Becoming Sheep (2015)

Group Exhibition Efterkommere (Descendants)

Kunstpakhuset Ikast

5 week intra-action with live sheep and multiple others

As a part of a 2015 group exhibition exploring the history and local myths of a woman living in a Danish heath landscape 150 years ago, I connected myself to a live sheep for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 5 weeks, turning us into a hybrid relational assemblage, intra-acting and becoming with the heath habitat, the other by-passing human and non-human animals, the changing weather and their fluctuating biological needs. I wanted to explore the discursive and material effects of a site specific human-nonhuman animal intra-action, to challenge the gendered and anthropocentric reading of a particular historical subject and to explore the messy constituents of the very categories of women and animals.

As a way of exploring my various becomings as a being with sheep, during the 5 week intra-action with sheep No. 2, I used two fellow queer critters as reflectors. By addressing their particular and situated beings, I called forth elements and nuances in my project, already in the being, already having been articulated and figurated, but now while addressing my thoughts to either Donna and Tora – and either in English or Danish (my mother tongue), different relational lines of flight was activated and animated. Enabling me to think twice, to think – folded into other existences. Both human. And non-human. Please see Writing for these autobiographical notes.

One of the last days of the intra-action, a journalist made on-site audio recordings (in Danish), creating unedited live soundscapes of his questions, my reflections, the sounds of wind, traffic and the sheep walking and eating grass:

Becoming Sheep Audio 1 - på heden

med Journalist Mads Bernhardt Jensen

Becoming Sheep Audio 2 - på vej fra hede til gård

med Journalist Mads Bernhardt Jensen

Becoming Sheep Audio 3 - i campingvognen

med Journalist Mads Bernhardt Jensen