The Appearance of the More: Ecologies of Relation

In this exposition, we - Emma Cocker and Nicole Wendel -present an assemblage of video extracts and artefacts generated through a collaborative practice called Ecologies of Relation, for demonstrating how Harmut Rosa’s conceptualisation of resonance might manifest in and through the materialities of artistic research. In turn, we share how artistic research might enrich Rosa’s conceptualisation, through fragments of a poetic vocabulary evolved in and through the practising of different Ecologies of Relation, a language emerging in fidelity to the embodied experience of resonance itself. Each Ecology of Relation creates conditions for the potential of what Rosa refers to as horizontal, diagonal and vertical axes of resonance: the horizontal axis of resonance relates to the in-touch-ness between human subjects, the reciprocity, responsiveness and mutuality of collaboration; the diagonal axis involves correspondence with materials, attending to the ‘singing of things’, whilst the vertical axis opens towards the potential of an unknown, the ‘appearance of the more’. Within this exposition, we present a series of video extracts drawn from a single Ecology of Relation activated live on Zoom on 18 September 2025 where we each engage in an improvisatory process of exploration attentive to Rosa’s three axes of relation. Alongside we share a poetic text drawn from transcript material generated over the last two years, reorganised in relation to (and with aim of providing a vocative articulation of) Rosa’s characteristic criteria or conditions for resonance: affection, self-efficacy, transformation and uncontrollability. keywords: Ecologies of Relation, resonance, language-based artistic research, drawing, collaboration, not knowing, conversation, ecologies, ecologies of practices, experimental reading, material correspondence