MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY
AND ARTFUL METHODS
5. ARTISTIC CO-DISCOVERY IN
MULTISPECIES COLLABORATION
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Deuce stands at the threshold of Elsewhere Museum considering whether to enter. From Horses at the Museum: Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere, Lee Deigaard, Elsewhere Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, 2014; Be Your Dog, Angela Bartram, KARST Gallery, Plymouth, UK, 2016 in which dogs with their human companions enter a gallery space as artists. Instructions to humans are to do as their dogs do, to follow their dog’s lead.
Method: to invite, and be invited by, animal collaborators into a non-hierarchical, non-deterministic creative process
Method: to invite, and be invited by, animal collaborators into a non-hierarchical, non-deterministic creative process
Bartram+Deigaard are artists working in sympathetic praxis and creative research within an ethos of multispecies parity. Our collaborative and solo projects invite animal collaborators into non-hierarchical, non-deterministic creative processes which invert hypothesis-driven methodologies. This is often through an invitation into human privileged cultural sites, to give the animal full access and to disrupt conventional organisational politics of which bodies belong where and in what context. We recognise that animal sites are significant, but for the context of this work it is important that the invitation sees the animal cross thresholds into and within the conventional governing principles of museum and gallery interiors where they can be considered artists by virtue of their active presence. Our approach seeks opportunities for convergent consciousness among non-human and human investigators; hypotheses, learning and insights occur not only through collaborative improvisation but also through retroactive review of documentation, development of work for exhibitions and writing accompanying text and essays. Collaborations proceed according to principles of mutual respect and autonomous engagement and are shaped by revelatory moments of co-discovery.
In our solo practices and collaborations as the duo Bartram+Deigaard, we have identified a ‘shared brain’ sensibility embedded within ethical commitments and considerations in working with other animals, identifying ourselves within that category. Despite considering ourselves as animal, we will henceforth refer to the non-human with this term for clarity of bodies/species derivation in the discussion. For the purposes of this text and abbreviated reference, we refer to our shared methodology, developed through our animal partnerships and with their full credit, as the B+D method, with the keen declaration that so much arises from the ‘+’ representing animal connectivity and inter-relating to our immense benefits. This relates to inviting animals to enter the creative space, in site and process, and of the acceptance of their reciprocal invitations into acts of animal-led creativity.
Key characteristics of the B+D method:
Porous, improvisational, intuitive; non-prescriptive, non-proscriptive, non-preconceived; open to the unexpected, embracing surprising results; iterative, aggregative
Artistic research has only relatively recently considered our kind of creative fieldwork as possibly predating much of the literature on the subject. This shift sees it eligible for scholastic merit, in addition to that of the existing contribution of literature. We have been working beyond the literature in practices informing critical references, presenting exhibitions and events, and delivering presentations at multidisciplinary international animal conferences since the inception of animal studies as a discipline. The B+D method favours the improvisational over the prescriptive, and does not enter projects with preconceptions about what will emerge materially or conceptually. This approach is designed to remain open to the unexpected, the tangential, the reflexive and the aggregative. It makes room for the embrace of surprise and the ways in which outputs can pivot on the action or reaction of a single participant – non-human or human. When all available energy and attention are focused on the play of intuition among co-investigators, useful and meaningful experiences are bound to result, some of which can be documented and named. It is assumed that the participants will arrive, on paths impossible to predict, at ‘wholes’ which are greater than the sum of their parts. The goal is understood to be a set of working conditions and a commitment towards becoming or being animal, rather than any kind of product or conclusion.
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Bartram+Deigaard, draw | breath | animal, exhibition of collaborative and sympathetic solo projects, Tippets and Eccles Galleries, Logan, Nov. 2021; Elvira, Deigaard’s companion dog, was written into the visiting artist contract as a collaborator and artist. Bartram+Deigaard ensured that, as an artist, contractually she was never leashed in the gallery (although she had to be beyond its walls) and was therefore free to interact and assign herself roles during installation of work and artist lectures; documentation of her responsive and curious interactions yielded new, on-site work conceived from her choices, presence and participation.
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For Elvira and her contractually permitted presence, this included her being in the darkroom for the making of new photograms using hair (hers and Bartram+Deigaard’s) swept from the gallery floor. Prints of her investigations within the gallery and its adjacent spaces (creative and transitional, such as art studios and hallways) were positioned and exhibited on the gallery floor to mirror the placing of the video monitor for Be Your Dog. Accordion and pleated book dummies drawing from her presence are examples of iterative and aggregative processes in co-creative spaces as documentation and opportunities enabling further engagement that were created on-site and exhibited within the gallery. Be Your Dog and Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere were part of this exhibition. Elvira was also present in the lecture hall at the subsequent Living with Animals conference in 2023, Eastern Kentucky University, where Bartram + Deigaard presented findings from their Tippets and Eccles Galleries residency. In the final image above, also visible on the presentation screen to its left, Elvira takes charge of the required leash in the hallway of the building. That she acted freely and to her own purposes and alliances in spaces normally closed to animals (but where animals were being discussed) is both provocation and establishment of creative equality.
Co-learning, co-investigation; shared leadership, shared initiative, shared curiosity; shared agency, shared access, free movement; diverse forms of hearing | listening | understanding; not oriented to human sensibility, desire, expectation
The B+D method invites all participants into a process of co-investigation, and assumes that each can take a share of leadership and initiative as events unfold. This approach is grounded in a learned awareness that all forms of consciousness feel and express curiosity, though their vocabularies and means of communication may differ. We have designed projects and situations in which agency – and any decision making around content and meaning – is shared without ranking or priority among participants. This necessitates shared access to project resources, including space for free movement and for mechanisms which allow all co-investigators to be seen and heard as they explore. For success, this method requires the cultivation of diverse forms of hearing, listening and understanding which are not oriented exclusively – or, perhaps, at all – to human sensibilities, desires and expectations. The way we approach our collaborative work asks human participants to interrogate these habits and presuppositions to pool multi-species creative abilities in more dynamic ways. This acknowledges that the animal may also be doing this themselves but, to avoid coercive or intrusive measures, we use intuition, observation and sensing only, and not externally determinable and quantifiable systems and measures. In the sense of artistic research, ours is a thinking-through process via methodological enquiry within a given context, whereby there is a placing of the research question into the interspecies debate within a cultural site and articulation of practice with respect and trust in all bodies. That is ethnographic as a working-through of trajectories of unbounded becoming. The exploring of creative synergies is mapped and detailed within cartographies of method and process to be reflective and observational of concomitant effects on those involved.
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Be Your Dog, Angela Bartram, workshop, Feminist Canine Ethnography Conference participants, Amsterdam, January 2020; Detail from Vixen.Vector, Lee Deigaard, 2016–17, a photographic installation depicting a former street dog who defies cartesian dualism and explores cartesian geometry in bodily expressive and deliberate alignments fluidly responsive to her changing environment. Vixen.Vector is drawn from the shared experiences of daily dog walks in which American leash laws require their use. It depicts Elvira’s clever conversion of her tether into a hypotenuse or connecting vector; Licking Dogs, Angela Bartram, 2008, a four-screen video installation shown across floor-based monitors, which aims to confront the role of danger and asks to which species does this display belong.
Choice, trust, clear exit options; recognise all forms of implicit coercion or even benign expectation (try to minimise); mutual legibility; working without harness or leashes
The B+D method is predicated on the assumption that all participants will exercise choice with parity throughout the discovery and exchange process, irrespective of species derivation and any markers of difference. The method aims to not allow difference – in species, body and mind ability, class, gender, or race – to obstruct engagement. This implies, as with most social situations, a high degree of mutual trust. Both Deigaard and Bartram have benefited for decades from long-term relationships with animal teachers and companions. They often work with animals whom they know and are known by well. The choice to participate is open, and no coercion or regulation is enforced; if the animal is not interested then their lack of interest constitutes the manner of the collaboration. They enter and leave as they wish. The non-human participants, beginning generally at a disadvantage in their interactions with human projects, must be provided with ample agency and the option to quit the process at any point, just as humans would expect. Much of this operates in the background of purposeful explorations; it is an ongoing effort to recognise and address all forms of implicit coercion imposed (consciously and subconsciously) by humans onto non-humans. This approach strives towards conditions which foster mutual legibility, and it stems from a sense of mutual respect and embracing animality and full ranges of self-expression among animal collaborators. One way to externalise these intangibles is to adopt inclusive pronouns like ‘we’ and ‘us’ (which assert parity among co-investigators rather than division by species) and ‘she /he’ (which recognises individual agency within collective play). Central questions to ask include: does the animal want to be there? Do they feel trust and security? Do they have the freedom to leave and to decide the duration? How can processes and experiments build on precedent and iteration, which are implicit to growing familiarity and improvisation? By engaging with empathy and shared cognisance with animal collaborators, and in being sensitive to their needs and preferences, we are better able to instrumentally gauge their interest and comfort. We offer a way out by opening a literal and metaphorical door and, if this is wanted and accepted, then the moment of engagement ends. How to read (and respond to) animals’ reactions is necessarily a subjective process, and this is where the artists’ training by diverse animal companions, their extensive direct observation for many years and their related research into the sensory and emotional worlds of animals comes into play.
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Horses at the Museum: Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere, Lee Deigaard, Greensboro, NC, Elsewhere Museum, 2014, composite (clockwise): ‘Witness Wonders’, Deuce heads to the kitchen; Deuce in the library; Deuce and Deigaard among the books; Gus returns the camera’s gaze after shooting pinball with human companion.
Key benefits of the B+D method:
Expansions of experiential and creative bandwidth; builds connectivity and ‘group genius’; (1) learning new ways of hearing, seeing, inhabiting, new durations while abiding in states of possibility not previously envisioned; openness and receptivity to the sensory world and differing sensitivities of perception, leading with the body, not mind, for processes of exploration and cognition; to ‘embody’ research
Our methodology is not formulaic, and therefore calls for a lot of improvisation on the part of participants at every stage of implementation. It is, at the same time, by nature flexible, scalable and idiosyncratic. The benefits it generates are not determined in terms of tangible outputs or static findings. Rather, they are felt directly by participants in the form of heightened and shared experience. Experiential and creative bandwidth expands as proprioceptive connections multiply and the scope of connectivity grows between co-investigators. In this regard, we learn often from non-human collaborators a heightened openness to our shared sensory environment, becoming observant and staying present and within the moment, being receptive and porous and patient. How to lead with the body when conducting research and letting the mind follow is a kind of embodied exploration linking cognition directly to the somatic processes involved with gathering information. When interaction among project participants becomes part of this gathering process, there can emerge a kind of ‘group genius’. (2) This is a kind of creative space-making – understanding space to be physical, emotional and psychological – which precedes the undertaking of any investigation. In this way, our method is part of a lengthy artistic legacy of foregrounding the positive potential of nonconforming behaviours; creative investigation is a pathway to domains of convergent imagination in which non-human and human participants are invited to describe what is and what could be. This in turn promotes equity, and the cycle continues. Our approach seeks to assert conditions allowing co-investigators to abide in states of possibility not previously envisioned, and for all to emerge with broadened powers of perception.
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Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks, Angela Bartram, Tempting Failure Festival, Croydon, UK, 2018; Gus and Deuce Go Elsewhere, Lee Deigaard, 2014, Gus departs the museum after lengthy exploration with his partner Deuce.
Co-discovery, (3) reciprocal caretaking, checking, monitoring, protecting, ruminating within shared meditative space
The risks and uncertainties that are bound up with the B+D method strongly suggest the need for a lot of trust and shared security. In the process of improvisational co-discovery, we find it useful to recall that the root of that word relates to notions of protection, defence, inclusion and a comprehending embrace. These are precisely the characteristics of the creative ‘enclosure’ which our method fosters. Within this exploratory space, there can be reciprocal caretaking, monitoring and constant adjustments (micro- and macro-) as circumstances evolve and co-investigators shift to meet them. It is especially important for non-human participants to feel safe and at ease, since many situations in which the work takes place (including barns and pastures but certainly within cultural spaces like museums and galleries) will be heavily imprinted by the shapes of assumptions of human primacy. Once a space of trust and inclusion is established, then the core work of simultaneous rumination and pooling of impressions may proceed within a shared, mutually-reinforcing meditative environment that is safe and comfortable. We ensure this process by being sensitive to the animals’ needs and wants, noticing how and where they are comfortable and involved. We invite them to enter (if they choose), enjoy breaks (led by them), moments to disengage (led by them), and opportunities to leave (called for by them). What is learned or generated by that type of environment, after it is established, emerges non-deterministically according to the nature of the event. Hospitality and being welcoming is part of a shared etiquette within groups, herds and packs. From mutual respect arises freedom and a sense of comfort and play.
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Reading Animal Theory to the Animals – Horse, Angela Bartram, 2017–ongoing; Angela Bartram, Human School (Be Your Dog), Manchester International Festival, 2019.
Erodes hierarchies of knowledge, experience, vantage, sense, consciousness, sensibility, access, sequence, etc.; presents tangible, constructive critique of human privilege; breaking up the determinism of standard human cognition
A central benefit of the B+D method is the systematic erosion of conventional hierarchies of knowledge, experience and sensibility. So durable and familiar is the anthropocentric approach to creative work, that while ethnographers have traditionally presumed that every human culture can and will pursue – under any conditions of climate, social structure, or material affluence – artistic activities which are intentional, they often formerly, and formally, did not recognise the overwhelmingly obvious and ubiquitous creative activities of non-human species, which, drawing from vastly diverse umwelts and life experiences, priorities and preoccupations, can only enrich our own. Our method overturns this pattern by assigning to all participants fully developed and rendered creative consciousnesses, forged by the experiences, insights, impressions and emotional associations unique to each of us. This approach allows the project to achieve internal parity while asserting a tangible, constructive critique of human privilege and the automatic preferencing of standard human cognition. These privileges have asphyxiated creative work long enough; this method presents an alternative that greatly multiplies both inputs and outputs in relation to a shared creative project. The B+D method considers which animals might enjoy novelty and an experimental experience. This means considering animal personality in posing the invitation and being responsive to their counter-offers and the questions they pose in turn. Bartram + Deigaard approach projects with ethical and mutual enrichment recognising that (not all but many) animals enjoy exploration, invention, sensory novelty and play with other animals, often including human animals.
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Horses at the Museum: Field Trips, Lee Deigaard, Mason and Gus investigate items from the permanent collection in arenas where they are free to engage or withdraw according to their curiosity, North Carolina, 2014.
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Reading Animal Theory to the Animals – Cat and Dog, Angela Bartram 2017–ongoing. Bartram noted the absence of animals at conferences discussing animals and conceived of bringing animal studies to animals where they live. Like Deigaard’s Field Trips, Bartram’s reading (all animals free to engage or leave in both projects) draws animal curiosity and cultivates creative co-bonds derived from mutually enriching shared experiences. The engagement for the dog is sensed through their willingness to listen and passages are read or stopped in response to their perceived interest.
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Vixen.Vector, Lee Deigaard, 2013–17, example of inventive improvisation by canine play partners in a revelatory (and characteristic to their qualities of play) optical illusion; Horses at the Museum: Field Trips, Lee Deigaard, 2014. Bartram+Deigaard foreground the animal being freely themselves in all collaborative spaces. Sometimes, project imagery may suggest to a human viewer a humorous reading of an animal’s action as a specific referendum on a project or novel object. All proximity to animals is inherently creative and generative and recognised by the artists as immense pleasure and an abiding privilege.
Artnographic statement
As artistic creative researchers, we act responsively and idiosyncratically according to our animal (non-human predominantly and very occasionally human) collaborators’ wants and preferences, both in siting (and citing) our work and its adaptive structure and reason for existence. The result is never preordained, as individual agency is embedded as a reason and means by which improvisation becomes situated as collaborative. An intersection of species and bodies that is co-created encourages optimal interest and engagement.
Non-human animals pose hypotheses and theorems just as the humans do and occupy, too, the position of artist. Our artwork arises from long-term relationships with non-human animals we have each conducted intimately and domestically for over thirty years, benefiting from our companions’ teaching and reciprocal care of us and, most specifically, their demonstrated curiosity within environments and relationships in which they feel secure. These histories are part of our inter- and multispecies ethnographic journey leading to the collaboration that is Bartram+Deigaard. Our methods, whereby we are responsive to the daily and the durational, to animal knowledge and sensitivities far surpassing ours, were developed cooperatively with non-humans we know and who know us, who engage with us and we with them. Artistic creative research has only relatively recently considered our kind of fieldwork (predating much of any literature on the subject). We are often working (and have been working) beyond the literature in practices informing critical references, presenting exhibitions and events. We have also been delivering presentations at multidisciplinary international animal studies conferences since its inception as a discipline. As artistic research, ours is a thinking-through via methodological enquiry within a given context – placing the research question into the interspecies debate within cultural sites and articulations of practice. That is ethnographic as a working-through of trajectories of unbounded becoming. The exploring of creative synergies is mapped and detailed within cartographies of method and process to be reflective and observational of concomitant effects on those involved.
How we include non-human animals in cultural spaces, as artists, features in the explorations we discuss here. Some animals are curious about where we go when we enter doors otherwise closed to them; others choose to observe while still others run freely, marking the interiority of the cultural site or place counter to expectation. Through the interspecies intersection, its participating bodies, the space and the encounter become fertile. Working improvisationally and responsively means being alert to interest demonstrated through voluntary participation. Their meaningful ways to contribute (and preemptively hijack, we hope) any latent ideas of design or hoped-for outcome informs the mechanics of the collaboration. We propose the value of practice to challenge normative rules of engagement and process from critical references informing research to what and who goes into a gallery. We embrace classical views of failure as successful outcomes through our commitment to reciprocal and non-hierarchical values.
