During the past few weeks, I have had Covid (claimed by some to have originated in a pangolin or in a Chinese lab studying animal viruses) and have read articles about the destruction of the seabed through bottom-trawling, Asian hornets’ threat to Britain’s bee population and what the Sycamore Gap tree-felling verdict means for nature.
Glance at the news and it is impossible to miss our entanglements and codependence with innumerable organisms and creatures. In response, artists, writers, architects and designers are increasingly seeking to emphasise humility and fragility rather than placing humans at the heart of everything.
An upcoming play at London’s Royal Court, Cow | Deer, for instance, seeks to “evoke the lives of two animals” through a performance that uses “only sound and no words”. Recently at the Venice Biennale, landscape architect Bas Smets filled the Belgian pavilion with plants, carefully monitoring their needs so that they are able to temper and control the environment. And opening this week, an exhibition at the Design Museum seeks to understand “a growing movement of ‘more-than-human’ design”.