Tessa Laird: Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film
Book launch
8 November 2025
12pm
Join us for the Queensland launch of Tessa Laird’s new book Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film (University of Minnesota Press), which addresses the depiction of animals in film and art, and the wider context of human-animal relationships. Laird and fellow researchers Fernando do Campo and John Edmond will discuss her book’s key themes, followed by a screening of Tina Stefanou’s You Can’t See Speed (2025), Ben Rivers’s Now, At Last! (2019), and Sriwhana Spong’s Vague Dog (2024).
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Tessa Laird is an artist, writer, and Senior Lecturer in Critical and Theoretical Studies at VCA Art, University of Melbourne, interested in intersections of visual culture and ecological thought. Her books include A Rainbow Reader, a fictocritical investigation of colours, and Bat, a cultural history of bats.
John Edmond works around film. A researcher and programmer, he runs Container, a screening and publishing series. He’s based in Meanjin/Brisbane.
Fernando do Campo is an artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane and Gadigal/Sydney, where he is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at UNSW’s School of Art and Design.
