The Museum of Impossible Forms warmly welcomes Terike Haapoja to discuss her ongoing art and research project, “[Against] Animal Capitalism,” which explores animal liberation and multispecies politics within the framework of anticapitalist struggle.
In the last decade, awareness of ecological crises has entered mainstream left politics, and multispecies perspectives and posthumanism have taken center stage in the arts. Despite this, serious critiques of industrial animal agriculture and the role of nonhuman animals in the capitalist economy remain marginal.In her talk, Haapoja explores how anthropocentric ontologies within Marxist theory inform contemporary left politics, as well as how recognizing animal labor as a central arena of exploitation is necessary for anticapitalist struggle. Questions driving her research include: Are nonhuman animals part of the working class? Is all labor animal labor? Is socialism good for animals? How to start a movement for multispecies left politics?
Haapoja’s current project builds on her extensive collaborative art practice and research on multispecies politics in relation to knowledge production (Closed Circuit – Open Duration, 2008), governance (The Party of Others, 2011), law (Gustafsson & Haapoja: The Trial, 2013), history (Gustafsson & Haapoja: Museum of the History of Cattle, 2013), and ideology (Gustafsson & Haapoja: Museum of Nonhumanity, 2016).
Terike Haapoja is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Berlin. Her large scale installations, writings, and collaborations explore the possibility of nonviolent coexistence across differences, with a specific focus on multispecies politics. While rooted in environmental thought and drawing from critical animal studies and posthumanism, Haapoja’s work is in dialogue with intersectional feminist and post-colonial discourses, critically reflecting on structures of exclusion that emerge from Western humanism.
