Partition Animale
Aether / SOFIA (Bulgaria)
11.12.2016 – 15.01.2017

For their exhibition in Aether, Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld and Adrien Missika connect to the spirits of a long extinct species by an embodiment seance. Their aim is to have a clearer vision of the future by gathering lost knowledge from the past. They merge scientific and spiritual approaches like paleontology and seance for their purpose, using the spectator’s body as a catalyst.
For connecting to the deep past, they employ Coprolite: ca. 200 million years old, fossilized dinosaur excrement from the lower jurassic period. Guests are invited to ingest the fossilized excrements of ancient entities, to digest and decode the information stored in this fossile with their own bodies. The participants are then asked to examine the output for writing down their oracular interpretation of the demineralized organic dino-human hybrid matter.
By reaching far beyond the beginning of humanity with Coprolite and involving the public, the duo reflects on interspecies communication, time consciousness and life-death cycles. Partition Animale is the first collaboration of Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld and Adrien Missika. It brings together Missika’s interest in time-travel and reenchantment using simple technologies with natural materials such as stones or plants, and Schönfeld’s engagement with oracular practices and alchemical experiments.

Courtesy of the artists and Aether