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Coexistence from the arts
A very warm welcome to these resources developed through the 'Creative Scholarship project', a joint project supported by the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI) and the Department of Politics pump-priming fund, co-led by Dr Ronit Amit from the School of Biology, University of Costa Rica and Dr Judith Krauss, from Politics/YESI at the University of York, UK, with six artists, three from Costa Rica and three from the UK.
This project is a labour of love - the project co-leads have both worked on human-wildlife coexistence in different ways, coexistence meaning how we humans share space with more-than-humans, how we meet our different needs and how we resolve conflicts when how we understand and use space clashes with each other. Ronit has worked as a wildlife manager and academic especially on feline conservation with communities in Costa Rica to reduce conflicts especially between jaguars and pumas and local people, for example when they attack livestock or domestic pets. Judith has worked with colleagues in Brazil, Tanzania, Finland and the U.S. on improving human-predator interactions with jaguars, wolves, lions and bears, and more recently, has developed an unhealthy fascination with red and grey squirrels here in the UK (see some visual summaries by the artist Luke Scoffield for a separate paper project with Mathew Bukhi Mabele and Wilhelm Kiwango on how differently conservation looks for loved others, those we see as worthy of care, vs. unloved others, those we ignore or even target for death).
This project, Creative Scholarship, recognises that despite all the research in this space, we haven't been able to stop environmental change and biodiversity loss at a large scale. We wondered whether this might be to do with difficulties in how researchers work together, ask questions and write grants, how we work with others, and how we work with the public. Among researchers, some people feel there is a 'right way' of doing science and that means sticking to one discipline, one 'correct' or 'objective' way of doing things, and that certainly does not involve creative or artistic ways of thinking or the public. However, both Ronit and I have worked across disciplines, between natural and social science and arts and humanities, and with artists and the public in different projects over time, and we think that all that is absolutely vital because it challenges us to question ourselves, what we think matters, think differently and hopefully also promote proenvironmental action. We have been very fortunate to find support for this creative - some might say crazy - project from YESI, the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, and the Department of Politics pump-priming fund, for our project. It has allowed Judith the privilege to visit Costa Rica in May and has allowed Ronit to come to the UK, and has facilitated us learning together and from each other.
For this project, we've involved artists and creative thinking throughout. We've worked with three artists in Costa Rica - Maf e Tula, Eyder Fonseca, the Wimblu Collective, leading up to a presentation in May, and with three artists in the UK, visual artist Gina Allen, musician Kitty Turner, and storyteller Tim Ralphs, leading up to a presentation at York in July. We invited our creative partners to reflect on human-nature relations more generally and human-wildlife coexistence more specifically in multiple conversations and workshops, and through art. We already know that art is very valuable in its own right, that it can produce emotional and social learnings that purely academic work cannot access, but also that it cannot be expected to solve everything on its own - that is why we, as researchers, are also very much trying to learn and change from this project.
As research sites, we thought we'd start with the university campus, as a microcosm of much larger questions about how to share space with and relate to more-than-human others. At the University of Costa Rica, their campus has issues with sloths and raccoons that have taken over buildings. Here at the University of York, we share space with geese and ducks who leave a lot of poo, quite frankly, swans who get very protective of their young and thus have to be separated physically from humans during that time, rabbits and squirrels who can chew through cables, pollinators, and many trees, which we've recently celebrated through an interactive tree trail if you are interested. We have invited our artists to reflect on these joys and burdens of sharing space and human-more-than-human relations.
On this page, we have made available some individual reflections from our three artists sharing what they have made and how and why they have made it.
Tim Ralphs tells a story about squirrels, their past, present and future relations to humans dating back to Ratatoskr, the squirrel messenger Vikings believed to be carrying insults between the worlds.
Listen to the Tim Ralph's squirrels audio
Drawing on human-wildlife coexistence research, Gina Allen reflects on the challenges inherent in quantifying human-wildlife interactions and wildlife-wildlife interactions, and incorporating how more-than-humans begin to look back.
Kitty Turner shares the process of turning visual images of York campus - the hazel tree, bluebells, a squirrel - into audio using spectral synthesis, and how that might challenge how we see or hear and value more-than-humans.
Together, their collective reflection Layers of Longboi evokes the one and only Longboi, our beloved and unfortunately departed campus mascot, a cross between an Indian runner duck and a mallard who, as my students informed me, had more Instagram followers than the university!
Enjoy.
We would like to thank:
In Costa Rica Maf e Tula, Eyder Fonseca, the Wimblu collective, Carlos and Carina Hiller, Marcela Alvarez, Bertold Salas, IIARTE, the Faculty of Arts, CIBET, the School of Biology at the University of Costa Rica
In the UK Gina Allen, Tim Ralphs, Kitty Turner, Lindsay Stringer, Rachel Drinkhill, Jane Güleç, Leena Arrakhan, Jenny Cousens, Kristine Gill, Joanna MacDonald, Harriet Gray, Jill Howitt, Sam Hazeldine, Daisy Kemp, Robert Simpson, all contributors to iNaturalist on campus, Luke Scoffield, the Department of Politics and International Relations, YESI and so many others.