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Uncertainty in the City

Joint research project between Reader Mark Wilson and long term collaborative partner, Professor Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, leading to exhibition.

Uncertainty in the City examined human responses to hidden societies, living in our midst, considering them simultaneously in two ways: one, as unselfconscious communities of fauna going about their disparate business within and around our homes; and two, as an incongruous and contradictory human construct, commanding and combining in tension, a wide and disparate range of affect.

The research process lasted several years and involved a range of activities, including accompanying the Pest Control services of Morecambe and Lancaster City Council in their daily duties and also traveling around the country to various fairs, towns and events with a specially designed mobile unit called Radio Animal. During these events a variety of people were interviewed about animal encounters, with recordings put on the Radio Animal website.

The project focused on margins of human tolerance, where the range of opinion or views provides a promising field of inquiry, as indicative of contradictory and certainly unresolved schisms in our social and socio-environmental fabric. Where such diversity of response to a phenomenon exists, it suggests there may be susceptibility to reappraisal and change. Challenging opinions which had been embedded over a long time and not reconsidered was a key aim of the research, to seek new juxtapositions and invite new readings and opportunities for understanding and behaviour.

Research questions included the relationship with proximate animals in terms of fear, discomfort and ‘a lack of control’; whether these reactions are intuitive or culturally informed; and exploring the concept that Homo sapiens, in its inconsistent approach to environment and ecology, is the most successful and damaging pest of all.