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Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir Spaces of Encounter: Art and Revision in Human - Animal Relations Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir Valand School of Fine Arts Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts University of Gothenburg Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Art at Valand School of Fine Arts, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg. ArtMonitor is a publication series from the Board of Artistic Research (NKU), Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, Unversity of Gothenburg Address: ArtMonitor University of Gothenburg Konstnärliga fakultetskansliet Box 141 405 30 Göteborg www.konst.gu.se Cover design: Robert Moxon Layout and design: Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir & Robert Moxon Cover photo: ©Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson Printed by: Geson Hylte Tryck © Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir ISBN: 978-91-977757-6-2 Cora & Curtis Abstract Title: Spaces of Encounter: Art and Revision in Human - Animal Relations Language: English Keywords: animal studies, artistic research, conceptual art, contemporary art, contextual art, fine art research, installation art, photography, post-humanism, relational art, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, site-specific art, taxidermy. ISBN: 978-91-977757-6-2 This PhD project explores contemporary Western human relationships with animals through a ‘relational’ art practice. It centres on three art projects produced by Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson – nanoq: flat out and bluesome; (a)fly; and seal – all utilize lens-based media and installations. Discourses on how humans construct their relationship with animals are central to all three projects. The first one looks at polar bears, the second at pets, and the third at seals, in a variety of different sites within clearly defined contexts and geographical locations. The thesis explores the visual art methodologies employed in the projects, tracing in turn their relationship to writings about human-animal relations. This includes both writings researched in the making of the works and those considered retrospectively in the reflections on each art project. These artworks engage their audiences in a series of ‘encounters’ with the subject through simultaneous meetings of duality, e.g. haunting vs. hunting, perfection vs. imperfection and the real vs. the unreal. These dualities are important in theorizing this relational space in which the eclipse of the ‘real’ animal in representation occurs and in formulating questions embedded in and arising from the artworks on the construction and the limits of these boundaries. The ‘three registers of representation’, as put forward by the artists Joseph Kosuth and Mary Kelly, have further helped to frame and develop the thinking, concerning both the mechanisms within the works and their perceived effects. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 I. PREPARATION Art and Animals: The Context 23 II. MAPPING Travelling through Space and Place 49 nanoq: flat out and bluesome 53 (a)fly 60 seal 67 III. SHOOTING Acquisitions in the ‘Wild’ with guns and cameras 79 nanoq: flat out and bluesome 82 (a)fly 93 seal 96 The Space of Empathy in Human & Animal Relations 109 The Morphing of Animal Celebrity 115 IV. MOUNTING Glazing the gaze 125 nanoq: flat out and bluesome 129 (a)fly 137 seal 155 Human Animals – Locating Animals 161 The Unsolicited Rendezvous 171 V. COMMUNING When Species Meet and Eat in Zones of Art 181 Reflection on Limits: Self, Language and Culture 191 VI. FINAL COMMENTS In the Abyss: Relational Opportunities between Reality and Representation 217 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 228 REFERENCES 231 Acknowledgements There are a number of people I’d like to thank at the end of this research project. Firstly, I have been extremely privileged to work with my supervisor Katy Deepwell who has been a supportive guide on all academic fronts and an inspiration to my thinking. I am enormously grateful to my co-supervisor Karl Benediktson who has been there from the beginning, supporting my enquiry and the context of the research. I am indebted to Leslie Johnson the Rektor at Valand School of Fine Arts for her continuing support. I like to thank Anna Lindal, Hans Hedberg, Johannes Landgren and Johan Öberg at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts and Lasse Lindkvist at the School of Photography. A big thanks goes to all those who have helped and supported my research through discussions, comments, recommendations and reading. First and foremost I like to thank my partner and collaborator Mark Wilson for being there, listening, commenting, criticizing and getting my English into shape. I wish to thank the discussants in my previous academic seminars, Jytte Höj, Hayden Lorimer and Nikos Papstergiadis who have all given invaluable support and guidance and I wish to thank the team at the British Animal Studies Network; Erica Fudge, Steve Baker, Garry Marvin, Chris Wilbert, Anat Pick, Gail Davis, Neil Badminton, Lynda Birke, Hilda Kean, Diana Donald, Jonathan Burt and Giovanni Aloi for inspiring contributions to the subject and Ron Broglio for his support and in depth commentary on our artwork and my research. I’d also like to mention Irina Sandomirskaja who through early discussions helped me shape my initial enquiry. Thanks go to Göran Boardy for generously providing the text for the ‘hunting diaries’, to Örn Þorleifsson, Knútur Óskarsson, Pétur Jónsson, Ólafur Pétursson, Hlynur Oddsson , Jóhannes Gísalson and Helgi Sveinbjörnsson, for talking to me on camera and to Manuel Arjona Cejudo for his contribution. Special thanks to Anna Líndal and Kristján Steingrímur at the Icelandic Art Academy and to friends and colleagues in Gothenburg; Cecilia Gehlin, Cecilia Grönberg, Annica Karlsson- Rixon, Anna Viola Hallberg, Tina Carlsson, Kajsa Eriksson, Otto von Bush, Henric Benesch, Fredrik Svensk, Hendrik Zeitler and Ann- Charlotte Glasberg-Blomqvist. Many thanks to Emily Mennerdahl, for her help and a big thanks for the administrative and technical help received from Anna Frisk together with Hanna Krusell, Henrik Hamboldt, Anna Holgen, Mats Olsson, Michel Droetto and Leon Lagergren. Finally I am grateful for the many animal friends I have made on this journey especially my two dogs. March 2009 Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir Introduction This thesis explores the research involved in three art projects that form the basis of my PhD enquiry, which began with exploring ideas of ‘wilderness’ in human relationships with animals. Through the process of the PhD, it has changed its focus into an examination of the relationship between different modes of representation of animals with a particular emphasis on lens-based media. The process of this research has lasted just over 4 years, giving me opportunities to concentrate on the practice at the same time as I have engaged with literature from a range of disciplines connected to animal studies. It has created a space for me to reflect in detail on my art practice and to articulate the processes involved in making the work and to consider its relationship to the work of other artists and related practices, as well as furthering a personal conceptual enquiry. When applying to do my PhD at Gothenburg University, one of the main attractions was what I saw as a commitment to artistic ‘practice’ as ‘serious’ research, on a par with other academic disciplines. Although the road travelled has not always been smooth I still believe this commitment holds, along with a genuine curiosity about the relationship between artistic processes and the production of knowledge. From the beginning of the assignment, it was clear to me that the production of artwork would be at the centre of my academic research and writing would act as an interlocutor to the artistic practice both reflectively and as a means through which the work itself would be informed. As evidence of that I consider the fact that through the process of doing this degree, my confidence in and command of visual language as an investigative research tool, has been reinforced. This is not about my own tenacity, but it has been about my study, of what have become the ‘subjects’ of my enquiry – the non-human-animals. Through studying non-human-animals I have come to recognize shortcomings 1 in human systems of communication and attendant power structures. Saying that, it is important to make clear that I consider the writing of this text for the PhD degree a fundamental tool in its delivery. I have found the demands of articulating my thoughts, my actions, my processes and influences in writing, an immersive process, which has challenged my thinking and helped to focus the artistic enquiry. In this research I have been guided by a number of thinkers, who have contributed to an academic discourse on the representation of animals in contemporary Western culture. A particular emphasis in my reflections within this thesis has been given to what constitutes what I refer to as the ‘eclipse’ of the animal. Spaces of ‘disappearance’ in human/animal relations have been utilized to enter, by means of visual art, into the logic of these arguments around the ‘eclipse’ in the encounter with animals. The strategies applied in the practice use concepts such as absence/presence in the context of contemporary culture and animal discourse. Exhibiting these works in a number of different public spaces and contexts has enabled the practical application of these concepts allowing me to observe and explore consequent multiple readings. The artworks aim to engage their audiences in a series of ‘encounters’ with the subject through simultaneous ‘meetings’ of dualities/opposites e.g: haunting vs. hunting, perfection vs. imperfection and the ‘real’ vs. the ‘unreal’ and are important in theorizing this relational space and in formulating questions embedded in and arising from the artworks on the construction and the limits of the ‘boundaries’ between them. The challenge in our art projects is to explore such boundaries in an attempt to ‘think with’ (quoted in Daston & Mitman, 2005b, 143) or to constructively ‘activate’ the spaces of encounter between human animals and non-human animals.
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