Speciation Dance
Authors: Wilson Michelle Margaret 
Published: February 2022

tba Submission

Video Link

https://vimeo.com/188828000

Artist Statement

As an artist I approach my practice as a conduit for imagining alternate political and personal realities in which the non-human animals are afforded relational and differentiated rights of membership in a multispecies community. The intention of such work is to stir the moral imagination of my viewer. By not simply raising indignation at abuse and neglect, not presenting (yet again) an image of the animal other as a passive victim, my purpose is to envision the animals we are entangled with as neighbours, friends and members of disparate communities.

Speciation Dance is a new media installation work that challenges established relationships between human and nonhuman animals. It represents a progression in my attempts to abandon the presumptive act of speaking for the animal other. Rather, this work joins animal and human voices in hopes of decentering the anthropocentrism inherent in art making.

Project Description:
Speciation Dance

A small but strategic desire exists within humanity to preserve certain charismatic animal species from extinction; this has led to a dance both epic and intimate, which paradoxically attempts to maintain natural wildness by crafting an elaborate system of interspecies dependency. This contradiction is most visible in the conservation of whooping cranes. This species has come to emblemize the extreme commitment humans have made to the management of creatures we ourselves have driven to near nonexistence. In the performative video work, Speciation Dance, I focus on slippages in identity for both human-surrogate-mates and animals in captive breeding programs. In these relationships scientists and conservation workers don cobbled together costumes and assume monastic vows of silence to prevent their charges from becoming too accustomed to humans. But perhaps more importantly, these orniphiles (bird lovers) encourage the crane to imprint upon their bird persona.

When a creature imprints upon an individual outside of their species it disrupts speciation, the inbred impulse to be attracted only to one's own kind. Imprinting on a human distorts animal identity; seeing itself as human an animal will have no desire to copulate with its own species. As the performers in Speciation Dance transform into bird/people we hear ornithologist George Archibald describing his cross-species relationship with a crane named Tex. George and Tex’s story inspired this piece, and George’s narrative, assembled from found audio recordings, gives humor and context to the work. In this 6-minute two-channel video work, I am documenting two professional dancers from the Nova Dance Collective as they flirt with becoming-animal. Stepping into the role of a liminal being, neither human nor bird, they perform as humans-come-whooping cranes. Dipping, leaping, strutting and extending prosthetic heads to the sky, they attempt to relate to each other through the embodied language of both species. Trying to court and arouse one another, the performers convey the beautiful absurdity of such a futile act.