Animal Influence I - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson
Photograph from Uncertainty in the City, published by The Green Box, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-941644-18-2 Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson
In the autumn of 2010, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson
completed a three-year project, Uncertainty in the
City, which explored perceptions and
manifestations of the phenomenon of “pests” by
focusing on contested borders where domestic and
wild worlds intersect. What we observed in this
project was that when the anthropologist Mary
Douglas claimed that "dirt is simply matter out of
place," she might just as well have been referring to
our responses to bestial imponderables in the
borderlands. [2]
During the research for Uncertainty, we
recorded a number of stories of seagulls and of
how Pest Control agents receive regular complaints
from citizens during the breeding season when, for
instance, their young are learning to fly. The gulls
are of course being protective of the fledglings and
see humans as a potential threat, but for many
humans, the large wingspan of the seagull and
their bold physical and vocal behavior can be
alarming and unsettling. For others, their presence is
an enriching one. One can understand people’s
concern, but for us as artists, it is rewarding to
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occupy and explore this zone of contestation.
So for the recent project, Vanishing Point:
Where Species Meet, commissioned for the 2011
Gothenburg Biennial, we applied the same
speculative approach we’d applied in Three
Attempts. On this occasion we invited the gulls for
dinner.
Through Vanishing Point we wished to
create a context of sharing and hospitality. From
our side we took certain measures in the work to
kindle this idea. The laying out of food on a table
signifies a gesture of hospitality. In Western
European and other cultures, the basis of hospitality
is the performance of rituals ideally designed to
make the “guest” feel welcome. Any possibility that
such a gesture may result in the guest feeling
threatened or patronized is avoided. The work set
out to make our intentions visible, and for any logic
or apparent irrationality to be weighed alongside
the consequences of the action. The
documentation of the event, once the action is
over, takes on significance and becomes the
artwork, or a component of the artwork, itself.