Creativity and Praxis:

The Politics of Aesthetics in an Age of Polycrisis

An International Interdisciplinary Symposium, 1-2 October 2026

J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice

Adelaide University

North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia, 5000, Australia

Keynote Readings and Lectures by: 

J.M. Coetzee 

Anna Funder

Nam Le

Amy Villarejo

This two-day interdisciplinary symposium, hosted by the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at Adelaide University, explores the political implications of creating, disseminating, and studying aesthetic objects in an age of “polycrisis”. This term, coined by Edgar Morin (1921-2026) in Terre-Patrie (1993, trans. Homeland Earth, 1999), has achieved new urgency in our present as shorthand for a context in which humanity faces “no single vital problem, but many vital problems”. A “complex intersolidarity of problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet” in our present moment is “the number one vital problem”, Morin declares (Homeland Earth, 74). “A problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope and thus threatens our identity”, noted historian Adam Tooze in the Financial Timesin 2022. “[T]he shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts. At times one feels as if one is losing one’s sense of reality. […] Things that would once have seemed fanciful are now facts” (Tooze, online). 

If the state in which we find ourselves is legible as a polycrisis, and a planetary one at that, what responsibilities fall to the arts and humanities, to creative practice and the study of cultural production more broadly? What are the politics of cultural criticism (in all its forms) that refuses to engage with these conditions? How does an awareness of polycrisis-as-phenomenon affect the work of the historian, the classical scholar, the film critic, the journalist, the archaeologist, the philosopher? Does the scholar of endangered languages, cultures, or material remains foresee in the uneven distribution of crisis effects the end of heritage protection or cultural revitalization? How do architects, designers, and urban planners respond to medium-term demands in an increasingly unpredictable context? What does it mean to continue to produce fiction and poetry, to compose and perform music, to paint or sculpt or make films, to publish, program, and curate in the storm of such times? 

Rather than limiting the scope of inquiry to our present polycrisis, the organizers invite contributors to engage with current and historical periods that might be classed as polycrises (whether at global or more local scale). We encourage proposals for presentations that seek either to investigate or to respond creatively to polycrisis.

The Centre invites submissions of 300-word abstracts for scholarly or practice-based creative responses. Indicative areas of investigation might include (but are not limited to):

-                Writing polycrisis

-                Visual arts of, about, and/or amidst polycrisis

-                Music and performance in response to polycrisis

-                Polycrisis cinema and other media (immersive, virtual, augmented)

-                First Nations perspectives on the enduring impacts of cultural and environmental colonisation

-                Deep histories of polycrisis

-                Polycrises of classical worlds

-                Curation as creative-critical response to polycrisis

-                Legacies of Edgar Morin’s complexity theory (pensée complexe)

-                Philosophical and theoretical interventions in polycrisis thought

-                Fates of endangered languages and cultures in a polycrisis

-                Urban and regional planning and adaptive architectural design in polycrisis

-                Journalism’s role in covering and shaping public understanding of polycrisis. 

Proposals should be sent to Patrick Flanery, email: jmcoetzeecentre@adelaide.edu.au, by 31 July 2026. Please include a brief bio and indicate whether you have an institutional affiliation or are an independent scholar or creative practitioner.

References and Further Reading

Cantor, Matthew, ‘What is this era of calamity we’re in? Some say “polycrisis” captures it’, The Guardian, 6 March 2025, online: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/polycrisis-disasters-politics

Centeno, Miguel A., and Peter W. Callahan, Paul Larcey, Thayer S. Patterson, ‘A Delusion of Control: Loss of Agency in Modern Complex Systems’, Global Perspectives, 31 January 2024; 5 (1): 117309. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2024.117309       

Keski-Korsu, Mari, Sensing the Polycrisis: Artistic Approach to Walking as Ritualisation. 2025. Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. 49, 1, p. 43–61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.138680

Lawrence, Michael, ‘Where did the term “polycrisis” come from?, Polycrisis Learning Journey, N.D., online: https://polycrisis.org/lessons/where-did-the-term-polycrisis-come-from/

Morin, Edgar, and Anne-Brigitte Kern, Terre-Patrie, Éditions du Seuil, 1993, trans. as Homeland Earth by Sean M. Kelly and Roger LaPointe, Hampton Press, 1999.

Tooze, Adam, ‘Welcome to the world of the polycrisis’, Financial Times, 29 October 2022: https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33

UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, Prospects for Children in the Polycrisis: A 2023 Global Outlook Report, online: https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/prospects-children-polycrisis-2023-global-outlook