Launch of Metamorphosis in Nature and the Arts: Ecstases of Matter and Image
Book launch with editor of the book Nicoletta Isar.
This book explores the concept of metamorphosis across art history, image theory, literary studies, and philosophy. By examining the shifting meanings of metamorphosis in nature, the arts, and technology, this book reveals the traces and ecstases of matter and body in transformation. It asks how images associated with elemental states – terrestrial, aquatic, and ethereal – have commingled throughout history, creating poetic fields of morphic resonance.
The chapters cover a wide range of topics, including the wonders of nature, the occult dimension of nature's artistry, and the vitalizing power of metamorphosis as a principle of life and art. The authors critically engage with philosophical concepts such as genesis, movement, hybridity, and trans-corporeality to reveal unexpected dimensions of metamorphosis, explore the miracles of transmutation of matter in ancient thought, and use new theoretical tools to examine modern ideas of evolution and the metaphysics of mixture addressed within the aesthetics of wonderment.
Selection of authors presentations
- Thea Møller Jensen: Porous incrustations: Exploring trans-corporeal encounters between stone, shells, fossils, and humans
- Jacob Wamberg: A Stone and Yet Not a Stone: Alchemical Resonance in North Italian Quattrocento Painting
- Maria Fabricius Hansen: Imagery of the Underworld: Humor and Horror in Sixteenth-Century Italian Grotesques
- Solveig Gade: A Folkloric Turn? Staging Medieval Magic Ballads in the Context of Climate Collapse
- Mathias Srisakul Larsen: Lemmerz’s Impossible Sculptures. An exploration of metamorphosis and disfiguration in Lemmerz’s sculptures
- Emily Kivistö: Metamorphoses – Myth to Movement: Occultural Reenactments in Contemporary Dance
- Hanna Louise Grønneberg: Occult body: the obscuring and revealing of human-AI-materialities
Video presentation of the book
AI-generated video by Palgrave Macmillan
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