The Animal that therefore I am.
(May 09-23, 2026)

Art and Speculative Research Field School in Kefalonia, Greece

“The animal is a word that men have given themselves the right to give. It designates a single being that they have instituted as radically other, inferior, and deprived of reason, language, response, or responsibility” (Derrida, 2008, p. 32).

“The separation of the human from the animal is inseparable from the separation of culture from nature, where nature is conceived as an external object available for use and management” (Wolfe, 2010, p. 19).

Derrida, J. (2008). The animal that therefore I am (D. Wills, Trans.). New York, NY: Fordham University Press. (Original work published 2006)

Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

FACULTY

Kurtis Lesick is an artist, curator, researcher, and award-winning creative content specialist. His installations, media works, digital performances, and cross-media collaborations explore the limits of materiality, knowledge, and themes of indeterminabilty. Lesick’s practice draws heavily on his experience in archaeology, anthropology and philosophy, as well as both his love and disdain for technology. His work has been presented and exhibited internationally in Canada, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.A. He is an Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts, has held an adjunct professorship at the Digital Futures Initiative in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (Canada), has been visiting faculty at the Banff Centre (Canada) and the University of California at Irvine (USA), and was a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol (UK).

Barbara Sutherland is an artist and educator working with fibre, sculpture, walking, and installation. She is particularly interested in the propositions of a priori, a posteriori, and topology as guides for explorations of being, material, and place. Recent investigations use plant fibres, natural dyes, and embedded linen string in handmade papers, the scale of the body, implicating a physical, sensorial response to the materials. The linen lines evoke animal tracks across land or human paths that defy designated routes—demonstrating an autonomous yearning, an illicit wandering or desire path. Barbara teaches at Alberta University of the Arts and has received numerous awards including Canada Council for the Arts: Research and Creation Grants, a SSHRC Graduate Scholarship and a Governor General’s Academic Medal. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, in Europe and Australia and she has worked in collaboration with other artists, writers and composers.

Tom Roach is Professor of philosophy and queer studies at Bryant University in Rhode Island, USA. He is the author of two monographs, both published by State University of New York Press: Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS, and the Politics of Shared Estrangement (2012) and Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era (2021). He is currently writing a new monograph, tentatively titled The Joy, Pain, and Politics of Queer Friendship, which explores the ethical and political stakes of the complex affective entanglements emergent in the dissolution of the friend/lover binary. Roach is also a musician, whose recorded output spans the art punk of Lifter Puller, the brooding film scores of Le Feeling, and the luminous darkwave of Wolfgang Tillmans.

*Additional Faculty will be announced closer to the event.

Call for applications:

The Animal That Therefore I Am is an intensive speculative research field school for artists, writers, curators, and interdisciplinary researchers interested in rethinking how being—human and nonhuman—is categorised, valued, and governed. It is hosted at the Ionion Centre for the Arts and Culture in Kefalonia, Greece, in partnership with the Geoparks of Kefalonia and Ithaca.

In 1997 French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, gave a seminar in which he posited that the category of “the Animal” functions as a conceptual boundary through which the human defines itself. To name something “animal” is not to describe biological life but to designate a negative identity: that which lacks reason, language, history, or ethical standing (Derrida 2008, 32–33). By grouping all other living beings into one undifferentiated class, humans have rationalised their right to use, consume, and dominate nonhuman life.

Posthumanist thinkers extend this critique to ecology and environmental relations. Cary Wolfe shows that the human/animal divide mirrors the divide between culture and nature, where nature is framed as an external resource available for extraction (Wolfe 2010). The metaphysical hierarchy Derrida identifies is thus directly tied to capitalist logics that stratify life into what is protected and what is expendable (Derrida 2008). This same mechanism operates in other contemporary categories of exclusion such as “trans,” “migrant,” “disabled,” “neurodivergent,” or “racialised,” where heterogeneous lives are collapsed into manageable groups that can be regulated, devalued, or rendered disposable.

This field school asks how such categories might be complicated, refused, or rethought—using ecology as a laboratory for thinking otherwise.

This is not a conventional residency or a science course. It is a space for rigorous speculative research, where uncertainty, dependency, and difference are treated as productive conditions.
This field school does not aim to answer questions. It invites participants to remain with complexity—and to imagine new forms of relation across difference, species, and systems.
Participants leave with new conceptual tools, expanded ethical vocabularies, and fresh openings for their artistic and research practices.
While exhibition(s) and presentations will be facilitated, the emphasis is on process, inquiry, and shared learning rather than polished production.

Focus

Participants are invited to consider:

the animal, ecosystem, or relationally dependent organism that they are;
the dynamic and self-regulating composition of (eco)systems;
the precarity and contingency of boundary making processes and their naturalisation substance;
the effects of naturalised reductive categories on our relations with others and with ourselves;
alternative ways of thinking and acting toward more ethical and sustainable relations;
emergent ethics of otherness grounded in interdependence rather than hierarchy.

The landscapes of Kefalonia and Ithaca—mountain forests, grazing zones, caves, coastlines, and geological fault lines—are approached not as scenery, but as active sites of inquiry, where boundaries are continually made and undone.

What Participants Will Do

The program includes:

guided field excursions across ecological and geological sites (please note that excursions will involve more rigorous walking/hiking in natural areas);
workshops, presentations, and discussions with artists and researchers;
time for independent and collective research and making;
public outreach activities;
and collective presentations/exhibitions of research outcomes.
accommodation at the Ionion Centre;
access to a shared studio for production.
Participants are responsible for their own supplies.
In general, the working language is English.

Who Should Apply

We welcome applications from experienced, interdisciplinary practitioners, including visual and media artists, performance and sound artists, writers, curators, and research-based practitioners.

No prior background in ecology or theory is required—only curiosity, critical engagement, and a willingness to let your practice be unsettled.

Participants are expected to engage with utmost respect, support, and kindness with all attendees of the field school including staff, faculty, and facilitators.

Extended Residencies

Participants are also encouraged to apply in advance for extended residencies (under the terms and conditions for normal residencies) at the Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture where they can further pursue their individual research, artwork, or exhibit their work before or after our program. For more information on the Center’s residency program please see: https://www.ionionartscenter.gr/the-institution/residence-areas/ or email here: contact@ionionartscenter.gr.

The Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture operates in a Global environment in the fields of Higher Education, Arts and Research. The Center is located on the Greek Island of Kefalonia with close proximity to the Kefalonia International Airport which provides easy access to the island by flight from most major European cities after May 1st.

PLEASE NOTE - All applicants for Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture programs must complete tax registration as part of their applications. For more information on the program and the registration process please contact: info@ionionartscenter.gr.

To Apply:

Web application: coming soon

Email application: info@ionionartscenter.gr

Deadlines for applications

Early Bird registrations: March 30th, 2026
Final Deadlines for applications – registrations: April 10th, 2026

Contact & Information (submissions, fees, grants info): info@ionionartscenter.gr

Facility Information: contact@ionionartscenter.gr

IONION CENTRE SUBMISSIONS POLICY, TERMS, CONDITIONS, FEES

The program is under the character of an academic course is granted a partial scholarship 40% off the normal fees (details below)

General information

Application is required through email: info@ionionartscenter.gr

Information in word document is required:

Full name of the applicant, copy of passport (which is used for supporting documents and visas), postal address, phone, country , email address, web site(if available), profession, discipline , short description of the plan and expectations of the participant, no longer than 100 words , short cv no longer than 200 words (all in word documents suitable for promotion, catalogue editing , press release etc).
In the case of group /collective project( group -school- organization) a title for the group is required –school or organization, full name of the person representing -or leading- the group , postal address, phone, country , email address, web site(if available) of the group -school- organization , short description of the group expectations, no longer than 100 words, short cv of every group member no longer than 200words (all in word documents).
1-3 still images (jpg form) of the artists’ works and free accessible web- links in case of music, performing works, film works/new technologies /video art.
Every submission / formal application towards being eligible must refer to the specific program and/or activity.
Every submission must contain a FORMAL non-refundable tax registration fee of euro 150 due with the application(PAYPAL account: info@ionionartscenter.gr)

Each application under consideration must be formally completed with the following:

Short submission notice -3 lines max - addressed via email: info@ionionartscenter.gr /or/ ionionartscenter@gmail.com
Transfer confirmation of the entry fee payment euro 150, for every separate application (usual payment method is PAYPAL: info@ionionartscenter.gr). In the case of any difficulties in paying through PAYPAL, the applicant must inform the Center.
All the information/documents of the paragraphs 2 &3 (above).

NOTICE: Applications/submissions which are not formally registered with the tax registration fee paid, can NOT be accepted. Please note: ONLY formally registered participations (with confirmed tax payments will be granted the attention and will be considered for the grant.

FEES

ENTRY/TAX REGISTRATION FEES FOR EVERY APPLICANT:

1) nonrefundable EURO 150, PLUS

2) PARTICIPATION FEES PER PARTICIPANT, (UNDER GRANT 40%) TOTAL FEES EURO 1130 (Rate includes partial scholarship with 40% off the normal fees and 24% tax fees in full inclusive –all services included, course expenses, fees and taxes plus full housing accommodation (please see more details below).

NOTE: Fees are calculate for shared accommodation. A personal room or partner inclusion in the accommodation is available for an additional fee beyond the program costs- for a single room is an extra 30 euro per day, for double room an extra 50 euro per day. Spouses and families are welcome, in agreement with the Center.(email:ionionartscenter@gmail.com). Program dates include the program only. A day's flexibility for arrivals and departures is available upon request (if space availability allows).

PAYMENT METHODS

150 euro tax registration /entry fee due with the application (payment method is PAYPAL: info@ionionartscenter.gr).

Course main fees 1130 euro due (4) weeks before the class (payment methods and accounts will be available on the invoices (payment flexibility applies upon request )

INCLUDED IN THE FEES: 24% taxes, course expenses - tuition fees, full housing accommodation, Inclusive: breakfast, dinner, snacks, coffee, refreshments available 24 hours a day, internet, free use of the Ionion Center professional facilities, fully equipped auditorium and exhibition hall for educational, creation, exhibition needs, personal support, / guidance, official opening- reception expenses.