Living with deadly mobilities: how art practice takes care of ethics when anthropomorphising a medically important parasite

Abstract

We propose that art practice as mobilities research offers alternative methods of more-than-human storytelling that expand simplistic narratives and illustrations of good and bad organisms. The article uses the authors’ artwork Para-Site-Seeing (2018–2019) to explore how art practice can tell multi-scalar narratives of multispecies mobilities that fold in rather than leave out the social, cultural, colonial and scientific aspects of a disease. We use a fictionalised parasite’s eye view to engage wide audiences in following the movement within multiple narratives of the disease. By situating Para-Site-Seeing in the context of the politics of care, and more-than-human art, we demonstrate the need for a more significant consideration of deadliness within the liveliness of biodiverse ecosystems.