Arts and culture
In the Making #5: Whose creativity? Explorations of interspecies being and making
- Date
- Thursday 24 April 2025
- Time
- Address
- West in the former American Embassy
Lange Voorhout 102
The Hague
The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag are pleased to announce their close collaboration in the second season of the public series In the Making. This series, dedicated to the practice of research in the arts, will consist of seven public sessions taking place on a monthly basis.
The articulation of art and research has a long and rich tradition that has grown in scope and relevance in the past few decades. ACPA has played a significant role in this process, as it is an internationally pioneering institution that enables artists to conduct research through their own practice in a University context. In the Making is meant to both present to the public the research carried out within ACPA as well as to foster a dialogue with a number of international actors from a variety of disciplines.
Artistic research makes the relationship between art and society permeable. Rather than bracketed in the private realm of the lone artist or the sometimes-isolated circuits of the art market, artistic research opens up its practice to the public domain. Its methods become part of collective process of exploration and re-imagining. In the Making aims to deepen a perspective which conceives of artistic practice not as the sole product of individual visionaries but as a collective endeavor embedded in society. It addresses the role of art in the construction of the present and the creation of possible futures.
In the Making #5: Whose creativity? Explorations of interspecies being and making
The climate catastrophe has thrown a sharp light on our relationships with non-human animals and triggered widespread interest in transforming the way we live with these ‘kin’. Artists and artistic researchers have not been slow to respond, so there is a growing field of interspecies making and reflection, particularly in the fields of sound art, film and creative writing.
In this event we focus on two contrasted research projects - golden eagles in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, and humpback whales in the Pacific Ocean. Through a combination of presentations and conversation, we will explore some of the questions that emerge when researching interspecies relationships through the lenses of artistry and creativity.
Key questions:
How can we learn to recognise, and engage with, the creative practices of non-human animals? To what extent is such activity transformative (and for whom)? How can climate change be influenced by non- human animals? How do non-human creative agencies differ between species (e.g. the golden eagle v. humpback whales?) What human and non-human creative practices emerge in the context of domesticated versus wild non-human lives (golden eagles inhabit both dimensions)? Is it appropriate to talk of ‘leadership’ in interspecies performances?
Presenters: Laura Lauta van Aysma, Federica Nardella, Rachel Beckles Willson
Laura Lauta van Aysma is a musicologist and singer, currently a PhD candidate at ACPA. Since 2009 she has been researching humpback whale song in Maui, Hawaii, initially through the lenses of bio and zoomusicology (Master cum Laude, University of Amsterdam). Her doctoral work explores how we can engage the creative practices of humpback whales in interspecies artistic research.
Federica Nardella has completed her AHRC-funded PhD in Ethnomusicology at King’s College, London. She has researched the late nineteenth-century Ottoman popular art song form şarkı in relation to literacy, linguistics, language pedagogy and debate, and the emergence of the bureaucracy and the press. Her current postdoctoral project explores the use of vocality in constructing partnerships between eagle-hunters and golden eagles in Kyrgyzstan.
Rachel Beckles Willson is Professor by Special Appointment, Intercultural Performing Arts at ACPA and at Codarts, Rotterdam. She is a widely-published, award-winning scholar, multi-instrumentalist and composer.