CALL FOR PAPERS

ART, ESOTERICISM AND THE ECOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

Association for Art History Annual Conference

9 – 11 April 2025

York

Session Abstract

When the art, visual culture, and creative practices of the ecological imagination are informed by esotericism, they reveal rejected knowledge and recover enchanted relationships. In recent years scholarship has expanded significantly in the fields of art and ecology, and art and esotericism, but intersections between all three categories remain underexplored.

Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm have noted one of the analytically most powerful capabilities of the concept of the esoteric is its ability to shine light on the ‘betwixt and between’ and phenomena that transgress seemingly impermeable borders. Esoteric thinking resists boundaries, linearities of time and progress, and conformity to anthropocentrism. Esotericism has long held the imagination as an important faculty to transcend the mundane and the human, the everyday and the present. Similarly, environmental philosophers have evoked the imagination to negotiate and conceive, simulate and project increasingly complex world systems. As Diana Villanueva-Romero, Lorraine Kerslake and Carmen Flys-Junquera have demonstrated, artworks promote environmental awareness through the exercise of imaginative processes, paving the way for encounters of affective knowledge between us and ‘other’ - the ‘more-than-human’. With the creative potential and possibilities of these mutual imaginative forces - both esoteric and ecological - artists explore alternative entanglements with the natural and supernatural, visualising the interconnectivity and reciprocity between planes, scales and beings.

What are the visual manifestations and wider implications of the ecological imagination when it unites with esotericism? How are alternative entanglements conceived, envisioned and given form? This session invites papers to investigate the intersections of art, esotericism and ecology in their broadest sense, including transhistorical and global perspectives. In addition to academic papers, we welcome interdisciplinary approaches and other presentation formats from artists, ecologists and esoteric practitioners.

Session Convenors

Michelle Foot, University of Edinburgh, Michelle.Foot@ed.ac.uk

Natasha V. Moody, University of Plymouth / Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices, natashavmoody@gmail.com

To offer a paper:

Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenors, details above.

Provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (or alternative presentation format), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme.

Deadline for submissions: 1 November 2024