Form: Video Essay in the form of an eulogy
WHO: The Leviathan, a biblical animal who is vanquished by God in order for mankind to transcend into their righteous self. The Leviathan therefore becomes the final thread in man's animal nature that is seen as a hindrance to human's progression/transformation
So what remains when we finally destroy the animal?
Do we no longer retain the nutritional animal? Does the sensorial animal uphold the basic scrutiny of what is deemed to be alive?
WHAT: Through this project I continue my exploration of 'posthuman transformations' and 'what it means to be human?' by bringing together two deviant figures;
a. The 'tree' that transforms into a technological being, through a WW era radio tech and geo-tagging sounds that can be heard through the application only under specific tree/geo-location
b. The 'delegitimised human' who have been denied Life through humanity's exclusionary doctrines.
HOW: These figures question the validity of humanity's search for what lies beyond the human, speculations that has historically hoped to eliminate the nutritional animal. The technological deviances that is proposed as Post Human by eliminating the animal is brought under the scrutiny of 'What is Life' and the theoretical life detection systems employed by space programs.
WHERE: AI is proposed as the direction for the emergence of the Post Human; a being so deviant from the current human-animal that the possibility of such a being is speculated through the violent elimination of the animal or leviathan. The conversations between these deviant figures is posed against a backdrop of humanity war against the animal; the nutritional and the sensorial.
The figures lament the death of the Leviathan and explore possibilities of their new deviances, a position brought about by exclusionary doctrines.
Scene 1: Coconut tree becomes classified as a grass by a legislative order in Goa, India.
Scene 2: Study of how wolbachia, a bacteria that infects armadillidiidae/pill bugs to make them decide.
Scene 3: Rivers Yamuna and Ganga deemed to have human rights and then stripped of these rights due to administrative difficulties.
Scene 4: Scientist make Astrocrete, for Mars colonisation, made from the sweat, urine and blood of astronauts with Regolith/space-dust.
Bibliography:
The Open: Man & Animal by Giorgio Agamben
AnimalInside by Laszlo Krasznahorkai & illustrated by Max Neuman
Snuff Memories by David Rosen
Ethic of becoming imperceptible by Ross Braidotti