Encounters & Fabulations at the Edges of the Human

What new possibilities for thinking and living might result from extending the notion of creativity beyond the human realm? The worlds that humans often pride themselves on creating are not and have never been exclusively human but are dependent upon and inflected by a multitude of other-than-human powers and presences, including animals, plants, geological formations, weather systems, and a range of humanly manufactured artifacts fashioned from a variety of materials.

Stuart McLean, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, was invited by Maxime Le Calvé as part of the stretching senses school (Cutting/OSA) to give a writing workshop on multimodal anthropological fabulations. If we accept that human lives and projects are inextricably intertwined with a host of other-than-human powers and presences (animal, vegetable, mineral, meteorological, etc.), how might we begin engage these in ways that do not reduce them to human-centered systems of explanation? Perhaps this demands a creative as much as an analytical or descriptive approach. This workshop explores some possibilities for doing so via experimental writing practices and the deployment of mixed media (textual, audiovisual, etc.) and mixed genres (e.g., documentary and fiction, poetry and prose). We discussed some examples from Stuart’s own work, including his involvement in Papay Gyro Nights, a festival of experimental and multimedia arts held annually on the island of Papa Westray in Orkney, Scotland. The festival draws its name and inspiration from a giantess commemorated in North Atlantic storytelling and performance traditions, who is herself a hybrid figure combining a range of conventionally male and female, human and animal, marine and terrestrial attributes.