A Turtle and Two Squirrels Walk Into a Bar…
Much of my work has focused on two themes: how humans relate to and filter the natural world, and the ways by which that world forms its complex systems. For A Turtle and Two Squirrels Walk Into a Bar…, I return to one of my earliest concerns: the effects of human activities on wild animals.
For this, my first video project, I use low-tech, child-like means to “animate” taxidermied specimens so they can comment on their lives in this contemporary, human-dominated world. Such events as deforestation or loss of fresh water cause consternation or bewilderment. A sea turtle swims laden with marine debris. A seagull searches for the inundated shoreline where it used to nest. I think of these works as as similar to political cartoons, in that they use humor to make pointed observations about serious situations.
In installation, the videos play simultaneously on 19” monitors, each movie looping continuously. Viewers move among the monitors while the soundtracks (at modest volume) provide a changing relationship among the predicaments featured in the videos.
Synopses of plots
God it’s hot. A tree squirrel and a ground squirrel are quiet in the heat, other than an outburst by the ground squirrel. The tree squirrel starts to respond but is too hot to really comment.
White coral is dead coral. A porcupine fish and a triggerfish swim along their bleached, dying coral reef. Their home is turning white (“bleaching”) and dying because global warming has made the water too hot.
Where’s the water? A lake where migrating ducks stop to rest has dried up and an incoming duck belatedly notices the only duck present is dead.
Where’s the shoreline? A seagull flies back and forth over its breeding grounds, which have been inundated by rising sea level.
No comment. A sea turtle is laden with marine debris. The debris also covers the coral reef, part of which has died and turned white. The turtle can’t really talk or eat because of the plastic ring and fishing line around its head.
I’m confused. A caiman has been affected by endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the water (probably an estrogen mimic) so that it has both male and female characteristics (which would hamper or prevent reproduction). The turtle, who wandered in to visit the caiman, explains this to the caiman.
Eichhornia crassipes…. A muskrat’s home pond is covered with an exotic, invasive weed. The turtle from Goddamn cars makes a cameo appearance. The turtle is a knowledgeable curmudgeon.
My god. Two parrots wonder where they can live, now that their forest has been suddenly logged.
There’s no milkweed. Migrating monarch butterflies search in vain for milkweed (on which to deposit their eggs) amid monocultures of genetically modified corn in the American midwest.
Goddamn cars. A turtle’s habitat is fragmented by a highway, and the turtle is in danger of becoming roadkill.
“Like the foot of an elephant….” A duck reads aloud a prediction from a James Lovelock book about global climate change to a group of animals affected by warming temperatures.
Oh god…. An African grey parrot living in Mexico reads a World Wildlife Fund newletter article about Mexican wildlife trafficking by organized crime. His audience of local wildlife responds with alarm.
Where’s Rocky tonight? An opossum and two skunks eating cat food wonder about the missing raccoon.
Carol Selter
2011