Wildlife

About the work

“This is fantastic… Where else would animals learn the basic functions to create music?” CNN. 2014
Medium: Three-channel video installation
Duration: 05:08 (looped)
Screen One – an Orangutang playing a keyboard. Appropriated footage from CNN.
Screen Two – a screen recording of myself navigating the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/jimi.jim.718) repeatedly clicking to create a slideshow of the images from the album.
Screen Three – Asia Small Otters playing a keyboard. Appropriated footage from CNN.

For this on-going project I do a Google search for wildlife images looking predominantly through CNN and SKY News footage. I take a screen capture and then place the images into various categories such as; animals dressed up, animals being photographed, animals performing or animals inside. The images are then uploaded onto the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/jimi.jim.718) , which has been active for over two years.

The footage of these animals playing music was recontextualized into a gallery setting with the soundtracks overlapping each other creating a frenetic sound. The centre screen, displaying the slideshow, was created by repeated clicking on images from the Facebook album. The repetitive clicking starts to reflect the Orangutang and the Asia Small Otters hand and paws, respectively, hitting the musical instruments.

I am interested in how we how we look at and consume images. How this looking establishes ideas and normative thinking despite the content of the images being potentially problematic and/ or absurd. Recontextualising the images highlights how we as consumers look at animals and how animals, particularly wildlife, have become a spectacle commodity.

Exhibitions and exposure

On exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Art Museum as part of the Eastern Cape Biennale which ended in February 2015.