminar will be held in conjunction with Aalborg University and is focused on the ways that humanities “green” research can – and should – build bridges between the university and the broader people, places and living communities that it addresses.

The seminar will start with a roundtable discussion based on  the AAU Green Societies sponsored project “On Grieving the State of Our Planet: Using the Lamenting Method to Re-Imagine Hope and Protest”.  The discussion will be focussing on the discussion about the relationship between humanities research and the communities it impacts.

The seminar will continue with presentations by invited scholars to present their current research, with a focus on climate grief in hopes to continue thinking about how we might bridge the divide between humanities-focused “green” research and the implications of such research for the larger communities with which it is engaged. 

Presentation 1: “Youth Climate Activism and Emotive Responses to the Ecological Crisis”
Alfred Sköld 

Presentation 2: “Ambience of loss and the poetics of grief”
Jonatan Spejlborg Juelsbo 

Bios: 

Dr. Alfred Sköld is an Associate Professor of General Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. His PhD-dissertation, Relationality and Finitude: A Social Ontology of Grief (2021), focused on the existential and ethical aspects of grief, and in his currect reseach project, Emotions of Climate Activism, he investigaste the the role of emotions in a climate activist setting. The project is based on ethnographic field work and qualitative interview study with The Green Youth Movement (Den grønne ungdomsbevælgese) in Denmark. Sköld is currently working on a forthcoming book, Youth Climate Activism and Emotive Responses to the Ecological Crisis: Bridging Historical Context and Existential Conditions, that broadly explores our emotional responses to the ecological crisis, with a particular focus on the relationship between grief, hope, and care within the context of climate activism.

Jonatan Spejlborg Juelsbo, PhD student, Institute for Communication & Culture, Aarhus University (DK) & Program Director, LungA School (IS), is an artist, researcher and educator working with practice-based means and methods for collaborative knowledge formation and articulation. His current studies explore contemporary experiences of loss in relation to climate change, and the collective practices of grief and memorialization that emerge and arise in relation to such loss.