This conference aims to address the relationship between ecology and visuality in the broadest sense. On the one hand several discourses have come to revolve around what Susan Sontag described in On Photography as an ecology of images, a perspective which raises both epistemological and ethical questions concerning our interactions with the image. On the other hand there are presently several indications of a pressing need for the field of visual culture studies to address what we might call the visualities of ecology, or the place of environmental issues in contemporary visual culture.

Some of the topics included are: Images and Ethics, “Ecology” as a Metaphorical Nexus in Visual Studies, Visual Culture within and without the Ecology of Disciplines, Consumerism and Visual Culture/The Visual Culture of Consumerism, Climate Change in/and Visual Culture, The Rhetorics of Environmentalism in Media and/or Art, Apocalyptic Narratives in Visual Culture.

Speakers

Jasmina Aleksova, University of St Cyril and Methodius

Diana Almeida, University of Lisbon
“Hast Thou Perceived the Breadth of the Earth”: Malick’s Ecosophy in The Tree of Life”

Adam Brenthel, Lund University
“Undoing Virtual Reality: The Use of Virtual Realities for Trier Social Stress Test – Then Taking a Virtual Green Walk to Recover”

Ksenia Fedorova & Marc I. Barasch Ural Federal University and University of California, Davis
“Mission to Earth: Visual Interfaces for Participatory Geo-Engineering”

Åsa Barathi Larsson, Uppsala University
“Eye Contact: The Vanadis Journey 1885”

Max Liljefors, Lund University
“Nature” in the Expanded Field: Limits of Anthropomorphism

Cecilia Mörner & Johan Nilsson, Örebro University
“Dear Hunters: Ecocriticism on YouTube”

Leila Nadir & Cary Peppermint, University of Rochester
“Indeterminate Hikes+”

Jovanka Popova, University of St Cyril and Methodius
“ALARM CONTAINER”

Michaela Quadaro, University of Naples-L’Orientale
“Heterogeneous Spaces: The Migratory Aesthetics of Postcolonial Digital Art”

Marja Seliger, Aalto University
“Climate Change Information and Visual Rhetoric”

Magda Szczesniak, University of Warsaw
“A Healthy Ecosystem”: Images in Public Spaces

Susanne Østby Sæther, University of Oslo
“Media Ecology Between the Imagescape and the Noosphere”

Elena Todevska, University of St Cyril and Methodius
“Intervention in Nature and the Intervention of Nature in Urban Environments”

Rebecca Wright, London Consortium
“The Activation of the Surrealist Thermometer: Weather Aesthetics and Ecology within Surrealism”

Lukasz Zaremba, University of Warsaw
“Images Slipping Through: The Dynamics of the Image Spam”