Timothy Morton describes dark ecology as \u2018ecological awareness, dark-depressing. Yet ecological awareness is also dark-uncanny. And strangely it is dark-sweet.\u2019 The concept of dark ecology represents a crucial intervention in the current moment of political conservatism and climate change denial and enables a focused exploration of a wide range of issues relating to performance and ecology. Human activity on the planet is responsible for a number of ecological and political dilemmas, including (but not limited to) global climate change, pollution, leaking pipelines, fragmentation of ecosystems, diminishing natural resources and nuclear meltdowns. While some may harbour hope and positivity about the future, it is easy to feel overwhelmingly hopeless about these large-scale, complex problems. Morton refers to the awareness of these substantial ecological dilemmas as \u2018ecognosis\u2019, which he describes as \u2018a riddle\u2026 It is something like coexisting. It\u00a0is like being accustomed to something strange.\u2019 It is this tension between hope and despair, the coexistence between \u2018depressing\u2019 and \u2018sweet\u2019 \u2014 this space of \u2018dark ecologies\u2019 in our current political and ecological climate \u2014 that we explore in this special issue. The essays in this issue consider dark ecology in relation to performance and explore the ways that performance can intervene in or engage with a plurality of dark ecologies.<\/p>\n
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Contents:<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/strong> My Sweet Disposability, Oh, Bury the Living and Unearth the Dead\u2009: A postcard from nowhere<\/strong> Plastiglomerates, Microplastics, Nanoplastics\u2009: Toward a dark ecology of plastic performativity<\/strong> Choreographic Architecture and Vital Knowledge\u2009: Ga\u00ebtan Rusquet\u2019s Meanwhile<\/strong> Estado Vegetal, a Gesture of Imitation\u2009: An Interview with Manuela Infante<\/strong> \u2018A Twisted, Looping Form\u2019\u2009: Staging dark ecologies in Ella Hickson\u2019s Oil<\/strong> Black-Light Ecologies\u2009: Punctuate! Theatre\u2019s Bears wipes off the oil<\/strong> Choreographies of Mourning\u2009: Commemorating multi-species loss in boundaries\/conditions performance assembly\u2019s Operations (1945\u20132006): Movements<\/strong> Embodying Climate Change\u2009: Self-immolation and the hope of no escape<\/strong> Hau\u2009: Living archive of breath<\/strong> \u2018Global Weirding\u2019\u2009: Australian absurdist cli-fi plays<\/strong> \u2018Dark Choreography\u2019 of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre<\/strong> Remembrance Day for Lost Species\u2009: Toward an ethics of witnessing extinction<\/strong> No Away\u2009: Phantom Limb Company\u2019s Falling Out<\/strong> We All Live Downwind [artist\u2019s pages]<\/strong> Embodied Narratives of Candombl\u00e9\u2019s Afro-Bahian Caboclos : Dark ecologies and critical kinetics<\/strong> Towards Radical Coexistence in the City\u2009: Performing the bio-urban in Bonnie Ora Sherk\u2019s The Farm and Mierle Laderman Ukeles\u2019s Flow City<\/strong> Reterritorializing India\u2009: The politics of dark ecologies in Deepan Sivaraman\u2019s Peer Gynt<\/strong> Unsettling Existence\u2009: Land acknowledgement in contemporary Indigenous performance<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n\n
\nAngenette Spalink, Jonah Winn-Lenetsky<\/p>\n
\nMalin Palani<\/p>\n
\nKatie Schaag<\/p>\n
\nKate Mattingly<\/p>\n
\nLaurel V. McLaughlin<\/p>\n
\nPatrick Lonergan<\/p>\n
\nGabriel Levine<\/p>\n
\nHannah Kaya<\/p>\n
\nClara Margaret Wilch<\/p>\n
\nCarol Brown, Tia Reihana-Morunga<\/p>\n
\nStephen Carleton, Chris Hay<\/p>\n
\nRobyn Sassen<\/p>\n
\nShelby Brewster<\/p>\n
\nBrenda Bowen, Liz Ivkovich<\/p>\n
\nShanna Merola<\/p>\n
\nMika Lillit Lior<\/p>\n
\nLisa Woynarski<\/p>\n
\nPrateek<\/p>\n
\nChris Bell<\/p>\n