Welcome to The Eco and Bioart Lab International Symposium-Workshop Critical Ecologies: Crisis, Grief, and Resilience in Philosophy, Science, and Art
Presently, climate change, species extinction and loss of biodiversity, destruction of habitats and ecosystems, epidemics, and slow environmental violence are converging with wars, extractivisms, renewed imperialisms, inequalities, and (neo)colonialisms. The biological and the technological, the natural and the social, the environmental and the ethico-political are tightly intertwined.
We find ourselves in the midst of critical ecologies.
With global warming unfolding in the Arctic four times faster than in the rest of the planet and the Baltic Sea turning into the largest ‘dead zone’ in the world, environmental disruption is acutely present in the social and cultural awareness close to home.
The sense of multiple crises, uncertainty, and more-than-human vulnerabilities evoke feelings of anxiety, despair, anger and grief, manifested both globally and locally in culture, scientific and popular-scientific narratives, environmental activism, and art.
Simultaneously, dominant societal discourses tend to prioritise either the techno-fix solutionism (the ‘technology-will-save-us’ scenario) or the all-encompassing apocalyptic framing (‘we are doomed’).
We need conceptual tools that would allow us to make sense of the converging more-than-human crises and their accompanying imaginaries and narratives; a toolbox that would assist us in resisting the binary of ‘techno-optimism vs impeding doom’; and last, but not least, an apparatus that would enable us to respond to the complex conditions of the present.
The Eco and Bioart Lab International Symposium-Workshop Critical Ecologies: Crisis, Grief, and Resilience in Philosophy, Science, and Art brings together researchers from across the humanities, social and natural sciences, and science studies, artists and artistic researchers, designers, curators and cultural workers, as well as other practitioners, in order to engage in a transversal, inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue on the social and cultural understandings of, engagements with, and responses to the critical conditions of the present.
Participation in the symposium-workshop is free of charge. Coffee and sweets/snacks will be provided.
Registration for event participation will open in May 2025 – please stay tuned.
Call for papers
Proposals for papers, performance lectures, and other critical-creative interventions are welcome. The time allocated to each selected proposal may range between 15 and 25 minutes. Abstract submission deadline: 15 May 2025
More information here: Call for papers: "Critical Ecologies: Crisis, Grief, and Resilience in Philosophy, Art, and Science"
The symposium-workshop is organised as part of the research project Ecological Grief, Crisis Imaginaries and Resilience in Nordic Lights (2022-26), funded by FORMAS: A Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.