Sandrine Schaefer Curatorial

In the second installment of the Artists For Animals, Vlada Benedetti shares their platform, SAFARINON. In this talk, Benedetti speaks about the journey that led to the creation and meaning of SAFARINON. The opposite of a safari, SAFARINON recognizes that personhood is planetary and offers all beings the opportunity to INterface with one another.

Acknowledging that meaningful connections can be made anywhere, SAFARINON explores the personhood of beings living in the wild in addition to places of captivity (ex. zoos) that Benedetti has history working in. This ongoing exploration aims to cultivate a "multi-species friend-group" where the personhood of all beings on the planet is shared.

Born in Colorado, Vlada Benedetti received a BFA in film/animation/video from the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 2009 started SAFARINON, a "multi-species friend-group merger". Through SAFARINON's platform, each work is an exploration into the personhood of beings interfacing in both the wild and captivity.

In this first talk in the Artists For Animals series, artist and series organizer Sandrine Schaefer shares their current work that explores everyday encounters between humans and resident communities of geese. These explorations are sited in urban wilds that hold queer histories. Sandrine juxtaposes goose-gathering behaviors and human strategies of assembly used in protest that occur in these spaces. Through site-specific performance art, interactive sculpture, and participatory walks Sandrine’s work proposes new possibilities for how humans and geese cohabitate in these shared spaces.

Link to survey mentioned in artist talk