Aarhus University is pleased to announce a two-day online conference on the multitude of ways of seeing, thinking, and living ecology through visual art, cinema, magic and philosophy.

The programme proposes to engage with a deep theoretical garden of ideas and experiences of ecology with a focus on cycles of decay and efflorescence in garbage and in plants, and on their particular ontologies and ways of inhabitation of the planet.

What appears as a juxtaposition in the title of the conference points at the productive paradox that lies at the heart of the uninterrupted continuums and entangled lives of all humans, non-humans, and things alike. The conference thus attempts to explore the tenets of ecological thinking across a wide spectrum of techno/bio/cultural phenomena, from waste and pollution to more-than-human intelligences and entanglements.

With contributions from the fields of posthuman theory, ecocriticism, new materialism, philosophy, theology, art history, and critical plant studies, we will discuss the sensorial, mystical, aesthetic and theoretical encounters with the nonhuman world, seen through the prismatic ecology of earthly gardens and dumps, and their multi-coloured and multi-dimensional posthuman agencies.

Keynote speakers: 

• Michael Marder (Professor of Philosophy, University of the Basque Country)
• Timothy Morton (Professor of English, Rice University)
• Chen Quifan (Author, Translator, Creative Producer, Curator, Founder of Thema Mundi)
• Jacob Erickson (Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics, Trinity College Dublin)
• Adrian Ivakhiv (Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture, University of Vermont)
• Simone Kotva (Research Fellow, Emmanuel College, Cambridge)

Read the full programme and sign up here >