How might creative practice allow us to attend to forms of dialogue with the non-human world? What does it mean to be in dialogue with an animal? What can we learn from a mole?
This session invites artist and researcher Hermione Spriggs to screen her new short film Earth Swimmers (23mins) in collaboration with mole catcher Nigel Stock. Commissioned by Sheffield DocFest Exchange with support from Wellcome, and previously screened at CCA Glasgow during Cop 26, Earth Swimmers attends to the tricks and techniques that mole catchers use to access the underground world of the mole.
Using tools as portals into the mole's vibratory world, probes, feet, noses and worm-charming instruments lead the viewer into alternative ways of sensing, knowing, and being in dialogue with the earth and its other species.
The screening will be followed by an experimental conversation between the artist and Flo Fitzgerald-Allsopp, who will consider the radical possibilities and ethical implications that might emerge from creative interspecies dialoguing. Woven through the conversation will also be some interactive practical tips and tricks for human-animal communication which the audience can participate in from home.
HERMIONE SPRIGGS is an artist and researcher exploring ways to access and empathise with other species worlds. She makes objects, texts and experiences that broaden our perception and understanding of what it means to be human.
Hermione is currently doing practice-based PhD research with a focus on rural pest control in North Yorkshire, asking how hunters communicate with animals and exploring the relevance of a hunting attitude to environmental art practice.
She hosts the collaborative project the Anthropology of Other Animals (''AoOA''), which attempts to elicit extraordinary effects from unpromising materials and explores the hidden links between craft and being crafty.
