Eco Legends
Be the Face
of Your Creations
Ek(o)phrasis
E C O A R T S O F B E I N G
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​​​Starting as an art of words to portray art, Ekphrasis has been employed by scholars, writers or even artists themselves. It is a creative space between the visual and linguistic dimensions of human expressions.
(‘ut pictura poesis’ -Horace.)​
‘Ekphrasis’ (or call it Ek(o)phrasis), is an experimental media form after the rhetorical word art of Homer dating 2500 years, in ‘The Illiad’ with its description of Achilles shield. The etymology given by Oxford English dictionary, states that ek= out and phrasis=to speak, so overall, it is ‘to speak out’. Ekphrasis signals the interplay of words and art.
Leaving aside the critics and their scholarly discourses over what actually constitutes Ekphrasis, and for the sake of enriching eco media journeys of expression, and encouraging transdisciplinarity in the practice, here is the path to immense utility in re-visioning Ekphrasis as Ek(o)phrasis i.e. Ecophrasis.
Then rewording James Heffernan in eco media parlance, Ecophrasis can mean the verbal representation of eco-imagery, from any where, be they are other visual forms of eco creative expressions or living elements of nature or ecosystems. Not disowning rhetorical roots of the art of words, the Gallery welcomes novel experiments to further the evolution of Ekphrasis as Ecophrasis.
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Inspired by the analytical account of Ekphrasis in Keywords Glossary under Theories of Media by University of Chicago (https://csmt.uchicago.edu/ glossary2004/ekphrasis.htm), and agreeing that this is the age of arbitrary sign, we prefer to adopt that the word portraits to qualify as ‘Ecophrasis’ need not be strictly literary, and prose, poetry, poetic prose, fiction or non fiction, verbal commentary or eco-critical writing or assessments, art of natural history, should qualify as long as it represents visual elements of nature or ecology.
To borrow the phrase, “investigation into the word/image dialectic”, and bridging the gap between the ‘verbal’ & the ‘visual’ is the core effort behind the evolution of genre as “Ecophrastic Media” which is hoped to serve its central place in contemporary discussion of Media Theories to encompass more and more disciplines.​
References
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Heffernan, James A. W. Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Wagner, Peter ed. Icons-Text-Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediary. New York: de Gruyter, 1996.
Welsh, Ryan. Theories of Media:Keywords Glossary, s.v. “ekphrasis.” University of Chicago. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/
