Multispecies Explorations in a World in Ruins. Hybrid Bodies, Intertwined and Inscribed Upon One Another

The seminar “Multispecies Explorations in a World in Ruins. Hybrid Bodies, Intertwined and Inscribed Upon One Another”, organized by Laura Del Vecchio and Stephanie Rincón —researchers with the project Cinema and Environment 2: Ways of Seeing Beyond the Anthropocene (PID2023-152989NB-I00)— aims to create a space for imagining and exploring new sensory and creative ways of thinking about plural worlds from perspectives that reach beyond the human. Rooted in the idea that the capacity to think, imagine, speculate, and remember is not unique to our species, the seminar invites participants to engage with non-human intelligences,opening paths to new landscapes, bodies, organisms, and ways of inhabiting a world in ruins.

The first sessions will feature guest contributors who will help broaden our perspectives and cultivate new spaces for thought and sensitivity. The opening session will welcome Jansky and their Insecta Dance Music, a project that invites us to explore speculative listening and consider how artistic creation can weave alliances with non-human animals. The second session will feature Dr. Júlia Lull, lecturer at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, who will offer a reflection on new materialisms and their complex relationships with memory, the agency of the other, and the presence of the non-human in contemporary thought and creative practices. Across four sessions, the seminar invites participants to explore different ways of narrating and understanding the non-human—from reading Amazonian soils as living archives of colonial violence and, at the same time, as fertile grounds for imagining new forms of kinship with the Earth, to examining how fantasy literature proposes ecocritical alternatives for rethinking the agency of non-human intelligences.

The seminar is free and open to anyone interested. Reading materials and a list of films will be provided upon registration.

The sessions will take place in person, and prior registration is required.

To register, please send an email to laura.delvecchio@uib.cat and stephanie.rincon@uib.es by May 5, 2025.

Sessions

May 8: “Speculative Listening: Multispecies Stories That Pass Through the Ears,” with Jansky and Laura Del Vecchio. 

May 15: “Silences Held in the Earth. On Colonial Violence and Ways of Remembering Beyond the Human,” with Dr. Júlia Lull (UPF) and Laura Del Vecchio. 

May 22: “Hybrid Bodies in Ruined Worlds. More-than-Human Agency and Responsibility in Cli-Fi Narratives,” with Stephanie Rincón. 

May 29: “Unearthing Ecological Thought from Fantastic Narratives,” with Stephanie Rincón.