This essay problematizes whether the notion of the ecosystem can offer generative ways of making and understanding art. The accompanying diagram reflects my current thinking, mapping references that support a working definition of Artistic Ecosystem beyond existing literature. Several concepts and theories included in the diagram—such as Hyperobjects, Hypermusic, and Assemblage Theory—are not discussed in this essay since these will be further developed in the coming months as the research unfolds.
Throughout the essay, I use the term ecosystem to describe as: (1) the ecological context in which artworks emerge and evolve (2) and the ecological conditions that the artistic processes generate around them. Looking ahead, I plan to engage more deeply with ecosystem theory—particularly Beth Dempster’s concept of sympoietic systems—which may align with the distributed and co-creative dynamics of artistic practice. Artistic Ecosystems challenge conventional ideas of agency, spectatorship, and control by foregrounding relations among human and non-human actants. This raises a provocative question: can non-human beings also be considered part of the audience? If artworks within these ecosystems are perceptible to other species—if crickets listen, or toads respond—might we expand our understanding of audience to include them? A non-anthropocentric framing would suggest that everything present—living or non-living, human or not—participates in the ecosystem’s aesthetic field.
Matter, not Metaphor
This essay builds upon a growing body of artistic and theoretical work that rethinks human-nonhuman relations within ecological frameworks. Influenced by posthumanist thinkers such as Donna Haraway (2016), whose notion of symbiosis foregrounds collaborative, more-than-human world-making, and Timothy Morton (2007), who reconfigures ecological thought through the lens of entanglement and relationality, this field challenges anthropocentric modes of art-making and perception. Scholars like T.J. Demos (2016) and Andreas Weber (2016) have further advanced the view of art as a site of ecological participation and sensuous co-becoming. While the term ecosystem is commonly used in fields such as computer science—particularly following theorists like James F. Moore, who applied it metaphorically to describe interconnected networks in business and technology—it has also been explored in the arts, notably in John McCormack’s work on creative ecosystems. Although there are some overlaps with the creative artistic ecosystems that I intend to explore—particularly in terms of distributed authorship, emergent processes, and open-endedness—this essay focuses on a more literal and material understanding of ecosystems.
Ecosystems within Ecosystems
In my artistic practice, I always look carefully at different dimensions of entanglement in the artistic process between myself, the other human and non-human participants and the broader ecosystem where the works are happening. This relates to Felix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies (1989): the mental, the social and the environmental. These three ecologies are intertwined with one another and need consideration when aiming for ecological changes towards more sustainable futures, since changes need to progressively operate in all levels. Perhaps in the context of this essay, while keeping present Guattari’s classification, it would be more appropriate to distinguish between the bigger umbrella as the Natural ecosystem, inside that one a Cultural ecosystem, and within that one the Artistic ecosystem. In any case, all these ecosystems have dynamic boundaries and entangled components. These ecosystems operate as force fields that bring together elements through a specific relational framework.
Here, Artistic Ecosystems refer to artworks that sustain life and involve multispecies, sentient beings as active participants. Rather than functioning as abstract metaphors or computational models, these ecosystems are grounded in living, breathing entanglements between human and non-human actors within specific environments.
Ecosystem as a format: Stein & Goebbels
The four works discussed in the following section, decentralize the visitor’s experience through immersive settings that blur the line between exhibition and performance. Their decentralizing qualities align with Heiner Goebbels’ concept of the Theatre of Absence, where the center is dispersed, the subject displaced, and meaning destabilized. By displacing the actor from their central position, Goebbels gives equal weight to all theatrical means and elements of performance juxtaposing sound, light, text, materials, bodies, and space, while preserving the individual integrity and distinct contribution of each element to the overall performance event (Goebbels 2015). These formats also echo what Gertrude Stein called Landscape Plays. Stein rejected the Aristotelian hierarchy of theatrical elements, in which plot and character take precedence over speech, song, and spectacle. In her poetics of landscape theatre, something analogous to setting or mise-en-scène expands to incorporate all other elements. These formats echo what Gertrude Stein called Landscape Plays. Stein rejected the Aristotelian hierarchy of theatrical elements, in which plot and character take precedence over speech, song, and spectacle. In her poetics of landscape theatre, something analogous to setting or mise-en-scène expands to incorporate all other elements. Stein developed this concept as a response to what she called “nervousness”, an emotional syncopation between the audience and the events unfolding on stage (Adam Frank, 2018)..
The landscape has its formation and as after all a play has to have formation and be in relation one thing to the other thing and as the story is not the thing as any one is always telling something then the landscape not moving but being always in relation, the trees to the hills the hills to the fields the trees to each other any piece of it to any sky and then any detail to any other detail.- Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America (New York: The Library of America, 1985), 264–65.
Goebbels brought the Landscape Play concept into practice in his work Landscape with Distant Relatives (de Assis & Schwab, 2019). In it, disturbing and moving images continuously come to life: Baroque societies, dancing dervishes, burning cities, and down-at-the-heel cowboys — once again emphasizing the absence of a centralized subject and instead presenting a multiplicity of topics (Goebbels, 2002). Unlike Goebbels’ concept of the Landscape-play, which tends to position the audience as passive observers, the four projects discussed in this exposition invite the audience to actively step into the landscape, being this one of the reasons why I chose to describe these works as ecosystems rather than landscapes. While the term landscape typically refers to the visible features of an area—often appreciated for their aesthetic value—it implies a more static, observational experience. In contrast, these four works go beyond passive spectatorship, encouraging not just attentive viewing but also dynamic engagement, interaction, and apprehension.
◘ My hypothesis is that many works engaging with ecological themes, particularly those addressing entanglements and the decentralization of the human in the artistic process, tend to adopt formats that resemble ecosystems, moving away from linear and unidimensional narratives.
◘ I propose that a critical appropriation of Landscape Plays in the context of ecological narratives could serve as a valuable tool for analysis, reflection, and creation. By devising decentralized landscapes, the audience is free to experience narratives in a non-linear manner.