‘We Are Animals’ is a research project which aims to engage with the urgent cultural momentum driving forward awareness about environmental sustainability and animal extinction – and make a valuable research contribution through remembering that we too are animals. Originally scheduled to take place at DRS and Dance 4/iC4C in the spring-summer of 2020, activities were cancelled owing to the pandemic crisis. However the creative team have continued to meet online throughout the lockdown period, taking the research forward and supporting each other through a difficult period.
They are exploring a wide range of cultural, political and ecological narratives, which both celebrate the human animal as part of human subjectivity and also degrade the animal as the opposite of everything human beings aspire to. These sources will provide a framework for creative research, which aims to achieve some understanding of human symbiosis and empathy with other animals and to ask fundamental questions about an idea of ‘civilisation’ which separates ‘us’ from ‘them’.
‘We Are Animals’ is curated by Dance Research Studio. The research artists involved are: Jacky Lansley, Jreena Green, Esther Huss, Ingrid Mackinnon, Fergus Early and Tim Taylor.
