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Research title 'Putting animals on display: geographies of taxidermy practice'. Summary of research This doctoral research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, award number 05/116126.
Thesis abstract
‘Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals, dessicated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed plants; that was all! I was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been attained.’ (H. G. Wells, The Time Machine)
Taxidermy specimens and displays have become increasingly liminal features in contemporary society. Viewed variously as historical curios, obsolete relics or more malignantly as ‘monstrosities’, they can be a source of discomfort for many. Taxidermy objects have become uncomfortable reminders of past scientific and colonial practices which have sought to capture, order and control animated life and as such have become increasingly problematic items for their owners. As a result many taxidermy displays have been dismantled and mounts relegated to ‘backstores’ to gather dust. The paradox is that taxidermy as a practice is a quest for ‘liveness’, to impute life back into the dead. Much like the taxidermist, my goal in this thesis is to revive and restore: to renew interest in and reassert the value of taxidermy collections by recovering what I term as the ‘biogeographies’ of their making and continued maintenance.
Considerable academic attention has been paid to the ‘finished’ form and display of taxidermy specimens inside cabinets, behind glass – in other words, to their representation (e.g. Haraway 1989; Wonders 1993; Ryan 2000). By way of contrast, this thesis recovers the relationships, practices and geographies that brought specimens to their state of enclosure, inertness and seeming fixity. These efforts are aligned with work in cultural geography seeking to counteract ‘deadening effects’ in an active world through a prioritisation of practice (Dewsbury and Thrift 2000), and elsewhere draw on research arguments and approaches originating in historical geography, and the history of science.
The thesis firstly investigates historical developments in the scientific and craft practice of taxidermy through the close study of period manuals, combined with ethnographic observations of a practicing taxidermist. Critical attention to practice then facilitates the recovery of the lifeworlds of past taxidermy workshops and the globally sited biogeographies behind the making of individual specimens and collections. The thesis required the purposeful assemblage and rehabilitation of diffuse zoological and historical remains to form unconventional archives, enabling a series of critical reflections on the scientific, creative and political potentials of taxidermy.
Practical outcomes
‘… their existence in themselves reverberates with a menacing excess allowing for potential monstrosities to be enacted.’ (Dewsbury 2000: 491).
Taxidermy specimens are contested objects. As such, they occupy increasingly marginal positions in contemporary society, posing difficult questions for museums and scientific collections in an era of interactive display and communication. Paradoxically, they remain a source of wonder for many visitors, and a favourite museum exhibit among children. Part of the goal of my doctoral thesis was to renew interest in, and reassert the value of taxidermy specimens and collections through collaborative exchange with museum practitioners and artists. The exhibitions Blue Antelope and out of time outlined below were the practical outcomes of different investigations by geographers and artists into how zoological collections can be reactivated (see Foster and Lorimer 2007; Patchett 2008; Patchett and Foster 2008).
out of time: an exhibition inspired by the arts of taxidermy
This exhibiton took place in association with The Glasgow Science Festival from 29th May - 27th June 2007 at the Huntarian Zoological Museum, Graham Kerr Building, University of Glasgow.
out of time was a practical outcome of different, inter-disciplinary investigations into the ways that zoological collections can be reactivated. The craft of taxidermy gave a frame for providing information as well as artistic departure. A collective of exhibitors teased out particular aspects of a specimen's object history and entanglements with human activity, present and past. Being familiar with the museum, exhibitors used the institutional setting strategically, making juxtapositions, exposing tensions between states of life and death, nature and culture, the artificial and the real. Work was presented by artists Kate Foster (exhibition curator), Andrea Roe and Jethro Brice, and geographers Hayden Lorimer and Merle Patchett.
Blue Antelope
'By which world should the Blue Antelope be known? By what territorial arrangement should we place it? And according to whose voice, language and values?'
Blue Antelope is an art-geography collaboration which charts the diverse lives of an extinct antelope from the starting point of a rare skull of the animal held in the Hunterian collection. The resulting exhibition, seminar and website brought together work by Kate Foster, Hayden Lorimer, Star Douglas and Merle Patchett, in association with Maggie Reilly of the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow.
*The exhibition took place from 21 August-24 November 2006, at the Huntarian Zoological Museum, University of Glasgow.
*The accompanying seminar Making Animal Afterlives took place at the museum on November 22nd 2006 .
*The website www.blueantelope.info brings together collaborative work on the Blue Antelope and recasts it in other contexts. This is the most comprehensive source of information available about the animal, and is available to those who cannot actually see the skull (the skull is presently on display in the newly refurbished Hunterian). The website, is framed by the artistic practice of environmental artist, Kate Foster. The objective of Foster's work is to extract specimens from their zoological niches and then on their return, re-present them to offer an expanded repertoire of interpretation and engagement. Through an exchange of drawings, writings, and ideas, the website generates new ways for people to engage with the few remains left of the Blue Antelope.
Awards and Prizes
Nov 08, AHRC award for Student-Led Initiative:
I was awarded a small grant from the AHRC Collaborative Research Training Scheme for the Student-Led Initiative Practising Historical Geography / Spaces of, and for Historical Geography that took place 5th/6th of November 2008, jointly hosted by the Geography Departments of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow.
Sept 07, Nature Behind Glass poster prize:
Lively geographies of dead animals is a poster which explores the tangle of beings, practices and places that go into the making of a taxidermy mount. As a product of co-enquiry, Merle Patchett and Kate Foster prepared a poster for Nature Behind Glass, a conference at the University of Manchester in September 2007. It was awarded first prize for "most innovative content" in the MGHG poster competition at the conference and is being developed for publication.
Links and Associations
www.blueantelope.info
www.meansealevel.net - Artwork by Kate Foster
www.incidentalrelationships.com - Artwork by Andrea Roe
I am currently the Honorary E-circulation Officer of the Historical Geography Research Group Supervisors Dr Hayden Lorimer
Professor Chris Philo
Recent publications Patchett, M. (2007) 'Animal as Object: taxidermy and the charting of afterlives' - an unpublished web-essay, www.blueantelope.info View full text >> Patchett, M. (2008) 'Tracking tigers: recovering the embodied practices of taxidermy', Historical Geography 36, 17-39. Patchett, M. and Foster, K. (2008) 'Repair work: surfacing the geographies of dead animals', Museum and Society v.6(2), 98-122. View full text >> |
