Rijksakademie Open Studios: 2024
This work was presented at the Rijksakademie open studios. 30 May – 2 June 2024.
It was preceded by the film program; The Journey of the Hyena convened at the Rijksakademie in April, 2024.
The apparatus establishing & dismantling itself I
Looking at animals is used as a method to give form & structure to drawings produced from visits to the Amsterdam Zoo (Artis); whereby these cumulative glances are understood as gathering evidence. The work locates the zoo as a site of intervention while the link between animal, machine, cinema and architecture is explored through obstructed and compromised glances since the animals are viewed at a distance. Distance here to be understood as measurement, a record from the past & to regard any species as spectacle, exotic or alien.
The use of analogue projectors emits the image as light as opposed to digital pixelation. It also refers to a time when such devices were used in dimmed European lecture halls to project images & research material of animals, plants & humans looted & uprooted from their homes, habitats & native environments. In this tension, the motors attached to the screens move back and forth seeking to intercept the image halfway while the autofocus on the projector attempts to render it with sharpness & legibility before it moves away again.
The apparatus establishing & dismantling itself II
The installation is largely a question of modernity, the tension that comes with the need for progress and the consequences of this acceleration. Observations of animals in their man-made environments at the Amsterdam Zoo frame the zoo as a colonial structure set up in Europe and Zoo architecture becomes a form to think with. The dynamism within this static environment is seen in the numerous monkey enclosures which become activated with rope formations hung to aid the animals in mobility and play. (the cardboard used here was a temporary stand in for a more durable material e.g steel or aluminum)
Model I: zoo architecture
The model format of working and situating the studio as a thinking machine continues from previous experiments with electronics and motors in my earlier work around Weather Instruments. The ‘model’ becomes an exercise in thinking about processes that occur outside of us and how we can intervene in their happening by observing, recording and measuring. Model I: Zoo architecture considers the Amsterdam zoo as a site of intervention by observing the architecture. Footage of two donkeys grazing in a field outside my studio in Ngong, Kenya is played against the projected image of a free bird encountered during a trip to the zoo to look at other caged birds.
The apparatus establishing & dismantling itself, I
The apparatus establishing & dismantling itself, II
Model I: zoo architecture
All images courtesy of the artist
