Carla Bengtson (USA)
Flicker, 2016

c3:initiative, Portland (OR), USA / Visited in July 2016

Bengtson is known for her site-responsive practice focusing on inter-species communication. In Flicker she installed amplifiers attached to gutters that flickers like to drum on – in order to help them to communicate in noisy human-dominated environments.

While I like many of Bengtson’s works and various elements of her methods, some filtering and reinterpretation needs to be made in order to trace any connections to my own practice. There are some obvious superficial elements – Flicker tries to engage with birds through sound, in Birds & Knobs I am also engaging with birds and sound (although very differently). Bengtson works conceptually, mixing media and often inviting participation or interaction – that is also my own modus operandi.

Yet, Bengtson’s work tends to have more pronounced political or ethical stance that I try to avoid in my work as I find it to be a slipper slope into propaganda and normativity that I don’t want in my practice. So while I enjoy the wit and provocation in her attempts to communicate and even conspire with other species, it is more their derivative aspects that become relevant for my work.

The train of thought that emerges starts with the question – “is this primarily for the birds or for the human gallery-goers?”. During my visit I saw a few humans in the room, but have not heard any flickers engaging with the piece. And, in case it is for non-humans, how far could I take it? Could I make a show just for the gallery walls? For the asphalt? For my bed? What could be the implications – both for the post-humanism (could it be exposed as a fake projection targeting humans while pretending to target non-humans? to what extent, on what grounds could humans understand any non-humans and their possible interests without projecting own understandings onto them that may not necessarily be shared by those targeted?), but also for art (is art still art if it is directed to non-humans that are unlikely to even have a concept of “art”; and if it is “in the eye of the beholder” – what would be the status of the artwork in the eyes of the audience that has no concept of art?)… I quite like when this kind of questions arise out of destabilised categories. It is not necessarily that any answer to these particular questions would be valuable in itself, but rather the possibility to think new thoughts, expand the discourse, discover new ways forward while considering them.