SHIFTERS
The French revolution and its legacy, ideas of liberty and equality, are in an urgent need of updating: the brotherhood of men first did not include women (nor enslaved people and children), while even today, it still does not include other-than-human species. We need to rethink our position in the world to reinvent and rebuild our community with all beings on Earth. Only then will the true meaning of coexistence be fulfilled.
The Shifters project started as archival research and a collection of articles about animal spies. Suspicious squirrels, spying dolphins, misidentified storks, nuclear lizards, photographer pigeons – all these animals were accused of spying and appeared in mainstream media.
Following the line of thought set by Éric Baratay, a French historian, who coined the term ‘history from an animal point of view’, it investigates and revisits the visual history of animals in wars and espionage, in services like the Red Cross or police. It analyses the meaning of the term ‘agent’ itself: a spy but also a subject performing actions. Taking into account such an interesting twist of animal agency, the project relates this multifaceted history of animals in war to that of their liberation and rights. The images used in this project are the ones circulating on the web, called ‘weak images’ by Hito Steyerl.
I would like to propose a selection of works from the Shifters project that will showcase other-than-human animals as characters, as subjects with agency, as agents of history, who actively shape its fenomena. The project evokes their presence, lives and experiences, because they cannot easily do so themselves. The issue of looking beyond the anthropocentric horizon is one of the most pressing and complex of our times.
