Ecosomatic Mutants: Calling for a New Paradigm of Ecological Transformation in a More-than-Human World
Ecosomatic practices open pathways to embodied knowledge, interspecies alliances, and ecological care. Moving beyond anthropocentrism, this keynote calls for a new paradigm where grief, perception, and participation regenerate human–more-than-human relations toward liveable futures.
Read and download keynote speech
Rufo, Raffaele (2025), ‘Ecosomatic Mutants: Calling for a New Paradigm of Ecological Transformation in a More-than-Human World’, Keynote speech presented at the first Genius Loci International Symposium of Ecosomatic Arts. Spazio Rossellini, Rome, 18-19 September 2025, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17229206
Abstract: This keynote speech explores the role of ecosomatic practices as gateways to embodied knowledge, interspecies alliances, and new forms of perception, care, and participation. If we want liveable futures, we must co-create a paradigm that reintegrates human life within a more-than-human world. In the 1970s Thomas Hanna described the “second wave” of somatics as a force of translucent egoism, predicting that individuals, no longer threatened by nature, would balance rational-assimilative and sensual-accommodative drives in a technologically shaped environment. That prediction failed. Nature did not become irrelevant — it became vulnerable. Ecosomatics, as the third wave of somatics, responds to this vulnerability and to the cultural shadows of romanticism and colonial projection. It calls for embodied participation that confronts limit, transforms grief into ecological responsiveness, and cultivates regenerative cultures of knowledge exchange.
