Picnic methodology: rethinking multispecies relationships through alfresco meals
This essay introduces a speculative “picnic methodology” emerging from site-specific performance art practice with a herd of reindeer. The practice expands from the justice-oriented picnic tradition and stages picnic as a space to envision nonhierarchical multispecies relationships. The picnic blank...
| Published in: | Human Geography |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2024
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/19427786241240397 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/19427786241240397 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/19427786241240397 |
| Summary: | This essay introduces a speculative “picnic methodology” emerging from site-specific performance art practice with a herd of reindeer. The practice expands from the justice-oriented picnic tradition and stages picnic as a space to envision nonhierarchical multispecies relationships. The picnic blanket is offered as a meeting place to appreciate more-than-human ways of being, thinking, and knowing, starting with our relative, the reindeer. The essay draws from the short film City Reindeer (2022), documenting the durational picnics in the wintery Arctic. The performance art practice forms here a contemplative and playful intervention to decenter the human and give the reindeer a voice, with an underlying commitment to promoting veganism. |
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