Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson

A Q&A between Amy Fung and Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson.

By: Amy Fung

Fung: Your collaborative team appears aware of problematic representation and dominant/centralized discourses raging in the field of animal studies surrounding moral authority, how do you think art methodologies, especially photography/video works, can steer the discourse into alternative ways of relating with animals/nature/Other?

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson: In the field of animal studies and particularly in art that espouses itself or is espoused by animal studies groups or individuals there is a regular and (in our view) unhelpful reiteration, sometimes spoken and sometimes just implicit of the question ‘How should we represent animals…?’

The representation of animals and myriad intended functions of such representation specifically, are also critiqued in our work, not only in respect of the disservice they do to our receptivity to and understanding of specifics and particulars, but also because our very messy, inconsistent and often contradictory relations to animals tend to provide such a graphic illustration of how we blind and delude ourselves daily with our dependence on symbols, avatars, simulacra and representations – a reflex tendency that we’re suggesting should be resisted strongly.

Our use of photography and video should be seen in the context of significant and established traditions. The role of lens-based media in representing and/or capturing images of nature (Animal Planet, Discovery etc) has had a profound influence on our relationship to animals and the natural world. Setting aside important issues such as an understanding of physical embodiment through proximity and the appliance of senses such as touch and smell, it has not only flattened the animal body into a two-dimensional semblance but accordingly, stripped it of its real nature and character into edited and fictional versions reflective of our own desires. Boundaries between the life and death of animals have also been seriously blurred in the same way, as these media have increasingly fused the relationship between what is real and what is not. In order to vicariously involve us in some of the emotions previously available only through real life excursions, natural history programmes have begun the practice of double takes. First the world of the animal is revealed but this is followed by behind-the-scenes footage revealing how the film was prepared and shot – of the cameraman behind the camera lens and his/her emotional reflections on the events – in short, a specifically human-oriented account.

Fung: At the end of your presentation, you suggest a goal of parity between humans and non-human animals. How do you think parity could be achieved between species operating in inherently different value systems?

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson: The answer to this is bound up in the idea of meeting without prejudice – meeting without presumptions, even trying to forget what we already think we know with a view to learning again by empirical means. In the case of non-human animal others (and also with post-colonial hindsight, non Western human others and those who are marginalized) it is a strategy for reinventing ourselves within an alternative framework of values. Empathy, or at least the willingness to acknowledge commonalities is central to this concept of parity. The work is idealistic in the way it wants to establish the basis of something better, less exploitative, more connective.

It is founded on the idea that we have messed up in relation to ‘others’ and to the environment we all share in order to serve short-term human (Western style, capitalist) self-interest. As artists our job is to constructively destabilize, to create a sense of unbalance in order to address what we see as an existing but deceptively stable looking imbalance in our relation to what we vainly perhaps appear to have become the custodians of – that is the world we live in.

Fung: Do you think we can tell “animal stories” or “earth/landscape stories” without mapping our human agendas into them?

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson: No, we believe it’s beyond us because we are who we are. Although we might try imaginatively to escape our condition, any such imagining whilst possibly worthwhile, will still always be human. In one recent project of ours, “Uncertainty in the City” (2010), a key component of the work which was centered around the variable perceptions of the term ‘pest’ was a series of interviews we conducted with people regarding their experience of particular animal encounters in and around the home. I think it was in full acknowledgement of the fact that these were human stories that we made these accounts central to the project. We are routinely blinded by our individual world-view and we are often surprised to find out that ours does not necessarily correspond with our neighbour’s world-view. Perceptions of what is tolerable, repugnant or attractive when it comes to animal others for instance, are diverse to say the least and when one examines those discrepancies or better still, puts them in juxtaposition with one another, the idea of cultural coherency is soon revealed as fragile, if not altogether mythic.

Our anthropocentric agendas have got us into some serious trouble and there are those who would argue that the problems we’ve heaped on the world are irredeemable. Even if that was the case wouldn’t it be, or isn’t it more interesting to test ideas that do not correspond with the logic that has taken us to the abyss’s edge, by imagining another way. There’s a presumption perhaps even present in your question, that to map human interests into our imaging of animals or the environment is necessarily problematic, but I’m not sure it’s the case. It’s the human exceptionalism with which we’ve historically stumbled into that habit that has created the mess – the exploitation on the basis that the world and its denizens are here solely to serve human needs and moreover, serve corporate greed. In any adjusted approach we can’t deny who we are, but by taking on board our essential interspecific position perhaps, if we must regard ourselves exceptional, we could be more constructively and responsibly so. There are hosts of environmental and ecological groups, activist and otherwise and we do not pretend to be directly amongst them – but as artists we can exercise subversion, playfulness and idiocy even, in the service of nudging or pushing an audience into thinking differently…

Fung: The issue of responsibility ties back to my initial question then of whether we can unmap humanist agendas, as both sides of the spectrum from capitalist corporations to environmental and activist groups have manipulated the representation of animals and nature to serve their own needs. The issue I’m perhaps burrowing down to is whether there is an ethical strategy into aesthetics or if “ethical aesthetics” is just an oxymoron?

Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson: You’re right, that in both cases the animal is exploited or depleted in order to serve human agendas. Clearly one end of the spectrum is likely to be working at least to some extent with more sensitivity towards the environment and therefore one might presume, the species that inhabit it. But the summary deployment of such representations is still too common and unthinking. The introduction or management of ethical agendas and content in this work is paramount, it’s what we’re weighing up all the time; but to evangelize is deadly, so we just have to keep on asking the questions. It is also important to note that the work we make concerns human behaviour, historically and now. Our interaction with other species (almost any other species it seems) provides insights into specific facets of human behaviour and as such allows us to unpick that which otherwise might go unnoticed or unchallenged.