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 EBL 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.
Call for papers and critical interventions
We invite proposals for papers, performance lectures, and other critical-creative interventions. The time allocated to each selected proposal may range between 15 and 25 minutes.
Please, send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word bio to: ecobioartlab@liu.se. Make sure to include the preferred timeframe for the activity you are proposing.
Abstract submission DEADLINE: 15 May 2025.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Philosophical and cultural approaches to ecological grief;
- Anthropocene in scientific narratives;
- Possible (multispecies) futures;
- Art and environmental activism;
- Anti-, post- and decolonial approaches to more-than-human crises;
- Biodiversity and citizen science;
- Curating art in times of environmental crisis;
- Polycrisis and science communication;
- Ecocide in philosophy, art, and science;
- Critical approaches to polycrisis;
- Cultural perspectives on climate change;
- Mourning the more-than-human;
- Queering the Anthropocene;
- Posthumanist approaches to environmental disruption;
- Cultural perspectives on environmental violence;
- Resilience in the times of converging crises;
- Deep time heritage;
- Nuclear cultures and deep futures;
- Design and climate imaginaries;
- Art and knowledge production in the Anthropocene;
- Art and biodiversity;
- Creative practices and sustainability;
- Cultural institutions, climate resilience and adaptation.
Participation in the symposium-workshop is FREE of charge. Coffee and sweets/snacks will be provided.
NB! REGISTRATION for event participation will open in May 2025 – please stay tuned.
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.