SUPERFLEX - Interspecies Café

Tommy Rosenkilde is a certified hypnotherapist specialising in neuropsychology. Using the power of guided imagery, he invites you to go deeper into your own mind. In three sessions, he will transport you to an imagined future world, shifting your perspective in an attempt to think more like a coralline algae, fish, or polyp. These short journeys provide insights that can inform our actions in everyday life.

Questioning ideas around self-consciousness and evolution, he argues against a hierarchy of species which sees humans at the top of the ladder. Instead, we must look past the artificial separation between the human and non-human. He insists that we should not use the human experience as a scale for comparison; just because something is different to our own experience doesn’t mean that it should be considered lesser.

Despite the fact that life has existed long before human legal systems, law has perpetuated the idea of nature primarily as a resource to serve human needs and interests. Through a critique of the dominant legal system and by recognising the rights of Nature, Katarina urges us to reframe our role as humans in the web of life. This requires us not only to acknowledge that our actions have consequences in ecological, social, and planetary systems, but also to consider what it would take to live in responsible and caring relationships with the rest of Nature.

In considering interspecies relations, Rikke highlights the importance of listening. She shifts the question from how we can communicate with other species to what we can learn from each other if we set aside our assumptions of knowledge. In this way, Rikke encourages us to give greater consideration to the perspectives of those who have been marginalised.