Short Abstract

Planetary aesthetics mobilize the senses to make a changing planet perceptible. We propose ‘atmospheres’ as an anthropological approach to explore planetary aesthetics beyond the nature/culture divide, attending to ways of sensing, perceiving, and feeling more-than-human relations.

Long Abstract

The Anthropocene suggests that humans have become a major geological force on Earth. Yet long before this became a geological claim, nature had been a source of perception and imagination, explored through art and myth as well as through everyday observations of weather, landscapes, and the lives of non-human animals (Ballard, 2021; Descola, 2013). In the arts, planetary aesthetics have transformed how the senses are mobilized to make a changing planet perceptible and reflect upon it. Taking a cue from these developments, we propose ‘atmospheres’ as an anthropological approach to planetary aesthetics. Gernot Böhme’s account of atmospheres shifts aesthetics from a theory of art toward sensory perception, bodily presence, and the production of environments (Böhme, 1993). It unsettles distinctions between nature and culture by showing how feelings emerge between bodies and surroundings, allowing us to ask how environments are sensed and how sensing, in turn, transforms them.

We particularly invite contributions on animal and multispecies atmospheres (e.g. Lorimer et al., 2019; Gieser, 2024): atmospheres of care, vulnerability, mourning, repair, cohabitation, hope, and renewal. We welcome studies of nature parks, multispecies gardens, rewilded landscapes, urban commons, and extractive sites—mines, quarries, tailings, forests, and settlements. If human optics have contributed to making humans a geological force (Ingold, 2007; Lepenies, 2018), we need to question the aesthetics of seeing the planet from one direction and explore alternative ways of sensing, perceiving, and feeling more-than-human relations.