Podcast Episode 11

Creative Reciprocity and Wild Empathy with Dr Julie Andreyev

About Dr Julie Andreyev

Julie Andreyev is an artist-activist, researcher and educator in Vancouver, located on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish people, including the  xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, as well as the unceded traditional territories of nonhuman animals and plantlife including bears, deer, raccoons, eagles, ravens, crows, hummingbirds, cedar, fir, salal and others.

Andreyev’s multispecies studio practice, called Animal Lover, explores more-than-human creativity and ways of knowing. The Animal Lover works have been shown locally, nationally and internationally. Andreyev has published her research in academic journals, books, catalogues and magazines. Her forthcoming book Lessons from a Multispecies Art Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding & Biophilia Through Creative Reciprocity is in the publishing stage with Intellect Books, UK. ETA: fall 2021. Her research and artwork are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Andreyev has a PhD from Simon Fraser University, and is an Associate Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art, Emily Carr University of Art + Design where she teaches in the New Media + Sound Arts major. Andreyev enjoys walking with her canine collaborators, Heroe and Zorra, paying attention to the liveliness of the local animals, trees and plants, and Earth forces. 

She is currently working on creative co-productions with birds (Bird Park Survival Station), and immersive media experiences depicting old-growth forest ecologies (Wild Empathy).

Artist statement

I am dedicated to the broad cultural transformation in thought and action that must take place during the climate emergency If we are to move towards a future of holistic planetary survival. This transformation includes an acknowledgment of human embeddedness in the natural systems of the Earth and new kinships with nonhumans modelled on respect and care. My art explores interspecies methods to investigate ethics of ecologization and kinship with nonhuman lifeforms. The projects incorporate knowledge from ecology, cognitive ethology, critical animal studies, ecofeminism and indigenous methodologies, to create expanded human attention towards nonhuman creativity. I research interspecies methods that include an ethics of respect in each encounter with other beings. I’m interested in the development of multi-species technologies to support noninvasive creative interspecies collaboration. So far, my collaborative art outcomes are in the forms of new media installations, sound art, immersive projects, performances and relational art.

I believe that change is best addressed in my local communities. With this in mind, I investigate creativity with nonhuman life close to my home with the intention to generate deep knowledge on the land, and with my multispecies communities. This work also involves taking action against unsustainable practices such as pipelines and other fossil fuel projects, over-logging and habitat destruction. Not only in my art but in the rest of my life, I’m committed to the changes needed for an ecologically-minded future.