Summary: | This chapter is a scholarly response to environmental degradation in Iceland. In recognizing the scope of the crisis, the chapter questions conventional wisdom in musical geography and offers a new vision for music’s potential in transnational futures. The chapter offers an argument for eco-cosmopolitanism as an alternative to place-centered approaches to the analysis of contemporary spatial experiences, suggesting that recorded music might help people see themselves as part of a global biosphere. The analysis includes a discussion of musical activism in response to the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project and offers two case studies, illustrating a topophilic and a biophilic conception of the national environment. The first case study is the 2007 documentary Heima (Homeland) about a free, unannounced concert tour by Sigur Rós and the second is Björk’s 2011 album Biophilia.
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