In Stray: Human-Animal Ethics in the Anthropocene (2017), film scholar Barbara Creed proposes "straying" as a unifying concept between human and animal life."To stray is a possibility for all living creatures" (p. 7), Creed writes – without confronting the question of what cross-species straying might look like. Her vignettes of humanstraying include various artistic approaches. Yet Creed fails to create a coherent concept of straying as a contemporary and independent concept. Instead, she uses it as a lens to examine a particular aspect of (artistic) works. But what if straying itself became the central research concept and just an diffuse lense for observation? 

The eighth century description of “striunen,” the predecessor of the German “streunen,” could be a definition of (artistic) research: “Roaming around, sniffing, curiously or suspiciously searching for something.” [Original German: “schnuppernd umherstreifen, auf neugierige oder verd.chtige Weise nach etw. forschen.”] (DWDS n.d.) Being active and curious contrasts with Creed’s understanding of the abandoned and neglected stray. Consistent with Kristeva’s concept of the stray in her essay on the abject (1980, p. 20), Creed defines the stray as an abandoned creature. Its marginalized existence is prerequisite for its being called a stray (Creed 2017, p. 10). In this sentiment, the shared vulnerability of humans and animals makes them both strays (Creed 2019, p. 100). “I think that animals who have been abandoned, ejected, and rendered homeless, understand – just as we do – how it feels to be othered, to live on the outside.” Creed writes (ibid.). But what if stray animals are not outsiders but rather part of a more-than-human city and possessing special (and spacial) knowledge?