web analytics
SE BACHINGER

Follow Me |

Search

È L È G Ē [S]

This compilation embodies a collection of multimedia “poems of affection and sorrow,” originating from a distant epoch, dedicated to the Earth and our interconnected companions beyond the human realm, during the era defined as the Anthropocene. This period marked humanity’s awakening to the unfolding repercussions of its fervent pursuits of industry, colonization, and consumerism upon the sole celestial body within our solar system equipped to sustain and nurture human existence. As humankind grappled with the ramifications of its insatiable desire of progress, the resonance of these compositions resided within the fading echoes of sound, capturing the final expressions of feminine, human tenderness and veneration for the intricate network of life forms that harmonized life’s equilibrium on this planet. Following humanity’s demise, these chronicles, safeguarded through the annals of time, are unearthed by novel species and new technologies. Within the cadence of deteriorating sound waves, they unveil the ultimate whispers of humanity’s devotion and homage toward the fragile cohabitants who once nurtured life’s delicate symphony upon this cherished sphere.

ELEGY FOR A GLACIER - Film by SE Bachinger | Photographs by SE Bachinger | Music - Glacier Movement No.1 by SE Bachinger [containing various compiled field recordings including hydrophone recordings from Jökulsárlón] | Poem - Elegy For A Glacier - written and read by SE Bachinger

ELEGY FOR A GLACIER - VERSE

Humbly I approach your margins
Scanning the topographies of loss
etched into earth
Markers of passing, marks of presence
It is at these edges where things grow
It is at these edges where things die
Our existence hangs in a lucid balance
Slices of atmosphere, stories in flow and flux
You allow me to hold deep time in a fleeting moment
though the consequences of my contact
drip through fingers and moulins
into meltwater rivers
ashes floating out to see and back again
Breaths of advance and retreat
Pulsing, blue spectrum horizons
From crevice to cradle we are linked
Intertwined in fluid connection
echoes in veins and rivers
and molecules ending in the cold continuum
of ancient tongues
I understand now the unsettling symmetry
of how we crumble in on our own movements
though there are still some that don’t believe
though you have been telling us for eons
pouring into footprints, imprints, woven and erased
Our vulnerabilities mapped in edges
that reconfigure continents,
while echoes of imbalances whisper on changing winds,
unravelling the ties that bind
reminding us that no thread exists in isolation.
It is at these edges where life finds its foothold,
It is as your edges where stories unfurl and fade.
And the echoes of our choices mingle with the swell
of
your
retreat.