Cannibals Lovers Both Neither: An Experiment in Mimetic Communication with Tardigrades
Cannibals Lovers Both Neither: An Experiment in Mimetic Communication with Tardigrades

Summary/Abstract: This paper emerges from an artwork developed by the author that sought to mobilise the affective potential of sound and image to communicate beyond the species lines—in particular with a species of tardigrade, Macrobiotus macronyx. Tardigrades were chosen due to their incredible gift for survival: they are resilient to extremes in temperature and climate, while some species may have already survived five mass extinctions. Could they, then, help us to survive our own mass extinction? Or is the formulation of such a question fundamentally extractive and anthropocentric? Through the construction of an artwork, the author aimed to develop less Promethean forms of knowledge-sharing and creation while simultaneously resisting some of the more universalising tendencies common to new materialism. Through what Anna Gibbs has called “mimetic communication,” the artwork aimed to open up alternative configurations for knowledge-sharing within a multidirectional, but always partial, network of human and nonhuman actors.

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