Karen Piddington - artist
I use film, sound and sculpture to rethink ‘becoming-animal’ and animality, and consider what new forms of multispecies kinships might be possible.
I explore the paradoxical spaces between the wild and domestic inhabited by nonhumans; and reimagine new spaces for interspecies co-existence to create a greater awareness of the importance of tackling biodiversity loss in the context of the ongoing ecological crisis.
‘Becoming-animal’ (1980), a concept devised by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, presents a mode of escape from dualistic thinking. It may be thought of as an event that replaces subjectivity - a kind of un-doing of the human. It’s transformative and rhizomatic nature has a capacity to both create and dismantle fixed ideas and identities.
As an artist, I engage with ‘becoming-animal’ for its fluidity and horizontality. It places humans and nonhumans in a non-hierarchical continuum. This power shift puts us humans in a different relation to the Darwinian hierarchy. An intention for my work is to overcome that human-nonhuman power relation - to destabilise fixed ideas and shift awareness of how we experience ourselves in relation to the planet and its co-inhabitants.
As well as an art practitioner, I volunteer as a Lookerer (a kind of assistant shepherd), working with sheep on down land sites around the edges of Brighton. Here, sheep and ponies graze on a number of important conservation and ancient chalk land, as part of a rewilding programme run by the Council. I situate myself in close proximity to animals utilizing these and other similar spaces as a kind of residency or studio - a place for encounter and alliance with nonhumans.
I step into their world to explore it not from a separate human position but from a position of animality, as an art practitioner. It’s a transformative process of undoing and shape shifting, a kind of shedding of humanness. I enter these lived entanglements using both a playful and serious intent to create interconnecting spaces between the real and the imagined.
‘Becoming-animal’ is my starting point from which to move in different directions. It’s nebulous movement, always in flight rather than settled, allows for unexpected connections and relations to emerge, opening up new possibilities. I hold open a space of ambiguity and position myself in that space with the animal. And, the use of technology is key to this articulation.