Journal of Embodied Research

Special Issue on ‘ECOLOGIES OF EMBODIMENT’

Vol. 5.2 (2022) & Vol. 7.2 (2024)

Co-edited by Dr Raffaele Rufo and Dr Doerte Weig

“I am immensely grateful to Raffaele Rufo, Doerte Weig, and Ben Spatz, who have been accompanying me in the process of this research-creation video article ("Embodied and Sensorial Methodologies for Researching Performance: Kinesthetic Empathy"). In the time we have worked together, they have shown me in different ways what empathy means and how important is grieving well as part of the human challenge to be in a different mode of contact with the more-than-human. They are a great inspiration for my research.” (Celia, author)

“It is such a joy to see this work has finally come together! Thank you and all the reviewers for their amazing job, I am so glad to see this Issue being published with such marvelous accounts and pieces of research. I also really loved how you referred to my piece in your editorial - you just made a better job than me in my abstract!” (Alessandro, author)

Journal of Embodied Research is the first peer reviewed, open access, academic journal to focus on the dissemination of embodied knowledge through video. It advances the scholarly video article as an experimental form supporting diverse embodied research projects. Articles are published on a rolling basis and offer the cutting edge of videographic scholarship, innovating relationships between textuality, audiovisuality, and embodiment.

 

VOL 7.2 (2024) - ECOLOGIES OF EMBODIMENT II

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Video Editorial:
Ecologies of Embodiment: Listening With Earth
Doerte Weig and Raffaele Rufo

Video Articles:
Ecologies of Embodiment: Video Essays III
Polly Hudson, Ana Luiza Azevedo Dupas, Lea Maria Elisabeth Spahn and Hana Magdonova

Letters to the Landscape (or an Alphabet in Ruins)
Marina Souza Lobo Guzzo and Mateus Guzzo

Breathing the Earth: Bodily Exploration of Relationality in Eco-rituals and Dances
Kyoung Mann Cho and Haeree Choi

Embodied and Sensorial Methodologies for Researching Performance: Kinesthetic Empathy
Celia Vara

Dancing with World: Experimenting with Experiments
Paula Kramer

Sonic Kinesthetic Forest: Fostering Ecological Empathy
Rennie Tang, Eleni-Ira Panourgia and Lisa Anne Sandlos

 

Video Articles:
Ecologies of Embodiment: Video Essays I
Csenge Kolozsvari, Anja Plonka, Marko Stefanovic, Rasmus Nordholt-Frieling, Jessica Marion Barr, Jenn Cole, LA Alfonso and Alessandro Guglielmo

Ecologies of Embodiment: Video Essays II
Dominique Rivoal, Daniel Portelli, Florian Goeschke, Fani Kostourou and Takako Hasegawa

Branching Songs
Julie Anna Andreyev, Maria Lantin, Sam Street, Cara Jacobsen, Keira Madsen, Simon Overstall, Lara Felsing and Leanne Plisic

Sentience, Sentences, and Sentiment: Sensing Deep-Ocean Sediment through Artistic Practice
Angela Rawlings

 

For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore how the experience of embodiment is embedded within the larger body of the earth. We call artists and researchers of interdisciplinary practices to propose works that weave threads between somatic, audiovisual and textual ways of knowing. We are curious about proposals that document and articulate the shifts of perception unfolding when we relinquish control and attune our human senses to the sentient presence of plants and the many other nonhuman living systems. Contributors are encouraged to engage the inquiry as a process of co-composing with the more-than-human and to reflect on how our relationship with other forms of life can be reconfigured in accountable and collaborative ways.

Some possible threads of inquiry:

  • Dance, performance, and related art and movement practices as ways of cultivating ecological and eco-somatic awareness and of exploring the embodied connection between humans and other beings and living systems

  • Embodiment as the neurological binding with the wider ecology in which human perception is embedded

  • Ecological crises as crises of perception endangering our coexistence with other species

  • The senses as our first technologies and how the intensified presence and use of digital technologies in everyday life undermines our direct sensory participation in the world

  • How humans can listen and relate with the articulations of nonhuman beings and living systems

  • The role of language in crossing the perceptual threshold into the more-than-human

  • Traditional wisdom, ways of knowing and ecologically embedded perspectives on embodiment

  • The assumed and asserted connections between embodiment, indigeneity and ecological sensibility

  • How our understandings of embodiment are influenced by the ideologies of separation and fragmentation imposed by colonialism and capitalism

  • How our understandings of embodiment are influenced by the whiteness of environmental movements and somatics

  • Embodied research as a response to the extractivism of multinational corporations and neo-developmentalist governments

  • Embodied research and the challenges of environmental justice

Types of submission:

The special issue welcomes both shorter video essay contributions (3-8 minutes each) and standalone video articles (15-25 minutes each). Submissions can range from practice-based to essayistic or conceptual pieces.

Deadlines:

Please submit your abstract (text of max 250 words or link to a 1-minute video abstract) by 15 November 2021 to the contact email addresses listed below. Send us a word document that also includes the title, keywords, name of the author(s) and short bio(s). Notices of acceptance will be communicated by 15 December 2021. The authors of accepted proposals will then have until 28 February 2022 to submit the full piece. We intend to publish the special issue during the second half of 2022, following a process of peer review and revision.

Editorial practice:

Guest co-editors Raffaele Rufo and Doerte Weig will curate the composition of the special issue and review the proposals with the support of the editorial team of Journal of Embodied Research. Co-editing will be engaged, explored, and documented as an earth-body practice of mutual healing which recognises our profound need to dance with the more-than-human and bears witness to the individual, cultural and ecological wounds of modern civilisation. Please contact Raffaele Rufo and Doerte Weig at the email addresses below if you would like to discuss a potential idea before submission.

Contacts:

Raffaele Rufo <raffaele.rufo@gmail.com> and Doerte Weig doerte.weig@gmail.com

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Journal of Embodied Research is the first peer-reviewed, open access, academic journal to focus specifically on the innovation and dissemination of embodied knowledge through the medium of video. With an editorial advisory board drawn from across the arts and humanities, it aims to pioneer the video article as a form of scholarship that supports the diversity of embodied research. For more information about the Journal visit: jer.openlibhums.org.