Life Forms: Through the Language of Emotion

WORDS BY Hannah Foley IMAGES BY Gabrielle Eve

Social anthropologist Tim Ingold suggests that ‘to human is a verb’ — a laying down of lifelines, in an entangled meshwork of ever-becoming otherness. In conceiving this, I imagine humanity as a whole, hurtling at speed, without pause to consider the infinite encounters or the impact of our collisions. Experimenta Life Forms offers its audience a chance to slow down. A point of entanglement at which to pause, and to reflect. To question our own definitions of what constitutes life, as well as the implications of such understandings. Exhibiting artist and researcher Oron Catts speaks of the ‘acute poverty of language’ in describing what life is. This exhibition, for all its technological intricacies, suggests an alternative language; one that is not spoken but felt.

Entering the gallery through blackened glass doors, there is a sense of being engulfed by Daniel Boyd’s video installation, History is Made at Night (p. 11). A mass of colourful dots shimmer and shift as stars in the sky, forming and reforming into unknown constellations. The impression is of

an active, morphing and ever-expanding universe. As an entry-point to Life Forms, Boyd’s work evokes a sense of awe and humility, instructing us to leave our anthropocentric notions of life at the door, and to bask in the unknown.

And yet, our own continued existence relies upon, if not a knowing, then a deeper understanding of the world around us.

PULSE: The Life Force of Trees, by artist duo PluginHUMAN, suggests a visual and aural translation of the complex communication systems of flora. The impressive light sculpture and soundscape is directed by internationally collected data from significant trees and their surrounding environments. Stepping into the small room which houses the work, there is a sense of being let in on a secret. Configured as a cluster of trunks, patterned with enlarged, microscopic imagery and pulsating with coloured light, the work draws you inward; you feel your own pulse and breath align and syncopate with the rhythms of sound, a tangible interconnection of, and with, the trees.

Where PULSE references new Western scientific discoveries, Suzanne Kite and Devin Ronneberg’s Itówapi Čík’ala (Little Picture), reveals that these findings are merely affirmations of old ideas. Drawing from a North American First Nations perspective, this immersive installation speaks to the intra-connection of everything, enacting a conversation between human and inhuman. The work is composed of a mass of hanging, hairlike braids, interconnected and entwined from a central ceiling fixture. The strands, woven through with electrical pulses and lights, are responsive to touch, allowing the audience to manipulate the accompanying soundscape. There is a resonance here with Karen Barad’s notion of ‘response-ability’ – an enabling of space for the ‘other’ to respond.

The work asks for, and suggests, a deeper listening, from which a mutual respect between living and nonliving beings can emerge. This sense of respectful symbiosis is reaffirmed within Theresa Schubert’s interactive video installation, Sound for Fungi. Homage to Indeterminacy, which demonstrates intra-affect by inviting the audience into an interspecies experience; performing with the biological processes of fungi mycelium. Meanwhile, Rebecca Selleck’s Snow Rabbits and feeler by m0wson&MOwson each touch on the devastating implications of our prior (and current) lack of respect for ecological systems.

Moving through the gallery, the audience is asked to shift their consideration from present, biological life, to future potential entities. Justine Emard’s video Soul Shift depicts the meeting of two generations of an anthropomorphic robot design. Captured at the point of data transference, we watch the second-gen robot learn to be ‘lifelike’ – voicelessly opening and closing its lips, stretching out its fingers. It appears to be reaching toward its now motionless forebear — trying and failing to connect.

In witnessing this interaction, a deep empathy is stirred, as well as a pondering of the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. This feeling of compassion, carried into viewing Floris Kaayk’s video work The Modular Body, makes the unsettling possible future depicted all the more disturbing – a future where human-constructed organisms are commodity.

Tying these, and the many other affective works together, is a single, hanging bell. Positioned centrally in the gallery’s largest room, Anton Hasell’s 3D Printed Difference Tone Bell (p. 12) references String Theory – the idea that minuscule vibrating strings make up the foundations of all life. Upon chiming the bell, sound resonates throughout the space and the bodies within it. The frequency carries with it a sense that life is not a thing, but a continual motion.

In defining ‘life forms’, we might first question the noun-ness of it. Life, after all, forms. And if ‘life’ is a verb, perhaps it is one that cannot be defined, only felt. Here, it is described – vibrantly, affectively and openly – through the language of emotion. Experimenta Life Forms is a must-feel show.

Experimenta Life Forms is showing at the Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, from March 20th to May 9th, 2021.

Daniel Boyd, History is Made at Night (2013)

Anton Hasell, 3D Printed Difference-Tone Bell (2017) (left) Justine Ermard, Soul Shift (2018) (centre) Agat Sharma, Brachiation on the Phylogenetic Tree (2020) (right)