Ecology of illusion. On the Transformative Power of Digital Narratives, Territories and Perception

Abstract

The article re-examines the “twin-transition” strategy of the European Union through a broader framework associated with artistic practice. To do this, the text offers the idea of “an ecology of illusion” to investigate how illusionist scenography – by means of perceptual disruption and speculative narration – reassesses our ways of seeing and inhabiting the world in the Anthropocene. Using as example The Terrestrial Trilogy (by Bruno Latour and Frédérique Aït-Touati), we focus on how site-specific installations, utilizing optical devices, media, and affective manipulations of space can create new ecologies of attention. Drawing on the works of Haraway, Ingold, Bishop, Morton, Gombrich and other thinkers, we ultimately argue that these artistic dispositifs provide important tools to reveal the interdependencies articulated in complex ecological relationships and help to reconfigure aesthetics and perception in relation to humans’ enlarged cosmological sense of responsibility to the environment.