Living with deadly mobilities: how art practice takes care of ethics when anthropomorphising a medically important parasite

Abstract

We propose that art practice as mobilities research offers alternative methods of more-than-human storytelling that expand simplistic narratives and illustrations of good and bad organisms. The article uses the authors’ artwork Para-Site-Seeing (2018–2019) to explore how art practice can tell multi-scalar narratives of multispecies mobilities that fold in rather than leave out the social, cultural, colonial and scientific aspects of a disease. We use a fictionalised parasite’s eye view to engage wide audiences in following the movement within multiple narratives of the disease. By situating Para-Site-Seeing in the context of the politics of care, and more-than-human art, we demonstrate the need for a more significant consideration of deadliness within the liveliness of biodiverse ecosystems.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Art
• art-science
• deadliness
• liveliness
• multispecies
• more-than-human
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

Para-Site-Seeing was commissioned by NEoN Digital Arts; and the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the University of Dundee; Additional support from the Centre for Mobilities Research and the Department of Biomedical and Life Sciences at Lancaster University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).