Spectral aesthetics: cultivating a viral ecology

ABSTRACT Situated at the intersection of visual art and the context of the Anthropocene, this article offers an eco-philosophical reading of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic regarding the ecological entanglements between humans, viruses, and the environment. Deploying the trope of the spectrality as a ‘heuristic device’, it argues that confronting the spectral aspects of human-virus encounter provides a helpful way to properly understand the ecological implications of the present pandemic. Bringing contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing's Air Memorial (2003) and Jia Zhangke's short film Visit (2020) into conversation with the theory of spectrality, I analyze what I call the ‘spectral aesthetics’ shared by both works. Specifically, it looks at how Xu's artwork elicits the spectral (im)materiality of viruses that is associated with the memory of the SARS epidemic, the materialisation of air, and the way that the spectre of air can keep haunting us across time and space. Then, it delves into the cinematic representation of a spectral atmosphere permeating the minuteness of human contact, arguing that the coronavirus opens up possibilities of perceiving, thinking, and living as spectres, evoking the sense of co-existence that entails the symbiotic relations among humans, viruses, and the environment.