MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY
AND ARTFUL METHODS
6. ATTENDING TO FIREBUGS:
ARTISTIC INVESTIGATIONS FOR RESPECTFUL CORRESPONDENCES
Photo Essay
Photo Essay
When engaging in fieldwork, firstly there needs to be focused attention on the observed, to perceive the atmosphere; then an aim for the day can be fixed and method of engagement chosen. Observing firebugs during the first days, the eyes were not habituated to focus on such tiny forms and it was hard to grasp these beings because of their small size and fast, sudden movements. The aim was to get to know their bodies and the possibility to enlarge photographs and film movement sequences suited this objective. After having gathered more information about the firebug’s body shape and getting used to their behaviour, life drawing, drawing from pictures and also sound recordings were used to diversify and intensify the relation with these beings.
When engaging in fieldwork, firstly there needs to be focused attention on the observed, to perceive the atmosphere; then an aim for the day can be fixed and method of engagement chosen. Observing firebugs during the first days, the eyes were not habituated to focus on such tiny forms and it was hard to grasp these beings because of their small size and fast, sudden movements. The aim was to get to know their bodies and the possibility to enlarge photographs and film movement sequences suited this objective. After having gathered more information about the firebug’s body shape and getting used to their behaviour, life drawing, drawing from pictures and also sound recordings were used to diversify and intensify the relation with these beings.
The reason for using situation-specific, varying artistic methods is to have a multi-layered view on the observed animal. Believing in a relational existence (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2009) and the importance of trying to listen to the research subject, the method is chosen once in contact with the firebug. To have a more rigid protocol would make it impossible to engage with these beings with the greatest possible openness. This trust in intuition when choosing a medium of registration has developed through a shifting research subject from sheep to firebug. The first year of my Ph.D. was dedicated to observing three sheep in an animal sanctuary in Saarbrücken, Germany. Shifting the focus from a farmed animal and mammal to a wild insect, I realised the importance of being sensitive to the specificities of species, beings and their environment when in the field, and to adapt.
When photographing, the aim is to capture the firebug’s body and take a closer look by zooming in the picture, to register firebug activities, such as eating or moulting and to capture the animal within its living environment. The purpose of filming is gathering information about the firebugs’ way of moving and sound recordings register sounds made by the animals and their environment.
Drawing requires longer attention spans in which the form of the firebug must be grasped and reproduced, implying the risk that lines and shapes may be interrupted by the firebug’s movements. It shows the artist’s dependence on the subject and the agency of other-than-human life, combining to ‘reconceive reality as a “subject-subject continuum” instead of a “subject-object dualism”’ (Freya Mathews, cited by Donovan, 2016: 79). The physical effort and concentration required to perceive and reproduce create intense moments of engagement and intimacy with the other, referring to Willa Cather’s aesthetics of care, where the artist ‘must thus be personally and emotionally immersed in a conversation with the world she transcribes’ (Donovan, 2016: 56).
Author
Throughout the summer months, firebugs can be observed in wide areas of Europe, whereas during the colder periods of the year they hibernate in the earth or tree cracks. Throughout their one-year growth process, the animals moult five times. Shortly after the moulting, their body is coloured in orange and red tones which then transform in the black and red pattern. In September, the firebugs slowly start to disappear for hibernation and I as well withdraw into the atelier to process the information gathered during fieldwork.
The choice to work on the firebug in the first place is explained by wanting to engage with a species that is mostly overlooked or encountered with discomfort and disgust, little overlaid by symbolic meanings, trackable without technical instruments and sharing spaces with humans, without being domesticated.
Compassion is a concept that frames the engagement with firebugs as well as the creative process. In Cognitive Based Compassion Training (CBCT) it is defined as a warm-hearted concern that unfolds when we witness the suffering of others and feel motivated to relieve it (Tenzin Negi, 2021: 18). It distracts from self-centredness and puts the focus on the other who is valued and respected (Karen Armstrong, Charter of Compassion). Compassion training is relevant to the research because it formulates a way to learn to be more sensitive and attentive to one’s surroundings. This skill is interesting as a more sensitive handling of artistic material can lead to better artworks. Also, when critiquing existing power relations, a compassionate handling of artistic material is important so as to not reproduce criticised power-relations within the creative process.
As the project investigates the human-animal relationship in art and aims for greater animal welfare, the contact with other-than-human animals should be analysed. This happens on three levels, namely when animals are observed during fieldwork, when animals are represented and when artistic material is used in whose creation process a variety of beings are involved. These contact zones are enhanced by the integration of compassion training.
An important aspect of CBCT is that, in order to strengthen compassion, a number of underlying mental stages should be cultivated. These include being able to create and maintain a sense of safety and security within oneself; the awareness of one’s own thoughts and feelings; and critical self-reflection.
There are parallels between a mental stage necessary to become creative and foundational elements of compassion training. In moments of calmness, ideas emerge. It should be said, though, that there are many engines of creative work that do not necessarily require inner peace, but also arise from emotional or other turmoil. In moments of calm before the creative work, however, I make more conscious decisions towards the material and the depicted than when becoming creative out of an inner unrest. Therefore, in order to be able to shift towards a more concerned artistic practice, I exercise to be in a more calm and aware state of mind.
The fieldwork observations are further processed by speculating (Despret, 2016; Haraway, 2016) about what the animals might be doing. When considering how a particular situation comes into being, one must take into account the consequences as well as the underlying elements. This connection between thought and empirical limits constitutes speculative thinking, as in a speculation something given is observed and also questioned. It is a method of inquiring what a situation is composed of, how its different elements relate and matter and where the situation might lead. (Hendrickx, 2017)
Donna Haraway describes `speculative fabulation´ (Haraway, 2016: 2) as a method of tracking lived experiences and getting involved with others to see a situation from a perspective that leads to greater multispecies justice. The research implements the concept of speculation to create images of firebugs.
The ideas on firebugs and multispecies worlds are further developed and rendered tangible through drawing as well as wood- and linocut. This intense relationship between a human and something non-human in the printing process creates tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1966) on human-other-than-human relationships and trains to trust the senses when engaging with something that doesn’t speak human language. Furthermore, the wood is a way to connect with the more-than-human world. Its grain tells stories that are brought to paper and disseminated. Tracing how the original tree is processed into wooden boards and paper that is used for the printing process helps being aware of the interrelatedness of existence. The process of printmaking goes from a printing ground to diverse prints and symbolises the concept of a common ground from where diversity arises.
The slowness of the creative process gives space to let the fieldwork experience with firebugs sink in and to come back to it over and over again. The physicality of the printing process further serves as a connecting point between my body, the artistic material and the research subjects. Also, woodcut is a non-toxic printing technique and appropriate for bigger formats.
From a viewer’s standpoint, artworks touch various sensorial stimuli and provide multi-layered, sensitive connections with the art piece, which in itself is something other-than-human, but also other non-human existences.
Artnographic statement
When engaging in Multispecies Ethnography the question arises of how to understand and translate the animal’s perspectives. According to anthropologist Harry Wels, ‘developing fieldwork methodologies in multi-species ethnographic research confronts researchers with the explicit need for and training in multi-sensory methods and interpretations’ (Wels, 2020: 343) and find ‘methodologies without words’. (348) Wels proposes the art of tracking, whereby the tracker ‘must project themselves in the position of the animal in order to create a hypothetical explanation of what the animal was doing’ (2020: 345). He talks about three aspects within this method, which are, firstly, observing for longer periods of time; secondly, imagining what the observed animals might be up to; and, thirdly, getting physically habituated to the field in which one is working (353–56).
When researching multispecies environments, there is agreement on the need for multisensorial methods, knowledge about the environment, patient observation and speculations (Despret, 2016; Haraway, 2016).
Sheep and firebugs, two species encountered throughout the research, live in a familiar environment, namely the countryside of Saarland, Germany. This common habitat already creates a connection and understanding of these animals. Artistic methodologies are then used to observe, register and speculate about their lives.
The style of attention that is cultivated when observing other-than-human animals does not aim to create knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but to learn how to inhabit this world differently. It refers to the vision of naturalist Arabella Buckley, who in her work Life and her Children (1882) says:
And now, since we live in the world with all these numerous companions, which lead, many of them, such curious lives, trying ourselves to make the best of their short time here, is it not worthwhile to learn something about them? May we not gain some useful hints by watching their contrivances, sympathizing with their difficulties, and studying their history? And above all, shall we not have something more to love and to care for when we have made acquaintance with some of life’s other children besides ourselves? (Buckley, 1882: 8; see also Mengual, 2021: 64).
This kind of ‘loving attention’ (Weil, 1947: 137) towards the natural world is the basis for an ethical aesthetic, developed throughout the research.
The poet produces the beautiful by an attention fixed to the real. Similarly, the act of love. To know that man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I exist-that is enough, the rest follows automatically. Authentic and pure values of truth, beauty, and goodness in the activity of a human being are produced by one sole and the same act, a certain application to the object of complete and full attention (Weil, 1947: 137; translated and cited by Donavan, 2016: 7).
This focused, caring attention reveals presences that remain uncovered through objectivation and abstraction. Through loving attention, the moral, qualitative and emotional significance becomes visible, that remains hidden in an unfeeling gaze. It also englobes empathising with the other, recognising it as a subject with its own reality (Donavan, 2016: 8). This valorisation of the observed as a subject with agency with its own point of view demands a respect and ethical reasoning regarding the wellbeing of the research subject that is absent in depersonalised methodologies.
Loving attention is cultivated through artistic methodologies. They represent a form of knowledge that connects instead of objectifies. Knowledge that functions by objectivation and by cutting off the affective dimension towards the research object creates distance and reduces the actual engagement with the other. Inversely, a holistic approach to experiences with animals gives space to cognitive, physical, sensorial and affective aspects of the encounter (Mengual, 2021: 98–102).
The sponginess of artistic modes of perception lead to individual and multi-layered perspectives on animality. It also suggests that much of the non-human animal is not yet understood and remains mysterious.
Also, Art is a tool for critical reflection on ethnography and its operational exclusions. Arnaud Gerspacher maintains that
The positivist killjoys will have to loosen up and realize that the entities and modalities that evade the scientism of their disciplinary nets are not therefore mere pseudo-object fit for the dustbins of New Age speculation. For their turn, aesthetic practices will have to remain vigilant of jejuneness, of the trivial instrumentally interesting and of its institutional contraints (Gerspacher, 2022: xii).
By integrating artistic methodologies in ethnographic research, artists can be critical about its ‘reductive assumptions and operational constrains’ (Gerspacher, 2022:14).
Moreover, animals, because of their complexity, consistently find ways to elude disciplinary limitations. Artistic processes may provide a constructive position free from ethnographic constraints, from which creaturely modes of existence can be speculated on (Gerspacher, 2022: 13).
The preceding photo essay elaborates on the concrete artistic methodologies used during fieldwork on firebugs. The photos consist in a selection of fieldwork registrations and their further artistic processing.
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Zhong Mengual, E. 2021. Apprendre à voir. Le point de vue du vivant. Arles: Actes Sud, Mondes Sauvages.
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