Ecoes #6

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Editor in Chief: Mirna Belina
Assistant Editor: Hannah Pezzack
Design: Rafaela Dražić
PDF, English, January 2024
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ISSN: 2772-5685

Published to accompany the 30th anniversary edition of the Sonic Acts Biennial, Ecoes #6 draws inspiration from the landmark book The Spell of the Sensuous (1996), authored by the ecologist and philosopher David Abram. Under this spell, the magazine explores the web of relations – experienced and perceived through the ‘sensuous body’ – that evoke our rootedness in the larger ecology of earth beings.

Ecoes #6 opens with an essay by Abram himself, where he reflects on the migratory movements of salmon, cranes, and butterflies, illuminating the intelligence that guides all scales of life, even the microscopic cells of our bodies. Navigating sensory exchanges across species, theorist Astrida Neimanis traces the interconnected lifeways of kelp and otters. Reflecting on mystical encounters, writer Elvia Wilk speaks to Hannah Pezzack about the pressing weight of climate catastrophe, whereas Juan Arturo García narrates his film Time, Displaced, about a hidden nuclear reactor in Bogotá, Colombia.

Themes of environmental interdependence, intuition and sensing bind the artistic and theoretical interventions in this issue. In dialogue with Margarita Osipian, artist Annika Kappner discusses speculative technologies and inherited memories across generations. In notes from the making of their collaborative film Soot Breath // Corpus Infinitum, Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva reflect on tenderness and its potential to counteract systemic violence. On the shores of the Salton Sea, an endorheic lake in California, Lukas Marxt uncovers former atomic test sites, while Elena Khurtova and Anika Schwarzlose focus on soil contamination.

The texts in Ecoes #6 consistently return to the idea of the porous body – a surface of metamorphosis and exchange. Xenologist Adriana Knouf explores radical transformations and the flux of human and non-human entities, while Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner consider digestion as a constant site of interchange between the self and the environment. In the sonic realm, François J. Bonnet, in conversation with Anton Spice, composes meditative soundscapes that blur the line between perception and sensation. And, equipped with her hydrophone, Susan Schuppli captures the sounds of melting glaciers, offering an aural glimpse into planetary deep time.

About Ecoes magazine

Ecoes unpacks alternatives to the anthropocentric perspective that approaches the nonhuman as a resource. A portmanteau of ‘ecology’ and ‘echoes’, this periodic magazine about ‘art in the age of pollution’ showcases compelling artistic and critical perspectives that engage with the past, future or afterlives of environmental harm, toxicity, extraction, and waste.

Published with the support of Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Introduction – Mirna Belina

Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet – David Abram

Holding Feeling – Astrida Neimanis

Elvia Wilk: A Divine Undoing – Interview by Hannah Pezzack

Two Hundred Years of Total Conversion – Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner

★ François J. Bonnet: Being Open to the Pure Moment of Listening – Interview by Anton Spice

Fragments of Xenology – Adriana Knouf

Annika Kappner: Shared Clouds and Other Inner Senses – Interview by Margarita Osipian

Dépaysement – a saudade do desencontro: Emotional Map – Pedro Matias

Soot Notes – Arjuna Neuman, Denise Ferreira Da Silva

★ Lukas Marxt: Everything Silenced or Invisible is Still Beautiful – Interview by Maïté Moloney