Genius Loci is an international practice-based symposium exploring how ecosomatic approaches can cultivate new ecologies of participation that transform inquiry, learning and knowledge exchange in a more-than-human world.
Rather than asking simply What are ecosomatic arts?, Genius Loci asks what ecosomatic approaches make possible. It proposes that embodied participation is one of the most significant contributions ecosomatics can offer to the transformation of knowledge exchange. Rather than treating the symposium as a programme of presentations, Genius Loci reimagines the symposium itself as an embodied ecology of inquiry, where learning environments, movement, spatial design, co-facilitation and more-than-human encounters become the very medium through which knowledge is generated, exchanged and transformed.
Proposal deadline: 21 July 2026
Submission form:
https://forms.gle/JCJEzrfB5WZeJ5pAA
Full Call and Symposium webpage
Who is invited?
The symposium welcomes proposals from artists, researchers, educators, facilitators, therapists, designers, curators and community practitioners working across ecosomatics, artistic research, the performing and visual arts, environmental humanities, education, psychology, health sciences, architecture, design, ecological and participatory research, and related fields.
Contributors are invited to propose participatory practices of inquiry rather than conventional presentations. Whether through movement, performative practice, spatial interventions, installations, participatory workshops, lecture-performances, walks or other hybrid formats, proposals should explore how research can be shared through embodied participation, collective learning and more-than-human encounter.
How will the symposium work?
The symposium is intentionally small—around 30 participants, including approximately 15 contributors—to create the conditions for genuine embodied participation, dialogue and collective inquiry.
Rather than presenting individual sessions to an audience, selected contributors become co-facilitators of shared learning environments organised around three interconnected ecologies of participation:
Movement Ecology
Spatial, Visual and Material Ecology
Outdoor and More-than-Human Ecology
Across two days, participants collectively construct, inhabit and connect these three ecologies, moving between practices while contributing to a shared process of research and knowledge exchange.
Conceived as a translocal gathering, the symposium brings together people from different countries, disciplines and contexts of practice. English and Italian coexist throughout the event, while the symposium explores how research can be shared across linguistic, disciplinary and cultural differences through embodied forms of participation, facilitation and knowledge exchange, rather than relying on verbal communication alone.
More than anything, Genius Loci seeks to cultivate new alliances between people, practices, institutions, territories and more-than-human worlds, inviting participants to experiment together with new ways of learning, researching and exchanging knowledge.