Surreal Encounters: Playing With the More-Than-Human at a Community Farm

Abstract

This article explores synergies between surrealism and posthumanism, including ways of knowing the world in ways that simultaneously value and decenter the human, and inspire much-needed creative thinking about reworlding the planet. These are playful ways of knowing that embrace chance, accept paradox, and question conventional understandings of time. Such ideas are explored through the example of an arts-based research project at a community farm in Lancashire, United Kingdom. The project’s “surrealist sensibility” resulted not only in encouraging participants’ creativity but also in opening them up to encounters with the more-than-human and providing acknowledgment of how connected we really are.