Mandy-Suzanne Wong

Anthropogenic art is anthropocentric too, inherently and in all its forms, as it is made by humans for humans. We artists, caretakers of The Tubercled-Blossom Pearly Mussel Memorial Library of Hope, have worked for years to make de-anthropocentrism a driving force in our creative practices. Why? Because other Earthlings exist.

Working with Delisted 2023 has reminded me yet again that a commitment to de-anthropocentrism is also quite a challenge. My thinking and practices are ever evolving in consequence.

I enjoy thinking and working with aquatic animals, with mollusks of all sorts. Many humans find it difficult to emotionally “connect with” mollusks and fishes because they’re so unlike ourselves. Humans tend to believe that fishes are without feelings, that they can’t even feel pain. We acquired and then indoctrinated this prejudice because fishes don’t have eyelids. Because they live in water, they don’t need eyelids to prevent their eyes from drying out. But it means that fishes cannot smile with their eyes. It isn’t with their eyes that fishes wince, that they show dubiousness or fear, all of which expressions are, in humans, largely functions of the eyelids. Isn’t it a sort of “ableist” hubris: to think that just because they don’t express themselves the way we do, these other Earthlings lack the ability to express themselves at all, even that they have nothing to express, being incapable of any sort of feeling?

Mussels do not have eyes. Their emotional expressions are completely illegible to us. How to empathize with them? I’d like to sit with this challenge.

There is much to learn from mussels in this respect. How to sit. How to be still and quiet. Receptive. Tarrying with what’s there. Very long thoughts. Buried in the sediment of a river with shells slightly parted, freshwater mussels caress the water with their cilia, filter interesting particles from the water, and sit with their particles, holding them, wondering them all over.

I don’t believe that acknowledging sentience, intelligence, and emotion in nonhuman Earthlings constitutes “anthropomorphism” or the projection of human qualities onto other beings. As a creative approach, then, instead of anthropomorphism, how about “musselomorphism” or “ichthyomorphism”? What if you couldn’t close your eyes? What would living feel like? What would sleep be like? What would the air feel like against your face? How would you express yourself without being able to narrow your eyes or throw them open wide?

How might an eyeless being express emotion? Options include gesture, vibration, chemical emission, and abilities beyond our ken. It’s not for any human to answer these questions. But we can wonder about them. Let the animals use our imaginations to teach us something about themselves.

Because others exist, they must be of concern. Imagination and speculation are creative interventions.

Especially with aquatic animals and invertebrates, the challenge is inviting them to teach me different ways of being in the world. The challenge is rethinking thinking, re-envisioning imagination. Imagining from different angles: not as usual but from oblique, abnormal, even weird perspectives. It’s far from easy to think outside received norms, outside one’s comfort zones. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of all. In order to think creatively with and alongside nonhuman Earthlings, what we need is not so much to “connect with” them as it is to disconnect from ourselves. We must disconnect from the ubiquitous, foundational, anthropocentric ways of thinking that reduce mussels and fishes to resources—to capital.