"Octopus on Roses" by Sylvia Gonzalez

Amid nearly unfathomable animal suffering and exploitation—the almost imperceptibly recurring horrors to which we have become habituated is what propels us to confer visibility on those whom we do not see, hidden from view, as “a Door to the Land of Change.”  Arukah Animal International’s live-streamed events attempt to capture what has been lost—the exquisite wonder of more-than-human animals in all their astonishing marvel—through stories, film, art, poetry, and exhilarating conversation in the collective sphere. We give shape and expression to stir emotions, to transform, to understand in a new and profound way, the alternate realities, and possibilities about our relationships with other beings.

In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel: “We must learn how to be surprised, not to adjust ourselves.” With our focus on arts advocacy, the art of looking anew, our events feature luminaries from the animal-rights universe—artists, activists, scholars, authors, philosophers, even a legendary pig—to inspire behavioral and cultural changes toward a more compassionate coexistence in a multispecies universe. Arukah Animal International’s events and films are an expression of art as resistance, to remove the veil of invisibility cloaking the systematic destruction against other animals seen as mere resources or products or commodities subjected to the cruel demands of profit.

The Door to the Land of Change means to live in freedom, the experiment or practice of freedom, to see all individual animals as sacred, valued, and dignified members of the planet we share—to want to be free, with the heart and mind open to the trauma of more-than-human-animal suffering.  Activist art resists and challenges, advancing cultures, and political systems, and meaning.

Why privilege one species (humans) over all other animal species, when we all breathe and share the same earth?

We are in a pivotal moment with respect to species outside of our own, with an extraordinary opportunity to create a profound kinship with those whom our fates are tied, with whom we share a spirit of consciousness. Over the last three years, more than 30 countries have formally recognized other animals, including gorillas, lobsters, crows, and octopuses as sentient beings. Aren’t they all sentient?

Arukah Animal International envisions a world where we don’t differentiate between all who live, all who breathe, where we transcend all borders, to be the equal of all living beings, in our spectacular variety and diversity, that we are in fact all a part of a natural evolution of life forms. We are in fact not a thing apart, but instead beings together.

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Arukah Animal International sees more-than-human animals as creators and subjects of their own lives, to thrive, to live, in all their richness and complexity, their individual and insistently singular and purposeful selves in all their fascination, flooding us with wonder.