Animals in Arts and Sustainable Education: Iconic, Cute, Partners, Food, Trade, Disposable

The presenters demonstrate through examples from contemporary art, sustainable (arts) education and artistic research how they have explored ontology, epistemology and ethics in relation to the emotional and 'rational' treatment of animals. Throughout history humans have formed relationships with animals for various, often self-serving, reasons and people continue to misuse animals as partners but also as disposables. Animal studies and work against speciesm add to and partially align with the social movement of disability studies, contemporary civil rights activism, feminism, and environmentalism focused on post-anthropocentrism, and activism for sexual and gender diversity. In this presentation, we explore how research and education might rethink the human - animal relationship and how this would contribute to the move towards more humane and democratic education and society. While animal studies perspective is an important addition to social movements, we argue that the issues should be considered from a nonhuman perspective. Hence, there is a difference between animal studies and other social movements, due to the historical divide between human and animal. The presenters use diverse visual materials from contemporary art, natural history museums, and their personal collections to elaborate on the presented themes as well as to explore how the arts and institutionalized use of animals for human entertainment and education simultaneously advance educational thinking but also, paradoxically, further problematize the educational cause.