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Water is a Limited Commodity: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, India, ca. 1614

Fri, March 31, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Palmer House Hilton, Floor: Seventh Floor, Burnham 4

Abstract

The Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), a climatic period marked by lower temperatures in Europe, brought to South Asia droughts of unprecedented intensity. In drought-ravaged north India, the beginnings of the Little Ice Age not only corresponded with the emergence of a new form of riparian architecture that framed and emphasized the materiality of flowing water but also saw the enunciation of a new theological aesthetic that centralized the veneration of the natural environment as a manifestation of the divine body of the god Krishna. This paper traces the intersections between architecture practices and theological economies during the first few decades of the Little Ice Age to produce an ideation of an ecological art history that brings together the natural and the architectural. In turn, the hydroaesthetics of beholding water becomes the link that connects aesthetic practices with an expanded nonhuman transterritorial arena where water was a limited commodity.

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