Panel Discussion and Preview Performance: da biltoon meena ("the love of loss") || Art, Activism, and the Anthropocene

In preparation for a full-scale production of a newly composed opera titled da biltoon meena ("the love of loss"), DMA Composer Seare Farhat will be joined by CALS Professor Karim Aly Kassam, soprano Anika Kildegaard, visual artist Elina Ansary, DMA pianist Jack Yarborough, violinist Asher Wulfman, and cellist Hannah Soren for a panel discussion on art and activism, climate and cultural memory, responsibility and stewardship of land, and diasporic knowledge. The discussion will be interspersed with performances of excerpts from the opera-in-process, as well as demonstrations of technology to be implemented in the final performance. The panel discussion and performance are generously supported by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Cornell Council for the Arts, the Cornell Center for Historical Keybords, and the Cornell Department of Music.


Da Biltoon Meena, or The Love of Loss, is a narrative multi-disciplinary performance constructed around a set of landai, a Pashtun tradition of oral poetry. Landai, typically authored by women and recorded as early as the 13th century, are witty, impactful couplets that touch on topics such as separation, war, loss, and love. They have historically served as tools in voicing political and social concern. In a narrative reinterpretation of these texts collaging the original Pashto and the translation in English, the work aims to confront often-overlooked questions relating to climate change: what happens to the art that climate refugees carry with them, especially with an art form so tied to the environment in which it was born? How is culture preserved on a changing Earth? How is knowledge about the stewardship of the Earth carried through art? More abstractly, how does the land itself hear cultural displacement – does it mourn?

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