Contact: laura.cull@ahk.nl | Registration: here.

This  event is a one-day symposium to mark the launch of the book Interspecies Performance co-edited by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp.

How might human ideas of performance be transformed through encounters with nonhuman animals? Or – given that how human and animals can meet is shaped by the contexts in which those meetings take place – how might animalizing the aesthetics and spatial-temporal qualities of performance enable new interspecies encounters? What happens to performance if it is made for nonhumans understood as perceiving and expressive subjectivities with aesthetic interests and preferences, rather than the mere objects of human art and attention? In contact with other species, the entire apparatus of performance is transformed.

Over the last quarter century, there has been a profound questioning of the anthropocentrism of performance leading to the manifestation of an incredible amount of interspecies arts works and projects made internationally. Interspecies Performance brings together artists and scholars from across the disciplines to interrogate the rich terrain of contemporary interspecies performance practice – specifically in relation to nonhuman animals. The book foregrounds an intersectional and ethically oriented approach that centres care, empathy and collaboration, and considers the deep entanglement of contemporary oppressions. In this symposium we will foreground the question of what performance contributes to understanding of the relationships between animal justice, decoloniality and disability justice.

Combining talks, practical workshops and performance, this event will bring together staff, researchers and students from AHK and UvA to explore the aesthetics, epistemology, ethics and politics of contemporary interspecies performance. The first activity related to Laura’s new Chair by special appointment in Performance Philosophy at UvA, it will close with a celebratory drinks reception and sales of the book.