Alternative Education Programme’s Public Lecture #7: Simone Kotva —Magic and Ecology

Date: 19 October
Time: 18:00
Location: Vilnius Tech University, Faculty of Architecture, Pylimo st. 26, Vilnius
The lecture will be held in English

Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme in collaboration with Vilnius Tech University presents a lecture Magic and Ecology by Simone Kotva.

MORE ABOUT THE LECTURE

In the public lecture, Simone Kotva will situate autochthonous practices of attending to spirits within an ongoing discourse that includes the need to perform what the feminist philosopher Isabelle Stengers (thinking with anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro) calls a “decolonization of thought.” Kotva relates decolonial theory to David Abram’s concept of traditional magic* as an ecological and subversive art and to Marisol de la Cadena’s notion of magic as counter-anthropocentrist communication with other-than-human “Earth beings.” In particular, Simone will be focussing on the notion of magic as a technique for facilitating multi-species diplomacy. They will then think with case studies drawn from the record of vernacular magic in the Nordic region, especially Northern Sweden.

*David Abrams The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (1997).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Simone Kotva is a writer, academic and student of Trolldom. Their published work draws on feminist, environmental and decolonial theologies, the history and theory of magic, new materialism and critical plant studies to articulate a new approach to the practice of philosophy as a way of life and spiritual exercise. Currently they are research fellow at the multidisciplinary ECODISTURB project, based in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. They are also affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, where they design and co-teach an MPhil (MA) module, Theology in the Anthropocene. In 2020-2021 Simone co-convened Magic and Ecology for CRASSH, the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Science and Humanities.

Rupert’s activities are supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
Partners: Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius Tech, Tech Zity