Nonhumotion
Summary
"In the future, we as nonhumans, how do we?"
We are slow to see the impacts of climate change, because their effects are often far removed from our immediate space and time. Their effects on planet are aggregated based on hundreds of years of human intervention and unsustainable practices that mother nature has absorbed, so that their immediate effects on us are barely visible. To engage people to look beyond the immediate, we designed a participatory engagement with participants to imagine climate futures through the lens of nonhuman perspectives. Local participants engaged in creation workshops by professors at BaptistU, PolyU, Academy of Performing Arts, and City University of Hong Kong. They created stories that narrate this future, created movement and presentation engagements to show these stories, and constructed objects from found materials designed for this future of warming oceans and gradual loss of biodiversity. We show these participatory narratives as found-material sculptures, and videos that uses motion capture data of the participants' body movement to propel designed nonhuman avatars, illustrating beyond-human perspectives. The interactive installation shows this vision of a future nonhuman perspective periodically interrupted by the presence of visitors in the exhibition space in Taikwun. This work highlights participatory practices for thinking beyond immediate futures in envisioning the effect of climate change on our natural habitat, using movement and narrative creation as interventions for engaging in speculative futures.
Interactive installation in collaboration with Picture Rhythm Studios. Lighting by LCM Leung. Musical composition for the show by environmental artist Dr. Kat Austen.
Exhibition website: Nonhumotion.