Abstract
Cecilia Novero’s essay situates Daniel Spoerri’s 1995 series of assemblages Carnival of Animals within the legacy of the historical avant-garde. In taking a close look at Carnival’s ingenious recourse to non-organicity, through Spoerri’s reworking of chance, and the readymade, but also “frottage,” the essay argues that the avant-garde helps to envision human and non-human encounters outside anthropocentric and representational frameworks. At the same time that Spoerri’s assemblages leave behind the frameworks of representation, they do not configure a new space of action or being for non-humans. Rather, they point to multiple lines of escape, including the carnivalesque. In short, the essay maintains that Spoerri’s work offers a valuable example of how the avant-garde indeed contributes to the discussion about con-figurations of human and non-human animals.