[email protected]
610 869 4712
​
Street Road
725 Street Road Cochranville, PA 19330 

The Little Free Library
1016B Gap Newport Pike 
Cochranville, PA 19330
Part 7 of the Near Dwellers series
​
Near Dwellers as Friends
May 30 - August 15, 2026
​
Online (film series) and at Street Road Cochranville (film series and exhibition), 

Friends: a Film series
Ada Wu
Ruth K. Burke
Eric Weeks
SLQS

Online viewing now – 6/19
Fleeting but Prolonged, Ada Wu
​
Stories of Friendship
​​Audience stories of friendship are gathered and exhibited, building collective story of how we are close to the other-than-human. ​Please email entries to [email protected]. Further detail below / right.
​
Near Dwellers as Friends: a conversation with
Heather C. Ohaneson
Setting the stage for this exhibition, Heather C. Ohanesen joined us in March 2025 as our online discussant for this node of the wider Near Dwellers project.
Near Dwellers is a seven-part series exploring animal-human relationships, with a focus on the spaces and places we share. Hosted by Street Road and the Tree Museum, programming includes exhibitions, discussions, and public participation, opening up new and multi-faceted ways of understanding animals and our relationships with them.

Near Dwellers as Friends

If you press me to say why I loved him, I cannot reply except by saying:
​‘Because it was he, because it was I.’
​— Michel de Montaigne, ‘On Friendship’, Book 1, chapter 27, Essays.​
Michel de Montaigne’s famous essay De l’Amitié, specifically referring to the writer’s own longtime friendship with Etienne de la Boétie, ends in an aporia: after multiple attempts to frame and to understand this love, both synchronically and through the historical lens of earlier philosophers, Montaigne basically throws up his hands – ultimately, there is no explaining this shared, intoxicating bond. It exists just because; it exists in a mysterious and unfathomable point of singularity.

In animal studies and related fields in recent years, conceptualizations of relationships between other-than-humans and humans have tended to be underlaid with a simultaneously romanticising and reparative drive: the impulse is to try to recognize a greater closeness with our animal neighbors, often involving the important but potentially misleading action of de-othering, especially the case when animal rights and activism are involved. Equally, dominant narratives on social media disappointingly tend toward more simplistic and sentimental conceptions of similitude and of companionship or love.

But we would benefit from a closer look at these relationships against the backdrop of both this inexplicability pointed to by Montaigne, as well as Derrida’s insistence on a relational gap and unknowability in The animal that therefore I am. As Derrida says, "[My cat] has a point of view regarding me [...] and nothing will have ever given me more food for thinking through this absolute alterity of the neighbor or of the next (-door) than these moments when I see myself seen naked under the gaze of a cat." [1]

There is something about friendship as surprise and wonder, but also as an unnameable, and even terrifying, force that might help us to frame our rich and deep, but never untroubled, relationships with the more-than-human. In this node of Near Dwellers, we look to a re-framing of friendship with the other-than-human as something much more than closeness or a kind of straightforward interspecies bond.

​We want to draw attention to both the inexplicability of our interspecies ties, as well as to the fact that these ties can be agonistic: filled not only with wonder, but at times with a wonder mixed with dread, fear and distance. 

[1] Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am, Fordham University Press, 2008, p.11.

Friends: a film series

Fleeting but Prolonged, Ada Wu
Itchy in the Grass, Ruth K. Burke
Weegee's New York, Eric Weeks
Walking Together, SLQS

The Near Dwellers series as a whole explores shared space as an underpinning of interspecies relationships. For Near Dwellers as Friends we bring together four artists' films that touch upon ways that the simple fact of being near to one another, of entering imaginatively into the embodied experience of the other, sets the ground for the possibility of interspecies friendship. 

​We ask how closeness and the imaginative leap of sharing embodied perspectives with other-than-humans opens space for friendship. Inhabiting the same worlds, looking together, and seeing from each other's point of view constitute and help us construct friendship ties.

Films are screened both at Street Road and in a Summer Online Film Series. Each film will be live online for two weeks: details to be posted soon.

Stories of friendship

​We invited our audiences to share a remembered encounter, interaction, or experience with a ‘near dwelling’ animal: this might be a moment of close connection, or one of contention (or perhaps both at the same time). Maybe a sense of mutual understanding, or something learned from an animal ‘near dweller’. These moments, amusing, or amazing, perhaps even awe-inspiring, are shared in the exhibition. 

For the duration of the exhibition, visitors and our audiences are welcome to continue to contribute their own experiences, and these will be added to the exhibition and collection.

TO CONTRIBUTE
Submissions should include am image and/or short film, along with a short (approximately but not limited to 250-1000 word) text or voice recording elaborating upon your encounter.
  • ​Email your contribution to [email protected], or
  • Post or drop off to: Street Road Artists Space, 725 Street Road, Cochranville, PA 19330 USA

​​Near Dwellers as Friends
A conversation with Heather C. Ohaneson​

Picture
Monday, March 10, 2025, online

The Near Dwellers series included online discussion sessions in connection with each of its parts.
​
For Near Dwellers as Friends we were joined by Heather C. Ohaneson who draws upon her own long research in the philosophy of friendship to help the audience understand some of the key historical debates in this field. We began with this starting point for then turning our minds to friendships between humans and other-than-humans. To date, there is little specific literature on interspecies friendships and our discussion focused on the freshness of this line of inquiry.
--
Heather C. Ohaneson holds a Ph.D. in religion from Columbia University. Having taught in great books programs, she has a wide array of academic interests, including the philosophy of friendship. Currently, Heather seeks to foster experiences of intellectual community in online sessions with the Princeton Seminar Series.
A series of podcasts based on the Near Dwellers online discussions are currently in development and will be available to the public soon. This project is funded in part by the SSHRC Institutional Grant. ​Researchers and our general audience are encouraged to contact us by email should you have interest in viewing the archived full sessions.

The Near Dwellers project

Part 1
Near Dwellers and the Sharing of Breath
Sarah Le Quang Sang with Spirit of Saigon
At Street Road Cochranville
August 4 – September 30, 2023

Part 2
Near Dwellers as Legal Beings
Fawn Daphne Plessner
Susanna Kamon
At Street Road Cochranville
October 13 – December 30, 2023

Part 3
Near Dwellers as Creative Collaborators
Julie Andreyev
Ruth K. Burke
At Street Road Cochranville
​February 2 – April 13, 2024
Part 4
Near Dwellers as Urbanites
Jesse Garbe
Doug La Fortune
At Street Road Cochranville
​May 3, 2024 – extended to January 31, 2025

Part 5
Near Dwellers as Roadkill
Lou Florence
At Street Road Cochranville
February 15 – May 31, 2025

Part 6
Near Dwellers as Indwellers
At Bothkinds Project Space
Vancouver, British Columbia 
​October 1 – December 31, 2025

Part 7
Near Dwellers as Friends
At Street Road Cochranville
May 30 – August 15, 2026

    Join our email list:
VISITING
Please check our website or social media before visiting as our hours are subject to change.
We can accommodate most times by appointment, given a little advance notice. 
Email us or phone to set up a visit.
And, stop by if you see a car outside!

HOURS — Street Road 
Saturdays, 11-3pm
and by appointment, in person or virtually. 
Note: we will be CLOSED on Saturday, July 4, 2026.

HOURS — Little Free Library 19330 (our 2nd site a few miles north)
Thursdays 12-4pm
Fridays 10am-2pm
Saturdays 10am-2pm
and by appointment.
Note: we will be CLOSED on Saturday, July 4, 2026.

Our Little Free Library outdoor boxes at both sites are open 24/7 and are regularly restocked.

Please call 610-869-4712 or email to set up visits outside our regularly scheduled hours. 
​
We are currently seeking volunteers for both locations: email us to enquire. We look forward to hearing from you!

DIRECTIONS
to Street Road here.
to The Little Free Library here.

A word about 'here':
We acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Lenape, original people of the mid-Atlantic area, forced west by British and US governments. Most Delaware Indian tribe descendants are now located in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. Lenni Lenapes in Pennsylvania are not officially recognized as tribes by the United States, though an estimated 5000 Lenape Nation descendants live in the Delaware River area. We pay respects to the Lenape people both past and present. Please consider the many legacies of violence, displacement and settlement that form part of our collective histories. While increased public recognition of these legacies and processes of redress such as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission are positive steps, concrete focus on return of land and land rights remains a distant horizon.
​