Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters

Eco Soma by Petra Kuppers encourages readers to be aware of their embodied reactions to art practice and to see themselves as active contributors to a shared sociocultural environment. It models a disability culture sensitivity to living in a shared world, oriented toward more socially just futures, and uses fantasy to explore ecopoetic disability culture perspectives. Eco Soma methods combine realities on the edges of lived experience and site-specific performance, inviting readers to become moths, sprout gills, listen to their hearts drum, and take starships into crip time. Kuppers argues that disability can offer imaginative ways toward living well and with agency in change, unrest, and challenge.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

In Eco Soma, Petra Kuppers implores readers to be mindful of their own embodied reactions to artistic practice and to recognize themselves as active contributors to a shared sociocultural realm. Through the exploration of contemporary performance encounters and artistic engagements, this book models a disability culture sensitivity to living in a shared world, with a focus on fostering more socially just futures. Eco Soma approaches blend and merge realities at the fringes of lived experience, incorporating site-specific performance. Kuppers invites us to embody the roles of moths, develop gills, attune to the rhythm of our hearts, and embark on interstellar journeys through the lens of crip time. Fantasy plays a central role in these engagements, encompassing sensations and perceptions of monsters, catastrophes, golden lines, heartbeats, injured sharks, dotted salamanders, kissing mammoths, and more. Kuppers sheds light on ecopoetic perspectives on disability culture, contending that disabled individuals and their allies create art to thrive in a changing world, engaging with feminist, queer, trans, racialized, and Indigenous art projects. By presenting novel ways of thinking, framing, and experiencing "environments," Kuppers emphasizes art-based methodologies for envisioning change and argues that disability can offer imaginative pathways toward flourishing and exercising agency amidst change, turmoil, and challenges.

Traditional somatics impart valuable skills for refining our introspective senses and expanding our awareness of the world within our bodies. Eco Soma methods extend this attention to encompass the creative potential of the interconnection between self, others, and the land. Eco Soma proposes an art/life approach of sensory tuning that encompasses both the inner and outer realms simultaneously, fostering a broader opening toward ethical cohabitation with humans and other-than-human entities.

Dimension: 203 x 152 x 38 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517911898