Récits des vivants / More-than-human narratives: an online seminar series, February-July 2023

Fourth seminar on 4th July 3.45-5pm BST: ‘Eco-Comics for Better Living in the More-than-Human World’, talk and discussion with comics artist Anne Defréville

In coordination with Better Living Through Comics: The 2023 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society

Anne Defréville (https://www.annedefreville.com/) is a visual artist, designer, illustrator and comics artist. She is deeply committed to ecology, and much of her comics work has focused on environmental and animal issues. She has worked in collaboration with INSERM (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and many environmental associations. Her bandes dessinées challenge anthropocentrism in creative, sometimes humorous, and always thought-provoking ways, shifting across autobiography, documentary and science fiction. She is the author of L’Age bleu [The blue age] (2019), which was awarded the 2020 Artemisia Prize for the Environment and the Mouans-Sartoux Prize for best environmental book; Journal anthropique de la cause animale [Anthropogenic diary of the animal cause] (2022); Mémoires d’un cétacé [Memoirs of a cetacean] (2023); and SEFARDIM, l’épopée d’une famille juive durant 3,000 ans [Sefardim, the 3,000-year saga of a Jewish family] (2023).

All are welcome to attend this free event, which will be held online via Zoom on Tuesday 4th July 3.45-5pm BST. The seminar will be in English. You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please note that if you already registered for the IBDS / IGNCC conference, you do not need to register for this seminar again as you will automatically be sent the joining link.

‘Récits des vivants / More-than-human Narratives’ is a series of five online seminars in which artists and activists discuss how their work engages with environmental and animal issues, in questioning anthropocentrism and contesting injustice, and with a view towards fostering ecological awareness and meaningful sustainability. Drawing on a broad range of media and artforms (painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, film, writing, graphic narrative), this series explores key topics for our changing world, such as oceanic potentialities, revolutionary popular environmentalism, the biopolitics of industrial slaughter, animal ethics, and decolonial ecology. In doing so, it aims to shine a light on the varied modes of resistance deployed by artists and activists to create and share alternative narratives for environmental justice, care and solidarity, engaging with multispecies, feminist, queer, and decolonial ecologies.

While this series focuses on more-than-human narratives through the lens of contemporary France, it aims to open a dialogue among scholars, practitioners, and activists working in the Environmental Humanities in any subject area. Across the series, we will discuss inspiring and militant ways of exposing and challenging anthropocentric, gendered, (neo-)colonial, heteronormative, nationalistic, and capitalist ideologies, as well as their material impacts on bodies and territories. We will explore narratives, imaginaries and practices that work to create possibilities for alternative modes of representing, engaging and living with the more-than-human in our troubling times.

For any questions, please contact the organiser Armelle Blin-Rolland at a.blin-rolland@bangor.ac.uk.

‘Récits des vivants / More-than-human Narratives’ is funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust Small Grant scheme (SRG22\220097).