Interspecies Dialogues

Interspecies Dialogues is an ongoing series of installations and performative conversations that seeks to heal the dualism between Humans and Non-Human Others. Can deep listening and empathetic response help to resolve our ecological crisis?

The Puffin grant allowed me to travel to Australia to work with HARN (the Human Animal Research Network), multi-species ethnographers, and a quantum physicist. The invited group of artists investigated the implications of Dr. Karen Barad’s theories of physics and queer studies, and applied them to our own research as artists and cultural explorers. Dr. Barad holds that all sentient beings are involved in an ongoing, intra-active creation of our world, from microbes to megafauna. This new understanding of quantum physics overturns the old Cartesian dualism of “Humans” vs “Nature”, and provides a new foundation for environmental conservation.

In addition to our exhibition of artistic works, 

each of the artists wrote papers, which were published in a special two-volume edition of ‘Antennae: the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture’(vol 31 and 32).

While in Sydney, I also performed the American Wilderness Wax Museum, in which I take the guise of a curator from the future, and engage passersby in dialogue about the extinctions and ecological crisis of our times. One-on-one dialogue becomes a tool for hope, education, and inspiration.

Additional Websites: http://www.multispecies-salon.org/, http://www.antennae.org.uk/