Partition Animale
11.12.2016 – 20.01.2017
ÆTHER, Sofia

A project by Sarah Schönfeld & Adrien Missika

For their exhibition in Aether, Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld and Adrien Missika connect to the spirits of a long extinct species by an embodiment seance. Their aim is to have a clearer vision of the future by gathering lost knowledge from the past. They merge scientific and spiritual approaches like palaeontology and seance for their purpose, using the spectator’s body as a catalyst. For connecting to the deep past, they employ Coprolite: ca. 200 million years old, fossilizes dinosaur excrement from the lower jurassic period. Guests are invited to ingest the fossilised excrements of ancient entities, to digest and decode the information stored in this fossil with their own bodies. The participants are then asked to examine the output for writing down their oracular interpretation of the demineralised organic dino-human hybrid matter. The collected interpretations will be printed and hung in the space for the rest of the exhibition time.

Partition Animale is the first collaboration of Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld and Adrien Missika. It brings together Missika’s interest in time-travel and reenchantment using simple technologies with natural materials such as stones or plants, and Schönfeld’s engagement with oracular practices and alchemical experiments.

-instructions-

Stage I
Enter the room, one or two people at a time.
Meet the hosts.
Look around closely.
Touch the matter. Make first contact.
Choose to participate to this experiment or not.
Leave the room or stay for the next steps.
Pick one element from the Partition Animale.
Ingest the chosen element.
Exit the room.

Stage II (if you participated to stage I)
Pay attention to your body and mind for the next 24h.
Take notes on any remarkable thoughts or feelings.
Pay attention to your next dreams.
Examine your next defecation.
Assemble all your notes.
Analyze what it could possibly represent.
Send your interpretation to: partitionanimale@mail.de

Stage III
An oracle is made from the shared interpretations