Arts, Ecologies, Transitions: Constructing a Common Vocabulary

Arts, Ecologies, Transitions provides in-depth insights into how aesthetic relations and current artistic practices are fundamentally ecological and intrinsically connected to the world. As art is created in a given historic temporality, it presents specific modalities of productive and sensory relations to the world.

With contributions from 49 researchers, this book tracks evolutions in the arts that demonstrate an awareness of the environmental, economic, social, and political crises. It proposes interdisciplinary approaches to art that clarify the multiple relationships between art and ecology through an exploration of key concepts such as collapsonauts, degrowth, place, recycling, and walking art. All the artistic fields are addressed from the visual arts, theatre, dance, music and sound art, cinema, and photography – including those that are rarely represented in research such as digital creation or graphic design – to showcase the diversity of artistic practices in transition.

Through original research this book presents ideas in an accessible format and will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of environmental studies, ecology, geography, cultural studies, architecture, performance studies, visual arts, cinema, music, and literature studies.

Roberto Barbanti is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Université Paris 8 and a member of the Arts des images et art contemporain research unit. He co-founded and co-edited the journal Sonorités (2006–2017) and is an advisory board member for the publisher Eterotopia France. His research areas cover ecosophy, sound ecology, and contemporary art. His publications include: Les limites du vivant (co-edited with Lorraine Verner, 2016), Dall’immaginario all’acustinario. Prolegomeni a un’ecosofia sonora (2020), and Les sonorités du monde. De l’écologie sonore à l’écosophie sonore (2023).

Isabelle Ginot is Professor of Dance Studies at Université Paris 8 and co-founder of the association Association d’individus en mouvements engagés. Her two main areas of research intersect with issues of vulnerability and difference in dance. The first addresses dance performance analysis and criticism, and focuses on artists with disabilities who perform on stage. The second analyses practices, especially practices (workshops, performances, participatory art) with "non-dancers" who have disabilities, are ageing, or are affected by social discrimination and exclusion. From 2010 to 2019, she chaired the research group Soma&Po, developing research and practices on the political and social uses of somatic practices. Currently, she runs a practice-based seminar entitled "Mouvements engagés" (Engaged moves), a peer-led workshop that shares dance practices in French care institutions. Lastly, she investigates alternative formats for academic research, involving the participation of artists, activists, and non-scholar actors.

Makis Solomos was born in Greece and lives in France. He is Professor of Musicology at Université Paris 8 and Director of the research unit MUSIDANSE. He has published many books and articles about new music. His main areas of research are the focus on sound, the notion of musical space, new musical technics and technologies, the mutations of listening, and the ecology of sound. His book From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th- and 21st-Century Music (Routledge, 2019) deals with an important change in today’s music. His latest book Towards an Ecology of Sound: Environmental, Mental and Social Ecologies in Music, Sound Art and Artivisms (Routledge, 2023) addresses an expanded notion of ecology, mixing environmental issues and socio-political questions. He is also one of the main Xenakis specialists, to whom he has devoted many publications. For Xenakis’s centenary (2022), he co-organized the "Xenakis22: Centenary International Symposium" and he is the editor of Révolutions Xenakis (Éditions de l’Œil – Philharmonie de Paris, 2022).

Cécile Sorin is currently Professor in the Department of Cinema at Université Paris 8. After having published books on practices of parody and pastiche in cinema (Pratiques de la parodie et du pastiche au cinéma, 2010) and Pasolinian pastiche (Pasolini, pastiche et mélange, 2017), she is currently examining processes of subjectivation in Pasolinian cinema and contemporary French cinema. Her recent work reassesses Pasolini’s work through the prism of ecopoetics. In addition, she is co-editor of the "Esthétiques hors cadre" series from Presses Universitaires de Vincennes.