Human animals have several very specific modes of relating with nonhuman animals. ANIMA, a body of work incorporating photographic and sculptural works, situates the viewer in two modes of relating: scientific and sympathetic. The photographs, which take on the mantel of the scientific, call into question the efficacy of rational, distanced and supposedly objective approaches to nonhuman animals. The very singular, interspecies creatures depicted, however, disrupt the solidity of this perspective on knowing. Three vulnerable and fantastical ‘deerhounds’ comprise the sculptural works. These absurdly plaintive creatures are embodiments of the consequences of a relating to nonhuman animals through infantilization and a dissolving of otherness. Through these works, and their relation to each other, the artist gestures to the possibility of alternate, ethical modes of relating.
This thesis examines the limits of human language as a vehicle for apprehending nonhuman animals. It suggests that art, because of its often instinctive, provisional and affective relating, is a parallel and useful method to approaching animality. It proposes sustained and attentive relationships with individual animals as an avenue for moving beyond relationships of ‘massification’. Referencing writings from biologists, theorists, musicians and authors of fiction, as well as interspersing the text with short poetic vignettes, the author attempts to build an interdisciplinary approach to questioning what is ‘animal’, and why it has been defined as antithetical to ‘human’. ‘Heteroaffection’, ‘telepoiesis’, criticial anthropomorphism and sympathetic imagination are proposed as catalysts for an ethical way to be with, and to represent that being with, another animal.