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Part 3 of Near Dwellers: Near Dwellers as Creative Collaborators Julie Andreyev and Ruth K. Burke February 2 to April 13, 2024 Reception Date and time to be announced Zoom Discussion Date and time to be announced Julie Andreyev Ruth K. Burke Please email us with any enquiries, for purchasing information, and to visit by appointment, including virtual visits, at info@streetroad.org. |
Artists Julie Andreyev and Ruth K. Burke introduce us to human-animal creative collaborations that seek to foster kinship relations with other critters and wider ecologies. Their art projects press us to engage with more critical questions of the ethics of these relationships and how one might re-imagine animal labour.
Andreyev's art projects explore nonhuman agency through co-creation with companion dogs, trees, and currently with local and migratory birds. Her art project titled EPIC_Tom (2014-2020) was conceived and produced with Andreyev's late dog Tom who provided the animated visuals and vocals for the performance. Her project titled Bird Park Survival Station is a collaboration with local birds, including a crow family whose territory includes her home in Vancouver. The Park, built on the roof of her home, uses methods of creative reciprocity. A computer system records sound and video of the birds and, in return, the Park provides fresh water, food, caching sites, nesting, shelter and perching features. The recordings are analyzed, and information is used to improve the Park's affordances to assist the birds survive the climate emergency. Ruth K. Burke’s art projects include working primarily with her team of young oxen and her horse. Her artworks consider interspecies kinship, multispecies history, and more-than-human collaborations through earthworks, installation, sculpture, sound, and social practice. Her current focus is on interspecies labour and her artworks advocate that interspecies relationships do create legitimate social communities and should be considered as such in socially engaged art. Her work is informed by the lived experience of caring for animals and is nurtured by continued participation in farm work and animal husbandry. Her intention is not to romanticize the past, but to see it as messy and complicated and to imagine a future in which all beings are recognized for their contributions to the co-creation of our world. She is particularly interested in the capacity of art to push conflicting or violent histories up against one another in generative ways. Andreyev has a PhD from Simon Frazer University, Canada, and is an Associate Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she teaches New Media + Sound Arts. Her new book is titled Lessons from a Multispecies Art Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding & Biophilia Through Creative Reciprocity, Intellect Books, 2021.
Burke has an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art, from Michigan State University, Ann Arbor, and a BFA in Art & Technology, cum laude, from Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. She is a teamster, farm laborer, professor, equestrian, and cultural worker. Straddling the practice of contemporary art and the field of human-animal studies, Burke has exclusively focused on human-animal relationships in her practice since 2015. Full program: Near DwellersAugust 2023 – September 2024
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