“Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic anda thu uuat unbidan uue nu” (Old Dutch)
“Alle vogels zijn al aan het nestelen, behalve ik en jij. Waar wachten we nog op?” (Dutch)
“All the birds are already nesting, except for you and me. What are we waiting for?" (English)

A Lament for the Greylag is a shrine dedicated to the Greylag Goose. It is a space to grieve the suffering inflicted on this bird in the Netherlands, an homage to the Greylag’s ability to flourish amidst climate breakdown, and an exploration of utilising design, understood as a worlding practice, to foster interspecies empathy. In just 40 years, the Greylag Goose has transformed from a rare sighting in the Netherlands to a species considered a pest. This population increase is a direct consequence of the intensification of agriculture and the increased availability of protein-rich grasslands. While other species struggle, the Greylag Goose thrives in this monocultural landscape – at the expense of crop yields for farmers. To prevent geese from eating valuable grasses intended for optimising milk production, various pest control measures are applied, including hunting, chasing them with robotic birds of prey, puncturing eggs to prevent hatching, and gassing entire flocks. These practices reflect a purely rational, economically driven, and human-centred understanding of ‘nature’ and beg the question: What kind of cultural imagination enables the infliction of such atrocities on our kin, and how can we learn to live and die ethically with the Greylag Goose?

As a first step, before we can even begin to answer this question and change our actions, we must first learn how to be genuinely affected by the violence unfolding before our eyes; we must learn how to grieve with other species. Or as the ecological philosopher Thom van Dooren argues: “Mourning is about dwelling with a loss and so coming to appreciate what it means, how the world has changed, and how we must ourselves change and renew our relationships if we are to move forward from here.”[1]

[1] Thom van Dooren, ‘Keeping Faith with Death: Mourning and De-extinction.’, 2 November 2013. Accessed through: https://www.thomvandooren.org/2013/11/02/keeping-faith-with-death-mourning-and-de-extinction/#_edn4