THE INTERSPECIES ARTIST'S WAY

The Interspecies Artist's way is a course of questioning, unsettling, and reorienting our conception of arts and artmaking to include our more-than-human kin. What does art look like outside the context of the human-nature dichotomy? What can we learn from and contribute to cross-species collaborations?

Each session will consist of a short presentation to lay a groundwork for generative discussions, followed by guided creative practices in writing, drawing, movement, somatic explorations and visualizations, the results of which will be shared amongst the group to encourage cross pollination of ideas. Throughout the course we will collaboratively author a living document of aesthetic values for interspecies attention, interspecies artmaking, and processes for engaging ethically in collaboration with our more-than-human kin. 

We will cover the following topics: 
  • Composting Human Centricity: our livelihoods as multispecies relationships, porous individuality and holobiont organisms, modalities of interspecies collaboration 
  • Relational Attunement - to sensory realms of more-than-human beings, to multispecies ecosystems 
  • Participatory Ecologies: Learning and designing earthly interfaces for ethical interspecies collaboration. 
  • Regenerative Arts of Interspecies Thriving: arts as collaborative worldmaking with the more-than-human world 
A self paced reading list and collective knowledge constellation of optional reading materials will be provided for participants to delve into and contribute to throughout the course.

INSTRUCTOR

Shanhuan is an interspecies inquirer and filmmaker composting established methods of cinematic storytelling to alchemize extractive methods of production into regenerative rituals, while making real the possibilities of speculative worlds by utilizing collective storytelling as a transformative cultural practice.  Their collaborations have woven community globally, ranging from cinematic additions to 20th Century Fox’s Alien franchise, to spontaneous tea service at School of the Alternative. In 2023 Shanhuan was a fellow in Emergence Magazine’s Seeds of Radical Renewal Spiritual Ecology leadership program, hosted workshops on Interspecies Collaboration and Attunement at New Moon Mycology Summit as well as through Exploring the Mycoverse and Sympoetic Ecofabulatory in so called Los Angeles.
Image credit: Shanhuan Manton, 2023
THIS CLASS IS AVAILABLE IN PERSON ONLY
​AT ABRONS ARTS CENTER:
466 Grand Street, NY, NY

WEDNESDAYS 6-8 PM EST
April 3 - April 24, 2024
4 sessions
$250 Tuition
BIPOC sliding scale available
50% low income discount available
+ $25 non-refundable registration fee
This program is made possible through the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).