Output details

Vanishing Point: Where Species Meet

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

Vanishing Point: Where Species Meet is a three-channel video work commissioned for the Gothenburg Biennial 2011, by the curator, Sarat Maharaj. The brief was for site-specific work: Vanishing Point focussed on the roof of the main Biennial building called Roda Sten, on the River Gota waterfront. Research included acquiring knowledge of and developing sensitivity towards the site, including the various species of gulls and their habits, such as through discussing diet and behaviour with local fishermen and birdwatchers.

Vanishing Point can be seen as a critique on the legacy of how Christian values have been interpreted and, together with Cartesian objectivity, have placed anthropocentrism and human interests at the heart of our conceptions of the world to the detriment of more ecological consciousness. Such viewpoints have contributed to a dislocation between human beings and the wider environment rendering it largely as a series of resources and a site for exploitation. The project asks how performance, involving the free will and participation of non-human others, may be used to test ideas of parity.

Vanishing Point attempts site-specifically to reconfigure ideas of notoriety and interspecific social order. How can art and aesthetic presentation contribute to the reappraisal of a known pariah? In the context of long-established scientific rationale and religious dogma, is it possible constructively through the processes and actions of art to effect new audience awareness of interspecific interdependence?

The performance-based HD video work documents a meeting between a human and various species of gull around a specially built table at which food is prepared and shared. Although the table designed by us was used as a prop in the video work it played a crucial role in setting the stage for our ideas concerning notions of sharing and a hospitality across species.