Oliver East’s work
is also concerned with ridiculous feats of endurance and the testing
of arbitrarily imposed limitations. His video concentrates around
an attempt to read Hugh Lofting’s novel ‘Voyages of
Dr. Doolittle’ to a herd of cows over a period of 12 months.
The cows, initially passive and attentive, gradually grew tired
of East’s presence, forcing him to run around in circles to
avoid their disgruntled interruptions. East’s introduction
of culture fails to impress the cattle.
Culture, of course, is always a colonial imposition, just as ‘nature’
is a cultural concept. The herd have always been subjugated by the
whims of the human imagination, their primary role reduced to the
provision of meat and dairy produce. East’s literary endeavours
to emancipate them from this fate through education might be futile,
but they do have a point. In the posthumanist present, evolution
is of our own making a cultural phenomenon akin to art or literature.
In light of this, East carries out limited no budget tests upon
the restrictions we place upon our productions of the ‘natural
world’ and our subsequent relationships with it.
Extract from exhibition essay by curator Dr Neil Mulholland
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independent
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georgian
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artists
