Erratic and still mimesis
Dancing multispecies relations in gallery space
Keywords:
human-animal studies, dance, multispecies ethnography, The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, Koen Vanmechelen, posthumanism, process philosophy, mimesis, preaccelerationAbstract
In this multispecies ethnographic study, underpinned by posthumanism and process philosophy, I explore dance as an art educational method for relating to the more-than-human in the contemporary art exhibition The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project by the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen. The six workshops took place at Kunsthall 3,14, a non-commercial art institution in Bergen, Norway. Third and seventh graders from local schools explored human-animal relations by dancing with and inspired by the movements of twelve chickens in the gallery space. Following Erin Manning’s theory of dance, as well as Donna Haraway’s writings on how to respectfully respond to the more-than-human, I argue that dance helped create a space to look back reciprocally in the workshops. The virtual potential of dance was actualized through mimesis – both through erratic and still movements – in an assemblage of material-discursive forces. This study contests the child-centred paradigm in gallery and museum education, contributing instead to a posthumanist understanding in which children are conceptualized as one important part of reciprocal relations in the gallery space. The research project is situated in the cross-section of human-animal studies, dance studies, contemporary art, and museum and gallery education.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Heidi Kukkonen

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