The Human Animal

Across the road from the High Park north entrance, two stone wolves stand in stoic silence, facing away from the public as they stare at the building in front of them. Their backs are worn from weather and children’s feet, and under the belly of one a small pup cranes its neck to observe the busy street behind. Accompanied by an unassuming bronze bench and a vast LED tableau of a digital forest, the installation serves to remind us of the way nature remains connected to urban life.

 The project was highly collaborative, created by Public Studio artists Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky in 2015 with the assistance of Lili Huston-Herterich, Josh Schonblum, Christopher Carlyon Jadoo, as well as students from the OCADU Digital Futures Initiative. The goal of the project was to create a work merging the real and the virtual, and in turn to create a work that was ever changing. To quote Flanders and Sawatzky, “we felt we wanted to create a new kind of public artwork that moves beyond the sculptural and that will never be viewed the same way twice.”[1] [2]

[1] https://www.publicstudio.ca/we-are-all-animals#:~:text=We%20Are%20All%20Animals%20is,of%20ecology%2C%20environmentalism%20and%20technology.  

[2] https://www.toronto.com/news/we-are-all-animals-art-installation-now-up-at-highpark-condominiums-near-high-park-avenue/article_47d2f1f2-6456-5a8b-a9a6-403ead9c7c7c.html         

When viewing the work in person, one must pay close attention to see it, or more accurately to see all of it beyond the wolves – to see the meaning in the intervention. Though the screen and bench are clearly there, they frame the courtyard in a way so natural it casts them into translucency. If I myself had not known of the scope of the project before visiting, I likely would have missed them, or at least not given those elements the credit they deserve.

The LED screen is of particular interest to me, key to the intersection of the work between the physical and the digital. It glimmers in a manner that cannot be captured accurately on camera, especially not in a photo, the way it moves and flashes necessitating an in-person visit. This creates a duality to the meaning of the virtual/physical divide; the virtual aspects of the work can only be accurately displayed in physical space, whereas the sculptural aspects can be viewed in either context with ease. The simulated landscape is a real environment as much as it is a digital one.

Considering the larger implications of the work, it seems to resonate even more greatly now, in a time when disruptions to human commuting patterns have allowed for animals to regain greater control over the urban environment, with sightings of coyotes and wild boar increasing, and even common critters such as racoons becoming more emboldened by an era of reduced human contact.

 To me, this is a reminder that fear and not ‘ownership’ is what keeps our land human-centric – we are not separate from nature, we are just the biggest, most vicious predator.