From “arts of travel” to “arts of noticing”: chorastering environmental imaginaria in the age of extinction

Abstract

Climate change is reshaping travel by transforming leisure sites into spaces marked by ecological loss, vulnerability and mediation. As environments disappear or become inaccessible, new forms of travel emerge in designed settings that stage encounters with endangered life and with speculative futures. This article introduces the concept of environmental imaginaria to analyse such spaces, including bioclimatic domes, immersive museums and audiovisual installations. It argues that these environments do not merely mediate ecological crisis; they actively create new forms of mobility and experience. Within them, travel shifts from physical movement between destinations to practices of attention, attunement and ethical engagement. To account for this transformation, the article develops the notion of “posthuman chorastering”, describing relational modes of travel that foreground multispecies entanglement, technological mediation and ecological care. Drawing on a typology of environmental imaginaria, the analysis identifies “posthuman chorastering” as a hybridised update of three previously distinct forms of mobility. These forms were embedded in the capitalist and postcolonial conditions of travel. The article contributes to debates in tourism studies, mobilities research and environmental theory. It does so by showing how travel in the Anthropocene is increasingly shaped by designed environments, which reconfigure how humans encounter, interpret and respond to ecological change.