Conference “Metamorphosis as a Creator of the Future”

On May 14, 2026, the Estonian Academy of Arts will host an open conference “Metamorphosis as a Creator of the Future”, with the main guest being the renowned Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia.

15:00 in room A-501 of the Estonian Academy of Arts

The focus of the conference is based on the philosophy of Emanuele Coccia, especially his view of life as an interconnected and constantly metamorphosing process, where the boundaries between organism and environment, subject and object blur. The conference’s keynote address will be given by Coccia, whose thinking has become an important starting point in contemporary ecological and posthumanist philosophy, treating the world as a constantly changing environment. Artists and thinkers who have devoted their work to the study of change and its impact around us will take the floor.

Programme

Register HERE

Emanuele Coccia is Associate Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He has been a visiting professor and researcher at numerous international institutions, including universities in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Düsseldorf, Columbia University, Harvard, Penn University and New York University. His work bridges philosophy, ecology, contemporary art, architecture, and visual theory, proposing a renewed understanding of life, form, and habitation on a planetary scale.

He is the author of several books translated into many languages, including The Life of Plants (Polity, 2018; Gallimard, 2016), Metamorphoses (Polity, 2021; Rivages, 2020), and Philosophy of the Home (Penguin, 2024; Rivages, 2024) and A Treatise on Modern Love (Flammarion and Einaudi 2026) . Together with photographer Viviane Sassen, he published Modern Alchemy (JBE Books, 2022), a book on photographic theory and image-thinking; with Paolo Roversi, Lettres sur la lumière (Gallimard, 2024), a philosophical epistolary on light as a principle of visibility and creation; and with Alessandro Michele, creative director of Valentino, The Life of Forms. Philosophy of Re-enchantment (HarperCollins, 2024). His forthcoming book, New Natures. Planetary Museums (Park Books, 2026), co-authored with author and curator Béatrice Grenier and architect Jeanne Gang, examines the emergence of planetary museums as living ecologies at the intersection of nature, architecture, and culture.

In 2019 and 2021, he contributed to Nous les Arbres, presented at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, where he is also a member of the Academic Committee. Together with Olivier Saillard, he curated The Many Lives of a Garment (ITS Arcademy, Trieste 2024) and Borderless (ITS Arcademy, Trieste, 2025), two exhibitions reflecting on the philosophical and social metamorphoses of fashion.

With Yuko Hasegawa, he co-curated Dancing with All at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, centered on ecology, coexistence, and the poetics of movement.

He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Power Station of Art of Shanghai.

In 2024, Coccia was awarded the Mondriaan Prize for his theoretical and curatorial work bridging philosophy, art, and architecture.