The Animals Were Never Alone I

Performance, 45 min. Recordings from the archive are played on speakers, mixing with the sound of the public space. An amplified voice shouts out instructions and 4 performers herd the audience as a group to follow along in choreography, listening and reading scripts. Sometimes the instructions are ambigous.

How can I mediate archives through performance, an art form that highlights temporality? Can I transform a collective memory into a collective present?

Walking in a circle, holding a scientist...

- amplified instruction

The Animal Sound Archive is an existing scientific archive. We have created a fictional story about it. Letting our story unfold in a public space, the performance functions as a rupture in the everyday life, a synchronized action where the past and the present overlap. The mechanical nature of a recording is emphasized by looping the sound, turning voices into beats for choreographed movement.

**Playback: Canis_lupus_S0231_01_short.wav** The sound of a dog barking nearby mingles with a recorded dog, a wolf, a screaming seagull, an ice bear...

Walking a little bit faster...

**Playback: Hippopotamus_amphibius_S0287.wav**

Almost holding hands!!

**Script on cardboard (50 pieces in total).** During the performance, a fictional narrative unfolds, told by the participating audience as we read scripts together.