In the Budongo Trail enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo three chimpanzees sit watching a
video, engrossed in a chimp-centred drama made especially for them by video artist
Rachel Mayeri, the first artist to make a film expressly for chimpanzees.
In Primate
Cinema: Apes as Family, the artist imagines a primate social drama in a contemporary
urban context and shows this to a chimpanzee audience. Her two-screen video installation
juxtaposes the drama enacted by humans in the guise of apes (of a young female city
ape befriending a group of outsiders) with mesmerising footage of the reactions of
its ape audience at Edinburgh Zoo.
"As the watchers of the watching chimps, we perceive—or
we imagine—fascination, puzzlement, and flashes of anger in their responses. Sited
in different spaces in Los Angeles and Edinburgh we are never sure whether we are
seeing a lab, zoo, wildlife park, rumpus room or post-apocalyptic landscape inhabited
by half chimp/half humans," explains The Arts Catalyst's curator, Rob La Frenais.
"Mayeri's intriguing and amusing story-and-response structure contains dark undercurrents
in its contemplation of the lives of our captive close relatives."
Giving chimpanzees
television to watch is not new: chimps in captivity all over the world are often
shown TV as form of environmental enrichment. To make Primate Cinema: Apes as Family,
artist Rachel Mayeri collaborated with comparative psychologist Dr Sarah-Jane Vick,
testing different styles and genres of film to gauge chimps' responses and discussing
issues around cognition and communication in research primates. Mayeri and Vick also
explored the idea of whether chimps 'lose themselves' in what they are watching as
readily as humans.
Rachel Mayeri is a Los Angeles-based artist working at the intersection
of art and science exploring subjects ranging from the history of special effects
to the human animal. In 2009 her Primate Cinema: Baboons as Friends (2007), a film
noir re-enactment of a baboon social drama with human actors, was presented by The
Arts Catalyst as part of Interspecies: artists collaborating with animals in London
and Manchester. The leading electronic arts festival—Prix Ars Electronica—awarded
Primate Cinema: Apes as Family an honorary mention and a version of the video was
previewed at O.K Cyberarts 11 in Linz, Austria, 2011.
Exhibition 19 October - 13 November 2011. The Arts Catalyst, 50-54 Clerkenwell Road
- London EC1M 5PS. Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-6pm, Thursday 12-8pm, admission
free.
Rachel Mayeri, Primate Cinema : Apes as Family, 2011. 22 minute dual-screen video
installation (stills)
