TREE MUSEUM
NEAR DWELLERS
AS LEGAL BEINGS
FAWN DAPHNE PLESSNER
& SUSANNA KAMON
TREE MUSEUM
Fawn Daphne Plessner's artworks and Susanna Kamon's videography continue our inquiry on human-non-human relationships. The focus of this exhibition takes its cue from developments in Animal Law and Indigenous Laws that attest to animals as political agents in their own right, i.e., to the essential nature of animals as legal beings.
Currently, within our legal imaginary animals are classified as property – a conception derived from English Common Law that pervades the workings of the colonial capitalist state. In the growing awareness of Indigenous Laws, we learn that the status of animals is not so conceived. All animals are understood as constituting their own nations and this, in turn, encloses humans in a wider matrix of political memberships, social obligations and ethical responsibilities. Humans are required to not only respect the autonomy and agency of other beings but are also under an obligation not to harm their life ways.
Fawn Daphne Plessner’s audio art project titled the Deer Tour teases out the implications of animals as political members of the community. Through the lens of her unique relationship with a small herd of deer, with whom she lives alongside on their island home in British Columbia, Canada, and the traditional Indigenous stories of Earl Claxton Jr. (W̱SÁNEĆ First Nation) and Jeff Corntassel (Cherokee Nation), the Deer Tour weaves together musically enhanced anecdotes and reflections that explore a number of interconnected themes: membership, kinship, sanctuaries, illness, hunting, killing, and the practice of treaties being made between humans and other animals.
​Susanna Kamon’s videography draws us into the world of interspecies relationships that speaks to the reality of self-governing animal communities. Centered on her fascination with the coyote and based in New Hampshire, Kamon’s film works capture moments in the social life of various communities of coyotes, deer, wild turkey, moose, bears and many others. What we witness are animals as they traverse the land in acts of daily socializing, play, nurturing, feeding, and indeed, hunting. The latter of which positions us to consider how killing is also a key issue in the political organization of a nation.
Fawn Daphne Plessner holds a PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom. She lives on Pender Island, BC, Canada, and is an Associate Professor in the Audain Faculty of Art, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver. Her recent book, Doing Politics with Citizen Art, published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, focuses on the role that art plays in shaping new modes of (non-statist) membership, to include more-than-human beings as described within Indigenous Laws. In 2020 she launched the Tree Museum.
Susanna Leveroni Kamon has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT as well as a BA in Economics from Yale. After spending time raising her children full time, she returned to one of her early first loves: the subject of wild animal and human minds. She now is a self-directed wildlife tracker, videographer and part-time life coach. Her work following and understanding animals both sheds light on the inner lives of these magnificent beings, as well as helps inform humans of how we might live more fully in the present moment, responding with completeness and grace to what is, and then returning to a state of rest. Some of her raw impressions can be found on Instagram @beyondthesafari, and on the web at www.beyondthesafari.com.
Film: Near Dwellers as Legal Beings
The Near Dwellers as Legal Beings exhibition included a film that blends excerpts from Fawn Daphne Plessner’s audio art project, the Deer Tour, interspersed with the videographic footage of wild animals by Susanna Kamon. Enjoy the full piece here.
PANEL DISCUSSION
Dr. Maneesha Deckha
On November 4th, 2023, Animal Law professor Maneesha Deckha, and artists Fawn Daphne Plessner and Susanna Kamon, spoke about how their work posits alternatives to anthropocentric legal orders such as those scripted and enacted within Common Law and Rights-based discourses.
Maneesha Deckha presented an overview of her important and radical work in Animal Law that powerfully critiques Common Law and rights-based anthropocentric legal orders and its problematic legal construct of “personhood.’ Deckha also discussed her work in scripting an alternative set of legal principles rooted in “beingness” – i.e., recognizing animals as “embodied, relational and vulnerable” and hence, requiring that a legal order must “recognize that these attributes of living experience create vulnerability to which the law must respond” (see Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders). Plessner spoke about her audio-art project called the Deer Tour which highlights formal Treaty relationships with non-human beings, such as those found within Indigenous Law. Kamon introduced her videographic work that aims to recognise and celebrate animals as autonomous actors in the making of the world. Both artists pointed to how art can be a form of enactment in forging new modes of political membership with non-human beings.
Maneesha Deckha is Professor, Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria, B.C., Canada. She is currently a Global Affiliated Faculty member, Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative, Emory Law School in Atlanta, as well as a fellow with the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network at the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law & Policy.
Recent articles include: Animalization and Dehumanization Concerns: Another Psychological Barrier to Animal Law Reform in Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations (PHAIR), and the documentary A Deeper Kindness: Animal Law and Youth Activism.
