Encouraging multispecies sociability through art : anthropomorphism in the visitor centre

Abstract

In this study, the potential of co-opting anthropomorphism as an artistic strategy to develop human affiliations with non-human species, especially with those significantly other to humans, is considered. I present my perspective as artist-researcher in reference to my relational artwork, The Visitor Centre (2016–2018), which was created as a mobile hub to encourage empathy and care for non-human species in urban environments. Informed by relational ontologies, including assemblage theory, care ethics, and empathy studies, the artwork employs anthropomorphism as a strategy to challenge human exceptionalism. Wearing a frontal pouch containing artworks, I invited public engagement by handing out objects to stimulate conversations about urban wildlife. During a series of events, participants were nudged to navigate the moral difficulties that restrict human–non-human species relationships, as evidenced in their conversations. The Visitor Centre speaks to a growing interest within diverse knowledge fields in the function and potential of anthropomorphism to alleviate the limitations imposed on non-human species. As existing and shared procedures of multispecies reciprocity are poorly understood at present, it is proposed that the absurd prompts located in artworks such as The Visitor Centre, in combination with embodied and dialogic approaches, can bring participants closer to existing but unseen multispecies sociability.