In Disputa de l'ase (1417), the Mallorcan writer Anselm Turmeda tells the story of a man who is judged by an assembly of animals headed by a donkey who, one after another, dismantles his arrogant arguments in favor of human superiority. with respect to other beings until he was surrendered to the last: God was incarnated in man and not in the animal. Six hundred years later, that satire written by one of the founders of Catalan literature serves as inspiration for Bestiari, the audiovisual project by the artist and filmmaker Carlos Casas and the curator Filipa Ramos, with which Catalonia will once again participate in the Venice Biennale ( from April 20 to November 24) within the Eventi Collaterali.
The sound of flocks of parrots flying over urban areas, the screeches of bats, the hisses of snakes, the braying of donkeys, the hum of bees, the clicking of dolphins or the trumpeting of elephants will resonate together. inside the Cantieri Navali, the usual headquarters of the Catalan pavilion produced by the Institut Ramon Llull, creating a sound landscape that will be both real and imagined (obviously no elephants have been found in Montseny) and that will be complemented with an audiovisual which will be partly documentary of the natural places where the bestiary has been recorded, and partly abstract, from images created by simulating the perceptual systems of different animals.
The project will be part of a Biennial curated for the first time by a South American, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, under the motto Foreigners everywhere, in allusion to the presence of emigrants and diasporas but also to the human condition, to be in the deepest all foreigners. “In this context, the proposal may surprise. But in reality what Carlos and Filipa do is take the theme further by placing the other in nature, in animality," says Pere Almeda, the director of the Ramon Llull, for whom the idea is that "we can see nature as part of of what we are, of sharing the same ecosystem and the same universe”, at a time when “humanity is now a form of barbarism. We see it at all levels, in the relationship with the ecosystem and in the relationship with ourselves.”
“The installation proposes Catalonia as a territory in which a conciliatory and non-anthropocentric commitment to the world is possible, where a different future can be desired, imagined and realized for the relationships we establish with other species,” summarizes the curator. Casas, who usually works with sound, film and visual arts, continues these days recording the fauna located in a dozen natural spaces, from the Ebre Delta to Cap de Creus, with which in Venice he will create an immersive soundtrack that will resonate through monumental sculpture-speakers. The artist, whose soundtrack has also included the voice of the pianist and singer Marina Herlop, has used ultrasonic recording systems that will allow the visitor to capture frequencies that are usually outside the human sensory realm.
For Casas, who has worked with the sound specialist Chris Watson, the recordings also had the objective of taking a still photo of the "state of the situation of the Catalan natural parks and their species" so that it can be heard by future generations. “But above all it was about bringing this royal state to Venice, so that visitors can experience the quality of the different natural parks” and that, like the protagonist of Turmeda's work, he has an awakening in which he is able to understand the language of animals”, concludes the artist.
