iJADE Conference 2025 | Ecologies
Bristol Arnolfini, Saturday 8 November 2025 | 15:25 – 16:10 GMT
Crafting Magic > Conjuring Relations
Video, (27mins)
Slides repo URI https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/44148
“Ecologic” in the context of art education is approached here as a complex metaphor that, at very least, blends “oikos”, “ology”, “art” and “education”. Distinct metaphorical blends offer a myriad of ways of interconnecting art, education, and their milieu. Metaphorical blends are forms of syntactical magic (spellcasting) that generate their own grammar (grimoire). Bio-cultural metaphors are thus agents of biophillic organisation – they conjure relations and situate actions. This raises two key questions:
Q. What sort of enabling constraints might different “eco” analogies conjure, and which actions do they situate?
Q. Are there “genuinely” ecological forms of identification and if so, which eco-metaphors might best rationalise them?
Looking at salient eco-metaphors – such as “shallow” and “deep” ecology, biophillia, (dis)enchantment, magical relations, technic, and panarchy – broaches how we can establish emergent boundary rationalisations, identifications and organisational forms through tricksterish blends of existing industrial and eco-metaphors.
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