Interspecies Reciprocal Inquiry as Socially-Engaged Co-Labor/Collaboration

In the many documents and books outlining fundamental strategies in social practice, human relationships are exclusively at the center of socially engaged art practices. Interspecies social engagement is rarely, if at all, considered. Animals and other nonhuman life are entirely excluded from many SEA guides such as Helicon Collective’s document “Mapping the Landscape of Socially Engaged Artistic Practice” and Pablo Helguera’s Education for a Socially Engaged Art: A Materials & Techniques Handbook. Socially Engaged Art often begins with consent from communities with whom an artist seeks to work—but how do practitioners collaborate with communities who cannot issue explicit verbal consent? During the age of the Anthropocene in which the industrial livestock industry contributes to an ongoing sixth extinction, practitioners must consider our pressing relationship to domesticated animals. This presentation uses as a case study a long term research project at the site of a small scale family farm in southeast Michigan. Based on the research of Dr. Jocelyne Porcher, I will argue that interspecies social engagement is intimately grounded in reciprocal inquiry and co-laboring. In the case study, interspecies consent and varying degrees of collaboration are considered at a primary research site, and within sustainable draft-animal-powered farming. How might we utilize the field of Animal Studies to move towards a less-anthropocentric SEA? An amended definition of Socially Engaged Art invites artists to imagine new potentials for the future roles of our working relationships with various species. It is urgent and imperative that Socially Engaged Art encompass more-than-human relationships.