For a long time, nonhuman animals have appeared within high art. They populate paintings, operas, ballets, literature, sculpture and symphonic music. Yet they have often appeared in service of human concerns. The fox symbolizes cunning, the lamb innocence, the horse nobility, the whale obsession, and the bird freedom. Rather than asking where animals fit within existing artistic traditions, artists are now beginning to reshape those traditions themselves. The nonhuman animal is no longer simply representing humanity. Humanity is being asked to reconsider itself through the reality of the animal. A requiem becomes a requiem for animals, and a gallery exhibition becomes a meditation on speciesism. Perhaps this is how cultural change begins.
BEN HUNT: When we think about art and advocacy, certain forms immediately come to mind. Documentary film. Photography. Street theatre. Protest performance. Illustration. Social media campaigns. These are all important and have become familiar parts of the movement’s creative landscape…
For a long time, nonhuman animals have certainly appeared within high art. They populate paintings, operas, ballets, literature, sculpture and symphonic music. Yet they have often appeared in service of human concerns. The fox symbolises cunning. The lamb innocence. The horse nobility. The whale obsession. The bird freedom. The nonhuman animal becomes meaningful because it tells us something about ourselves…
That feels like a significant cultural shift. Rather than asking where animals fit within existing artistic traditions, artists are beginning to reshape those traditions themselves… The nonhuman animal is no longer simply representing humanity. Humanity is being asked to reconsider itself through the reality of the animal… A requiem becomes a requiem for animals. A gallery exhibition becomes a meditation on speciesism. A fan convention becomes a site of ethical reflection. Contemporary art begins asking questions it has too often overlooked. Perhaps this is how cultural change begins.
To explore how music can become a powerful force for compassion, reflection, and social change is Keane Southard’s ‘Requiem for Animals’, Keane’s extraordinary choral and orchestral work that invites audiences to collectively mourn the immense loss of animal life while reconsidering humanity’s relationship with the more-than-human world. Throughout the episode, you’ll hear excerpts from the Requiem woven into the conversation, offering a glimpse into its emotional and musical landscape…
The requiem occupies a particular place within Western classical music. For centuries, composers have written requiems to mourn human death. Mozart, Verdi, Fauré, Britten and Duruflé all contributed works that have become central to the classical repertoire, offering audiences space to contemplate grief, remembrance and hope. Keane asked a deceptively simple question. Why has nobody written one for animals?
The question feels obvious once it has been asked. We inhabit a world where billions of nonhuman animals die every year through industrial agriculture, where species disappear at unprecedented rates, and where entire ecosystems continue to unravel. Yet culturally there are remarkably few rituals through which those losses are collectively acknowledged. We count them. We investigate them. We campaign against them. We rarely mourn them.
Keane described encountering research documenting the dramatic decline of wildlife populations over the past fifty years. What troubled him was not simply the statistic itself, but the inability of numbers to communicate their emotional weight. Music, he suggested, might achieve something that data alone cannot. It might create an experience rather than merely convey information… Writing a requiem for animals quietly insists that nonhuman lives deserve the same artistic seriousness that we have historically reserved for human loss. SOURCE
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