Abstract

In her series, K-9_topology, Maja Smrekar challenges anthropocentrism by linking biology and culture, particularly addressing the interaction between human and animal species. The artist builds upon recent scientific findings that when it comes to humans and dogs, domestication was, in fact, a mutual process. Not only was the dog mastered by humans, but dogs have also had an active role in “using” the human species to ensure a more comfortable survival. Both species coexist. She nurtured a puppy within the project Hybrid Family from the K-9_topology series. The artist refers to this process as the process of becoming, becoming-animal, becoming-woman and becoming m(Other). Deeply rooted in her own experience, when at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, “the liberal capitalism finally struck hard into the newborn Slovenian economy,” as she writes in her blog. Her parents lost their business, house, cars, forests, meadows, and vineyards. Her father committed suicide; she found a way to resist by submitting herself to a “dog-human kinship relationship as a radical intimate action of ‘returning home’.” The process of becoming a mother is analyzed concerning the process of becoming animal. Furthermore, the process of becoming (m)Other is particularly examined about the unity between mother and child, as regards the notions of die Umwelt and Otherness. The process of becoming (m)Other is finally examined as a biopolitical statement or intervention with the investment of the artist’s body to regain the position of power, i.e. as an act of resistance to bio-power—the exercise of power over and through bodies.