HÖRNER/ANTLFINGER
Tales of a Modern Parrot
Living Entangled Lives in an Interspecies Art Collective (2022)
“Staying in the subject of learning from animals, Hörner/Antlfinger’s “Tales of a Modern Parrot: Living Entangled Lives in an Interspecies Art Collective” describes decades of the artists’ lives, living with and thinking about and creating art about and with animals. Describing such a long-time cooperation, the text also describes changes in the collective’s work that reflects changes in philosophy and politics concerning general shifts in multispecies co-habitations. It offers valuable insights into “a more reflective kind of anthropomorphism. One that does neither overestimate, nor does it underestimate the similarities between human and nonhuman animals.” Also, the parrots taught their human cohabitants and co-workers about new balances between work and play, a well-known relation for many artists – and perhaps academics, too — and the artwork with animals therefore poses fascinating questions relating to what “work” is. Does it make sense to say that pets work? And is it only human beings that create art?”
Ida Bencke and Jørgen Bruhn in the introduction to
Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices︎︎︎
Hörner/Antlfinger, Tales of a modern Parrot, p. 49-74.
Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices
Edited by Ida Bencke, Jørgen Bruhn
punctum books, 2022
Contributors Melanie Boehi, Karin Bolender, Adam Dickinson, Vinciane Despret, Hörner/Antlfinger, Fröydi Lazslo, Katie Lawson, Maya Livio, Péter Kristóf Makai, Emily McGiffin, Carol Padberg, Helen V. Pritchard, Loup Rivière, Cassandra Troyan, Kristina Van Dexter, Elizabeth Vander Meer, Gillian Wylde
Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices is a speculative endeavor asking how we may represent, relay, and read worlds differently by seeing other species as protagonists in their own rights. What other stories are to be invented and told from within those many-tongued chatters of multispecies collectives? Could such stories teach us how to become human otherwise? [...] Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices offers steps toward a (self)critical multispecies philosophy which interrogates and qualifies the broad and seemingly neutral concept of humanity utilized in and around conversations grounded within Western science and academia. Artists, activists, writers, and scientists give a myriad of different interpretations of how to tell our worlds using different media – and possibly gives hints as to how to change it, too.
Earth, Milky Way: punctum books, 2022. 324 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-68571-022-4. DOI: 10.53288/0324.1.00.