Anna Blume:
Reflections on Animals, Architecture, and Aesthetics

In this discussion I will want to engage us in thinking about and with animals from the ways their bodies reflect and change ecologies to the ways in which they move in land and seascapes marking the air with sound and scent. As a case study within this field of research I propose to look closely at the shell structures that female Argonaut octopuses make, carry with them, travel upon, live within, and through which they interface with other animals, their offspring, and the jellyfish they often ride upon to traverse different topographies of the ocean depths. My consideration of animals draws from the scientific literature about them; my perspective however is art historical, ontological, and phenomenological.

Anna Blume is professor and chair of the history department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. For the past several decades they have written on ancient Indigenous stone carving and architecture of the Americas. Currently, they coordinate an Ethics and Sustainability curriculum encouraging the development of courses to engage students and professors in research, discussion, and reflection on the imperative to think through and beyond human perspectives of coexistence with other animals, plants, and geologic formations.