The Artist as Companion: Living Critically with Anthropocentrism through a Companioning of Companion Bird Species

This exegesis negotiates multispecies encounters and their histories in the field and the archive, and proposes birdwatching critically, animotmorphism and parafictioneering as artistic methodologies through which to decentre anthropocentrism when encountering wild urban birds. An affinity for House sparrows (Passer domesticus) forms the basis of my practice-led research. Focusing on writing by Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Jose Esteban Muñoz, Elizabeth Freeman, Andre Bazin; and artworks by On Kawara, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pierre Huyghe, Walid Raad and Barnett Newman; I propose the ‘artist as companion’. Mobilising companion as both a noun and a verb, I counter a colonial and anthropocentric way of being in the world through a situated, queer and affirmative forms of companioning companion species.