Art Between Species: Two Case Studies of Animal's Agency in Interspecies Art

By examining two exemplary cases, this paper addresses the contemporary phenomenon of artistic collaborations between human and non-human animals, which is referred to as interspecies art. Interspecies art has become increasingly significant since the beginning of the twenty-first century and excels at challenging binary oppositions by crediting animals’ creative abilities. Located within the field of human–animal studies, this article combines art historical methods with agency concepts derived from praxeology and action theory. The innovative approach of connecting these ideas of animal agency with interspecies art provides the framework to analyse Aaron Angell’s Gallery Peacetime inhabited by axolotls and CMUK, an interspecies collective consisting of humans and parrots. In order to make the animals’ participation visible as well as to provide a deeper understanding of interspecies art, these specific human–animal relations are examined using Lisa Jevbratt’s and Jessica Ullrich’s criteria for interspecies art and Mieke Roscher’s concepts of entangled and relational agency. This analysis is complemented by a field study and proves to be fertile for revealing the animals’ strong involvement in the artworks as well as beyond the art context.