Konrad, T. (ed.) (2021). Art + Media: Journal of Art and Media Studies 25, Special Issue “Acoustic and Visual Ecology of Damaged Planet.”
This special issue of AM Journal of Art and Media Studies invites scholars in the environmental and energy humanities, media studies, film studies, musicology, sound studies, and cultural studies to probe climate change and environmental degradation from the visual and sound perspectives and their intersection. We are particularly interested in how various visual and sound media, including film, TV, art, and music, address the problem of the invisibility of the current environmental crisis and censure our insufficient action to save the planet, even as these media are ultimately seeking to make these issues visible and audible to audiences worldwide. The special issue also examines the ways in which images and sounds of the degrading planet formulate the cultural understanding of the environmental crisis. How, through various kinds of visual and acoustic performances, do authors, artists, and activists challenge the existing socio-cultural and political attitudes to climate change, ecological decline, environmental degradation, and the destruction of the planet, so that their works emphasize the urgent necessity to act in order to preserve the life of humans and nonhumans on Earth? The articles in this special issue not only foreground the power of visual and acoustic texts to re-envision climate change, the planet, and the role of the human in the current environmental crisis but also illustrate how visual and sound media can be effectively used to directly tackle climate change and environmental destruction.
Tatiana Konrad is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria, the principal investigator of “Air and Environmental Health in the (Post-)COVID-19 World,” and the editor of the “Environment, Health, and Well-being” book series at Michigan State University Press.