Moritz Matschke

Human Storks Tangled Tracks

Beginn des PhD-Programms / Start of the PhD-Program​: SS 2020 Betreuung / Supervision:
Karin Harrasser My artistic research project deals with the performative act of parametrical travelling with storks on their migrational routes. Based on the methods of nowadays animal tracking, both participants are equipped with RDF-transmitters  and connected via telemetrical signals during the travel. On the basis of being on the move with a migrating stork potential forms of mutual subjectivation  between nonhumans and humans are being located. In the moment of simultaneous migration, they are able to transform each others constitution. The tracks of my human-being-in-the-world are becoming temporarily distorted by avian flight ways. For the stork my performative act incorporates a human willingness to listen to their articulations. Through the sometimes productive, sometimes destructive mutual contamination, subversive figures of “Anthropo-zoo-genesis“  may come into being. With this in mind, following their flight ways means to propose and receive other stories, other identities, other worlds in order to destabilize the anthropocentric idea of exclusive human subjectivity.
In addition, my project is dealing with problems of visualisation the relationship between storks and humans. I´m interested in how certain methods of presentation are resulting in certain forms of relationship. How is the relationship changing through different ways of its visualisation? How to make a mutual relationship between nonhumans and humans visible without telling an anthropocentric story? Aside the performative act of parametrical travelling, my tools for elaborating on these questions are imaging processes like photography and film. By showing different moments of closeness and distanceness between the followed storks and myself, the photography and videos made during the period of travelling are serving as a visible reference for my participation in the depiction process and hence calling different qualities of visibilities of my relationship with storks into question. From the 19th of August until the 2nd of December 2018 I realised a first experimental travel with a stork from Kleinfischlingen, Germany, to Kidira, Senegal. During my PhD I will perform at least one more travel with a stork. By my ongoing explorations of the apparatus of satellite based animal tracking, the project will develop into a relevant and subversive contribution to ornithological practices by artistic means. Email-Adresse / Email-Address:
moritz.matschke@kunstuni-linz.at Weblink:
www.moritzmatschke.com