Ecosophical Alternative Realities

Since Western postmodernism sparked awareness and shaped our governance and lifestyle at the turn of the millennium, Global North ecosophies have attempted to grasp the ecological and ontological crises, creating their own performative narratives in the process. Pervasive throughout all modes of thought about our relationship to the world, environmental consciousness is part of political ecologies and contemporary hermeneutic. From design philosophies to laws and representations, everyone has an opinion on how we should manage our biospheres. This has led to the global south being flooded with Western ethics, which are often hostile to them in the manner of imperialist modes of operation. Even more astonishing is the versatile plasticity of these conceptual changes, which are less disruptive than radical and pursue the same resilient environmental ethics that gave rise to them. Thus, the world of contemporary art is flooded with thinkers of a new ecological aesthetic modelled on the genesis of the Anthropocene era. The era of neoliberal ecological aesthetics in communication design has thus become a soft power advocacy for Western imperialism, much like built environment experts who damage the world they claim to protect. It glorifies a myriad of empowering narratives of the corporate, privileged, wealthy and educated elite, reminiscent of the aristocrats of past Western imperial empires. In an era of mutating environmental aesthetics, we will explore the foundations and issues of these ecosophical alternative realities that perpetuate indifference towards both humans and non-humans. We will also examine how contemporary ecological relativism is leading new generations to disengage from generic communication design and embrace other existence praxis.