The initial inspiration for this project was the artwork of Joseph Beuys; I Like America and America Likes Me. The idea of a man trapping himself in a well-lit gallery space with a live coyote was fascinating, to say the least. In particular, I was interested in his fascination with materials and making art with mediums such as felt, animal fat, and animal fur, even going as far as cradling a dead hare. Furthermore, his alleged tale of encountering a Tatar tribe member in which the tribesmen took care of him, wrapping him in felt and animal parts to keep him alive. Though much of this is probably selfly mythologized. 

Of course, the mention of a Tatar, an old Turkic/Mongol ethnicity, instantly reminded me of my homeland, where such conceptual explorations in Beuys work are exhibited on a daily basis on the vast steppes. Subsequent research of ideas led me down a rabbit hole of abstract performance artists to anarchist philosophers, mutual aid, and life on the nomadic steppe in Central and northern Asia. This allowed me to curate a global and diverse art collection that varies greatly but still holds its weight in a robust thematic connection. In this visual novel/exhibit, I argue that the only move forward for humankind is co-dependent cohabitation with nature and move away from western capitalism. 

The entire exhibit will be thematically presented as a video game-based visual novel. The setting of which is a post-apocalyptic world in which humans must live in anarchist communes for survival, the host being a pixelated version of myself; you travel the ruins with this lonely museum curator and discover what led to humanity’s fall. By the end of the exhibit, the viewer will see the conclusion of the tour guide’s fate and ultimately take rain over as the museum’s new curator. This type of story and art focus is to instill a sense of immersion and depth to a research-heavy project.

The first exhibition looks at abstract and performance art as a means to explore human-nature mutual aid, visualized as symbiotic manifestations. The first being, I like America and America likes me, followed by Revital Cohen’s Life Support, a shockingly daring artist that combines the world of biology and art to daringly conceive of what literal human and animal symbiosis would look like. After is Miru Kim’s The Pig that therefore I am, an erotic and evocative artist that blurs the line between animal and human through her powerful photographs.

Following that is a historical and artistic interpretation of the ideas of Anarchist ideas. From the illustrations of Clifford Harper’s idealized anarchist visions to the Graphic Design of CNT-FAI during the anti-fascist anarchist collectives under the Francoist rule of Spain, where anarchism was a means of rebellion. After a modern look into mutual aid as a measure to combat refugees and covid in Greece’s hardest neighborhoods. A huge inspiration being the writings of Peter Kropotkin and other contemporaries. The example that stood out to me the most was the idea of an ecologically mindful and mutually aid-driven city in Elisee Reclus’ texts. The natural city as he puts it is a place where the urban border is an indefinite extension of the city’s natural counterparts. He envisioned urban faces to lack fences and divisions, where agriculture isn’t hidden from the city dweller but rather lives in it. Both writers’ ideas are integral to our modern conception of a welcoming home for wildlife in the urban space. Though not heavily featured as an artwork topic, one such idea is the Zoopolis, the notion of non-anthropocentric design, including elements of nature as a means for peaceful and non-intrusive coexistence, or at least to minimize it as much as possible. Ultimately, a conclusion is reached upon which the modern city can no longer function without a non-anthropocentric perspective to architecture, upon which people and nature will live in parallel.

As a close for the finale, I end the exhibit with a mix of anthropology and art by examining art inspired by the great Asian steppe and its indigenous inhabitants who persist today in a world full of western and Sinocentric colonialism. Though capitalist encroachments endanger their cultures, we exhibit what an ecologically sustainable and harmonious relationship between human spaces and natural animal spaces could look like. It is an alternative perspective to both the western capitalist domination. Such artists in the exhibit come in the form of Anu Osva, an artist painting Yakutian cattle in the barren icescape of Siberia, Baatarzorig Batjargal, a classically trained “Mongol Zurag” artist, blending religious, ancestral, and modern elements into his intricate paintings, and topped off with an object-based art project in which Hermoine Spriggs attempts to see the world through a Mongol Nomadic Herder’s lasso. 

Osva, Anu. “The Symbiotic Human Animal Relationship: An Artistic Investigation of Yakutian Cattle.” Good to Eat, Good to Live with: Nomads and Animals in Northern Eurasia and Africa , 11, no. North Eastern Asian Studies (2012): 203–2011. 

In spring 2005, a research team traveled to the Sakha republic in the Russian Federation. The goal was intended to evaluate socio-economic risks associated with preservation of endangered Yakutian cattle. Along the way they reevaluate the perspective of this research study as an artistic meditation. Interviewing people, drawing, painting and photographing the animals. This up close confrontation with these animals allowed for an unique view and artistic interaction.  Larger implications and understandings of human – animal symbiosis and relationships are assessed from these rare colonized peoples.

Kleszcz, Justyna. “The Idea of Zoopolis in Contemporary Architectural Dimension.” E3S Web of Conferences 49 (2018): 00056. https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20184900056. 

In this article, they analyze the prospects of non-anthropocentric architecture and how it is and should become an emerging determiner of contemporary architecture. They analyse Donaldson and Kymlicka’s work from 2011 and re-interpret their political-scientific perspective to one of physical conceptions.

Travlou, Penny. “Kropotkin-19: A Mutual Aid Response to COVID-19 in Athens.” Design and Culture 13, no. 1 (2021): 65–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2020.1864119. 

While this case study of Mutual aid, appropriately named after Peter Kropotkin’s work of Mutual aid and it being an important driver for evolution, it is also a beautiful piece of participatory and socially engaged art. It is a particularly potent example and piece of art is because it applies to our modern times and would be especially engaging. It tracks the emergence of Kropokin-19, a mutual aid organization in Exarcheia, Greece during the lockdowns in March and May 2020. 

Spriggs, Hermione. “‘Uurga Shig’ – What Is It like to Be a Lasso? Drawing Figure–Ground Reversals between Art and Anthropology.” Journal of Material Culture 21, no. 4 (2016): 405–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183516662673. 

This article looks at Mongolian indeginious understandings of cosmology and human-animal relationships in nomadic settlements. The writer reflects on these topics through the lens of ‘uurga’, Mongolian for lasso, the best way to describe is that it resembles the shape of a ‘P’, the bowl (in typography terms) of the letter P, being the rope while, the stem is a flexible piece of wood.  Alfred Gell’s thesis is used as additional framing, his work ‘Traps as artworks and artworks as traps’ (1996), allows the Lasso to be representative of a push against western ideas of animals. 

Regine, and K-9_topology. “K-9_topology, On the Human/ Dog Coevolution. An Interview with Maja Smrekar.” We Make Money Not Art, March 28, 2018. https://we-make-money-not-art.com/k-9_topology-on-the-human-dog-co-evolution-an-interview-with-maja-smrekar/. 

The article interviews and examines the artworks of Maja Smrekar. She particularly investigated human/dog/wolf co-evolution and codependency. She even goes far enough to imply hybridization of human and dog species. Her most famous work, K-9 Topology, places her work of human – dog coevolution as a commentary on what it means to be human and challenges the self centeredness of humanity as well.

Editorial, Artsy, and Jon Mann. “When Joseph Beuys Locked Himself in a Room with a Live Coyote.” Artsy, November 3, 2017. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-joseph-beuys-locked-room-live-coyote. 

This website editorial looks at the origins and cultural inspirations that led to Joseph Beuys revolutionary performance art piece. 

Gorman, Richard. “What’s in It for the Animals? Symbiotically Considering ‘Therapeutic’ Human-Animal Relations within Spaces and Practices of Care Farming.” Medical Humanities 45, no. 3 (2019): 313–25. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011627. 

Drawing on case studies and empirical studies from care farms in the UK. This article uses the term symbiosis as a framework to examine relationships within interspecies therapeutic practices. Care farming is a new idea in which it uses farming practices as a form of therapeutic intervention. It attempts to dissuade the notion that interspecies therapy is a strictly anthropomorphic or utilitarian tool. The text goes to explore whether or not these relationships are reciprocally beneficial and how it can be used to further ideas of mutualism and codependence from the perspective of medical humanities.