Competition

The Animalesque Visiting School Competition invites students and professionals from all over the world to participate in the production of visionary scripts about the future agency of animals in the design and construction of urban environments. We are welcoming all kinds of creative film works, including those with limited technological resources.

Selected winners will get 1-to-1 mentoring with jury members in order to develop a high quality film which will be presented at AA School London and at the ARCH+ cohabitation exhibition in Berlin.

Over the past three years, Animalesque Berlin Visiting School has been committed to investigating the meaning and potential of animal wildlife in the city, and to stimulating design that is beneficial to all species. Working collaboratively with designers, ecologists, biologists, artists and academics, among others, we stimulate transdisciplinary research that responds to the growing complexities of an urban/natural world.

What is an Animalesque City? We challenge you to express an activist and radical viewpoint through a short movie about the (future) relationships between humans and animal species in times of rapidly expanding urbanisation; to envision emergent societies in which multispecies citizens exist in symbiosis.

The medium of film enables the transmission of narratives and fiction in a critical and engaging way. Together, the selected submissions will express visionary animalesque realities, constructed from different global perspectives and seen through a multiplicity of lenses.

Context

From the time when humans lived alongside animals and moved around as nomads to gather seeds, fruit and plants to the current era in which the mass production of meat feeds the global population, our species has developed various interactions with fellow animals, which range from practical to economical as well as mythical. Such relationships have been shifting over time and in different settings as contexts of climate, geography and culture have changed.

Since the agricultural revolution, and later the eras of industrialisation, urbanisation and globalisation, our relationships with animals have become more and more exploitive. The tremendous growth of the human population in recent decades, together with our focus on property, wealth and environmental control, puts these connections under even greater pressure.

Humans are mammals, but our anthropocentric perspective has unbalanced our position within the animal kingdom and within the natural world as a whole. Animalesque proposes new ways of thinking and engineering that can help us establish interspecies collaboration based on mutuality, instead of domination and one-sided exploitation, and believes that this will lead to more resilient socio-ecological systems.

Can we build scenarios for symbiosis with the species that inhabit the world and live alongside us? What can we learn from animals by looking at how they use their senses, the ways in which they communicate and work together, the extent to which they follow their instincts, their adjustments and adaptations? And what do we have to offer from our side?

Criteria

• Duration: The movie should be between two and five minutes long
• Genre: Fiction, documentary, animation and experimental film are permitted. All creative formats are valid.
• Content: Narrative and engagement potential will be considered. Does the movie trigger curiosity and excitement?
• Framing of context: How is the proposed scenario dealing with time, culture and place? There are no limits here, so think big.
• Reference to cultural interspecies relationships: Myths, legends, rituals and tales can narrate our intrinsic relationships with animals
• Addressing current and future urgent topics: for example loss of biodiversity, climate change and sprawling urbanization.

Outcomes

• Mentoring with Jury members and a lecture series in early 2021
• Exhibition of selected winning movies in Berlin and London in 2021

Registration And Timeline

Participation is open to students and professionals from all fields in any location around the world. Submissions can either be made individually or as a team, with a maximum of three members. The registration fee is £25 per person (the fee for a team of three is therefore £75), you will not be charged the membership fee.

Scholarships are available. If you wish to apply, please send a strong 200 words statement of interest in participating in the competition to the Visiting School Office.

Submission deadline: 8 January, 2pm CET

Announcement of results: 30 January

You can make a registration by completing the online registration on this website. If you are not able to make an online registration, please contact the Visiting School Office for instructions.

Once you complete the online registration a link will be sent to you to make a full payment, please submit your entry by sending an email to the Visiting School Office with your short film (mov, mp4) attached, by link or by Wetransfer.

Jury

• Christopher Pierce (Head of AA Visiting School)
• Ricardo de Ostos (unit tutor at AA School, Director of NaJa & deOstos)
• Anh-Linh Ngo (Editor in Chief of ARCH+ Germany)
• Dunya Bouchi (Managing Director of ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory Germany)
• Pinar Yoldas (professor at UC San Diego, infradisciplinary designer/artist/researcher)
• Liam Young (film director, speculative architect)
• Emanuele Coccia (philosopher, Associate Professor at EHESS)

Advisory Board

• Mark Griffiths (Global Leader Climate Business Hub, WWF)
• Jan Wurm (Leader Research and Innovation Europe, Arup Germany)
• Raoul Bunschoten (Director of Chora Conscious City, Berlin)

Animalesque Team

The Berlin based Animalesque team exists of architects and designers Jorge Godoy Roman, Ana Zatezalo Schenk, Sjoerd Krijnen and Florentin Steininger. Through Animalesque they initiated collaborations with various academic programmes, institutions and local initiatives.

Animalesque Methodology

As part of the Visiting School programme, Animalesque Berlin explores, tests and visualizes mutually beneficial ways of human-animal coexistence in the urban realm. Our design research accumulates in workshops, seminars and exhibitions. To respond to the growing complexities of the urban/natural world, we work collaboratively with designers, ecologists, artists, biologists and academics, amongst others.

After introducing insects as the first layer of animal life in 2018, the research scope was extended to birds in 2019 and includes mammals in 2020. To see more about our previous work please click here.

http://animalesque.aaschool.ac.uk/archive2019/