Rachel Mayeri
dal 18/10/2011 al 12/11/2011
Segnalato da
18/10/2011
Rachel Mayeri
Arts Catalyst, London
Primate Cinema: Apes as Family at The Arts Catalyst
The artist imagines a primate social drama in a contemporary urban context and shows this to a chimpanzee audience. Her two-screen video installation juxtaposes the drama enacted by humans in the guise of apes (of a young female city ape befriending a group of outsiders) with mesmerising footage of the reactions of its ape audience at Edinburgh Zoo. As the watchers of the watching chimps, we perceive - or we imagine - fascination, puzzlement, and flashes of anger in their responses. Sited in different spaces in Los Angeles and Edinburgh we are never sure whether we are seeing a lab, zoo, wildlife park, rumpus room or post-apocalyptic landscape inhabited by half chimp/half humans. Mayeri's intriguing and amusing story-and-response structure contains darker undercurrents in its contemplation of the lives of our captive close relatives. To make Primate Cinema: Apes as Family artist Rachel Mayeri collaborated with comparative psychologist Dr Sarah-Jane Vick, testing different styles and genres of film to gauge chimps' responses and discussing issues around cognition and communication in research primates.