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Once and Ever Alive, Statement by Irene Tsatsos

Tammy Singer, Dr. Carlos Arredondo Antunez, & Alberto del Rey

Los Animistas is a cross-disciplinary team, comprising a visual artist, a video artist, and a biologist/Anthropologist. The team came together to unite artistic and biological investigative fields in considering ethical, aesthetic and ecological issues. In addition to their expertise in their individual fields each of the Los Animistas team have also acquired both art and science credentials in the United States and Cuba. Consequently their collaboration represents not only a union of the artistic and biological, but also of a richly fertile mélange of cultural antecedents. Through their individual careers the Los Animistas team members have all worked extensively with animals, accumulating both hands on experience and academic knowledge. When they function as a group, it is the animal that the team employs as the primary image, 'object' and metaphor of their installations, and recent works have included such taxidermy native Cuban wildlife as vultures, scorpions and crocodiles. Comprising presentation of taxidermy creatures alongside scientific studies, drawings, video footage, photographs, and both natural and artificial artifacts, Los Animistas' installations displace the animals from their natural habitat, bring them into an artistic environment that also inculcates scientific processes, and pose them before us, dead and stuffed. By both intentionally celebrating that bond and deliberately invoking its ties and responsibilities in the integrated contexts of artistic pursuit and scientific investigation, Los Animistas' work powerfully stimulates consideration of the relationship between nature and human culture, and most particularly of the investigative pathologies by which we have defined and examine the 'natural' as an entity separate from ourselves.

Using scientific methods Los Animistas is in the process of studying animals in Cuba that interact with humans with the intention to use the information for the following purposes.  These studies will include examinations of the animal’s structure, function, growth, origin, and evolution in a series of very personal works that also include humans.  

• Present documentation of the animals’ life in this collection of works, and show the social environment surrounding conservation of animals today.
• Find creative ways to present scientific information without altering the original purpose of the studies. 
•  Present a photo/video presentation culled from images taken while studying animals and their relationships with humans.
•  Use the historic artifacts of taxidermy works in an installation without altering their original scientific purpose.
• Educate the viewer on wildlife in Cuba.
• To show links between animals and human interactions with animals.

"Our fascination with animal “skin” appears to spring from our longing for the lost sense of unity with all living beings, which was once ours when we ourselves were still “primitives”.  What we know as the cow, the ox and the bull, are in fact the same species of a larger group of animals called the Artiodactyls Order.  Around the early Eocene Period, the first’s features of these animals became apparent with very particular genus.  A feeling of something forgotten comes to us when presented with primitive animals like the Bos taurus.  Those who view the work are affected by a visceral reaction to the sacrifice of animal life; an atavistic response that draws from ancient man’s relationship with animals he hunted, killed, skinned, ate, and sacrificed."