Anthropocene Pastoral is a meditation on the complex emotional landscape of the biodiversity crisis. This two-minute video, conceptualized and directed by visual artist Clare Börsch, merges the disciplines of six international female artists—visual art, dance, poetry, sound, and cinematography—to create a deeply immersive experience that invites reflection on our place within the natural world.
Catherine Pierce’s poem, Anthropocene Pastoral, serves as the emotional core of the piece, its verses illuminating the tension between pleasure and mourning. Clare Celeste Boersch creates the physical stage for the work through an immersive paper installation composed of intricate silhouettes—76% in muted tones, 24% in vibrant hues—visually representing the staggering reality of biodiversity loss. Projection mapping and animations by visual artist Amelie Runkel transform these delicate forms into an evocative, living, shifting organism. Berlin Staatsballet dancer Marina Duarte embodies the emotional weight of climate grief through movement, while Romy Runkel’s sound design creates an expansive auditory landscape. Through Adriana Berroteran's lens, the collaboration becomes a richly layered cinematic experience, resonating with emotional complexity and capturing the depth of the work.
At its core, this project examines the contradictory emotions of living through a climate crisis—the unsettling beauty of unseasonably warm days, the joy of birdsong in February, the eerie loveliness of cherry blossoms blooming too soon. The piece juxtaposes idyllic nature imagery with the foreboding reality of ecological collapse. It asks: How do we reconcile love for the natural world with the grief of witnessing its decline? How do we hold onto wonder while acknowledging loss?
The presence of the human body—soft, breathing, ephemeral—is central, reminding us that climate change is not an abstract crisis but one we will experience through our lungs, our skin, our hearts, our movements.
It acknowledges the grief and fear that accompany the awareness of ecological loss, while also celebrating the enduring beauty and resilience of the natural world. The biodiversity crisis is not just an environmental issue; it is a cultural and spiritual one, a symptom of our disconnection from the earth and from each other. Anthropocene Pastoral invites viewers to feel that connection anew—to grieve what is vanishing, to marvel at what remains, and to find hope in the knowledge that we are not separate from nature but an inseparable part of it. In the face of uncertainty, art can help us navigate the emotional landscape of this crisis. It can remind us of what we stand to lose—and what we must protect.
Photography by Christiane Meyer.