La saturation médiatique, au niveau de la consommation comme de la production, fait surgir des questions inédites sur les relations non humaines, y compris avec nos très chers amis à poil. Les animaux de compagnie occupent la majeure partie de notre flux de médias sociaux, mais très peu de notre attention intellectuelle. Dans cet essai, Javier Fernández Contreras se penche sur leur histoire au sein de la vie domestique.

Instead of situating interior architecture as an all-encompassing field that designs the domestic cohabitation of animals and humans, the workshop given by architect, curator and scholar Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco for students of the Master of Arts in Interior Architecture at HEAD – Geneva used this discipline to critically examine the validity of this historical phenomenon from a material and spatial perspective. Moving away from the notion of a “pet” – questioned by new theoretical approaches to the relationship between humans and non-humans – the workshop aimed to identify the traditional role that interior design plays in animal domestication within home interiors. Its ultimate goal is to envision non-hierarchical relations that diverge from the imposition of human-centric materials and spatial domestic standards onto other species.

Students collectively worked as a research unit on a graphic publication to be presented at the end of the workshop. After reading several key texts from fields such as the history of science, biology, and philosophy, they mapped out current discussions regarding the presence of animals in domestic spaces through clippings from general printed and online media written in the languages each student speaks. This included new legal frameworks, political polemics, the transformation of the home, the design of new architectural artifacts, etc. As a means of making the workshop’s discussions public, students’ ongoing research is published in ISSUE.

What if there were a Bechdel test equivalent for the representation of animals in works of fiction? French-speaking Swiss comic book author Fanny Vaucher makes a proposal in this direction.

Why use the Bechdel test model to assess the representation of animals in works of fiction? Julie Enckell speaks with HEAD – Geneva alumna and illustrator Fanny Vaucher about the SIMBA test she developed in 2024, at the intersection of her artistic practice and her anti-speciesist activism.