Mar­sha Pearce

For artist Michelle Eistrup, her ex­plo­ration of spaces and the in­ter­ac­tions be­tween hu­man be­ings and an­i­mals be­gan with a vis­it in 1996 to the city of Harar in Ethiopia."Peo­ple and hye­nas live close to each oth­er there. That re­al­ly struck me. No one was run­ning. The hye­nas would feed next to the peo­ple. They have been co­ex­ist­ing for many years," Eistrup said. Since then, some of her video art has fo­cused on the prox­im­i­ty of the ur­ban and the wild. Her lat­est video project has been de­vel­oped in Trinidad.With sup­port from the Dan­ish Arts Coun­cil, Eistrup spent the months of Ju­ly and Au­gust as an artist in res­i­dence at the Al­ice Yard space in Wood­brook, where she worked on both a light in­stal­la­tion and a video. As the cu­ra­tor of Bridg­ing Art and Text, a plat­form that seeks to cre­ate net­works be­tween Scan­di­na­vian writ­ers and vi­su­al artists and cre­atives op­er­at­ing in Africa and the Caribbean, Eistrup al­so spent time meet­ing with Trinidad-based artists.

Eistrup is not a new­com­er to the Caribbean. She was born in Den­mark to a Ja­maican moth­er and Dan­ish fa­ther. She grew up in Ja­maica, Paris and New York. Her new video is en­ti­tled Pitch Mold­ed An­i­ma­bil­i­ty and she has been busy in Trinidad shoot­ing and edit­ing in prepa­ra­tion for screen­ing the work in Sep­tem­ber as part of the Ren­dezvous with Na­ture ex­hi­bi­tion in Oulu, Fin­land. Seg­ments of the video are shot in Sene­gal; Eistrup di­rect­ed her lens at the don­keys there."When I go to a place, I don't start film­ing the peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly. I fol­low the an­i­mals be­cause they tell some­thing about space and give en­try to the peo­ple," she said.Her ex­pe­ri­ence of the don­keys in Sene­gal raised for her key ques­tions about spa­tial re­la­tion­ships and the bonds we can have with each oth­er."I no­ticed that the don­keys were al­lowed to come in­to the sta­di­um while the guys were play­ing foot­ball. That tells me the peo­ple are not con­cerned about be­ing so pre­cise about where an ac­tiv­i­ty can take place. For me that ques­tions the no­tion of bound­aries. If there are no bound­aries what does that say about the ca­pac­i­ty of peo­ple to be open?"

It is this abil­i­ty of an­i­mals to point the way to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of deep­er hu­man in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty that is bound up in the mean­ing of the word "an­i­ma­bil­i­ty"."An­i­ma­bil­i­ty is a word I made up. It sug­gests what an­i­mals can do. The word is about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of what an­i­mals have–of what they can teach us," said Eistrup.An­i­mals found in Trinidad are al­so part of her new work. She has spent time in Ch­aguara­mas, Ca­roni and La Brea cap­tur­ing im­ages of birds and snakes.She has al­so filmed the Pitch Lake, us­ing its bub­bling, mal­leable sur­face as a sym­bol of the po­ten­tial for re­shap­ing and mold­ing hu­man so­ci­ety in pos­i­tive ways.Eistrup said, "Pitch is earth that is worth so much. It is a rich source of pos­si­bil­i­ties."For the artist, Pitch Mold­ed An­i­ma­bil­i­ty car­ries sev­er­al lay­ers of sig­ni­fi­ca­tion with its at­ten­tion to sound, light and move­ment in space, but fun­da­men­tal­ly the video con­sid­ers, as she put it, "whether we are con­struct­ing so­ci­eties in which we can live–so­ci­eties that are for our ben­e­fit."Blocks away from Al­ice Yard, at the Au­gus­tus Williams Wood­brook Play­ground, chick­ens marched across the grass, while chil­dren spun on a mer­ry-go-round and adults chat­ted on the pe­riph­ery.

More In­fo: michelleeistrup.com