A New Therapy for an Age of ‘Climate Grief’

One evening last summer, at a loft event in Brooklyn, attendees were asked to set down their drinks, lie on the floor, and close their eyes. As the recorded hums of cicadas and crickets filled the room, two women walked around brushing flowers against the cheeks of the supine people. Afterwards, participants took turns visiting an altar, which was lit by candles and piled with ripe fruit, hunks of honeycomb, and a heap of dead insects.

Part group therapy, part performance art, and part party, the gathering had a pointed goal: to make people feel something about climate change. That is the work of Nocturnal Medicine, a two-year-old project by a pair of New York City landscape architects. Through live events, online installations, and self-published texts, founders Larissa Belcic and Michelle Shofet act as elicitors of and guides to the difficult feelings created by climate change.