Valender, Jen

Visual Artist & Researcher

Independent Scholar
Research interests / activities

Jen Valender is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist whose academic background is in visual arts and sociology, which drives her research into the cross-sections between art and multispecies relations in the midst of ecological crisis. Her site-responsive practice studies sensory networks between non-human and human animals through the creation of performances, sculptures and sound artworks that establish an embodied connection with the landscape. Recent projects have seen Valender enquire into bovine ethology and the sonic perceptions of Australian pythons. In 2023, her theory of ‘cross-dissonance’ – used to describe the difficulty of self-positioning as a practice-based artist researcher – was published by The Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools’ Journal FINDINGS.

Outputs

Casting of Nets, Art + Ecology, Art + Australia, 2023. https://artandaustralia.com/A__A/p163/casting-of-nets-

Lecture-Performance: cross-dissonant problems in the projected image, FINDINGS Journal, 2023. https://acuads.com.au/findings/

Digital Mimesis: revisiting the reimagined cry of the Huia, Issue 8, Unlikely Journal for Creative Arts. 2022. https://unlikely.net.au/issue-08/digital-mimesis

Birds and Language, Co-editor, Unlikely Journal for Creative Arts, 2022. https://unlikely.net.au

The Link, The Limits Between, Currents Interdisciplinary Journal, 2021. https://currentsjournal.net

Conference Papers
A Snake Never Blinks, Art Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference, 2023.

An Action of Translation, Australasian Animal Studies Association Conference, 2023.

Artist as Animal, Forum des images, Paris, International Symposium of Electronic Art, 2023.

This could really be it, Misdirected Unrealism, Art Association of Australia & New Zealand Conference, 2022.

Cross-dissonant Problems, Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network (APARN), 2022.

Conscience Centred Methodology, Mattering, Significance & Value Research Symposium, University South Queensland, 2021.

Deaf Pixels, Memory Conference, Centre of Visual Art (CoVA), University of Melbourne, 2021.

Silenced Strings, Birds and Language Conference, Sydney College of the Arts, VCA, University of Sydney, 2021.

Distilled Dissonance, Faculty of Fine Arts & Music Research Symposium, University of Melbourne, 2021.

Potential areas for collaboration
Fine art, Film, Visual Arts, Cross-species Collaboration, Performance, Sculpture, Sonic Art
  • Valender, Jen
  • Valender, Jen