Exercises in non-human listening
In this lecture Espen Sommer Eide will present his latest project Imaginalia. Based on studies of animals’ sensory biology, it develops a number of exercises to enter into other creatures’ sensory worlds; exercises where reason must be partly abandoned. At the same time this project demonstrates the boundaries of our own senses and how such limitations and inadequacies are what give form to our personal memories and histories. We see the world as much through our missing senses as through the ones we have. In this presentation Eide will mainly focus on mosquitoes and salmon, and their distinctive organs of sight and hearing.
When a Portia Spider Hesitates
In their lecture, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens will reflect on how the scientific community has approached and measured non-human animal cognition from the early 20th century to the present. Drawing upon key experiments conducted in laboratories by psychologists, biologists, ethologists, zoologists and neuroscientists, they will examine the protocols and apparatus imagined by researchers to measure the performance of animals.
The artists will anchor this presentation in their most recent work, entitled Anthology of Performance Pieces for Animals, which is being shown in their exhibition at Visningsrommet USF. Taking the form of an artist book, scaled models and text, the work explores what happens when animals involved in experiments are no longer depicted as passive objects but rather as active participants, as performers who make sense of the situations in which they are placed.
