This artistic research was carried out during a one-year Master Performing Public Space study at the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts. Based on concepts of coexistence between nonhumans and humans, I create new narratives with the models of utopia-catopia, symbiocene, empathy, and compassion. While observing a community of free-roaming cats, we, cats and I, co-created a series of interspecies communications and utopian experiments as I was inspired by the close intertwining of public and private, street and home, place and space, learning and knowing, being and acting, compassion and acceptance, and it is also a continuation of my artistic practice based in anthrozoology. It exemplifies artistic co-creation with nonhumans, more-than-human public space geography and the potential of artistic research as a scientific discipline. Above all, it is a road of heartful and tacit knowledge and trust, in oneself, in the more-than-human beings.
WE ARE HERE IN THE FORREST AND NOW
GREEN AND BLUE WE SEE
BLURRY WE SEE
COME CLOSER TO SEE US BETTER
WE LIVE TOGETHER WE FORREST YOU
WE COME FROM YOU
YOU COME FOR US BUT YOU DO NOT HUNT US
WE GIVE RESPECT WE ASK FOR YOU PERMISSION
WE HUNT
WE RESPECT PLANTS WE LIVE FROM PLANTS
WE HUNT OTHERS WE ARE HUNTERS
WE PLANT PLANTS WHO ARE SPIRITS OF ANIMALS WE ARE
WE EAT PLANTS WHO ARE SPIRITS OF ANIMALS WE ARE
IT IS NOT I THOU IT IS WE
IT IS STRANGE BUT IT IS NOT PAINFUL
HUKMANMI KANMAN ICHAQA MANAM NANANCHU
TUPANANCHIS
I had a dream last night that I hunted You
You were close to me and You were telling me a story of my birth
You were my Mother and my Father
You were We were in the Forrest, in the leaves, in the sunbeam deep
inside
You tell me a story of my birth
You were Me
My whiskers are long and sharp they smell earth on Your skin
My hair is wet from Your hug
You carry me on Your back in Your womb
Your belly is swollen from Ca’ah
And We drift in the river to catch fish together with our whiskers and our
nails
Our limbs are floating