Intelligent Design
Interspecies Art
September 05, 2009 - February 6, 2010

Opening Reception: September 26, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Sweeney curatorial Walk-Thru, 6:30 -7:00 PM
UCR/CMP curatorial Walk Through, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Public reception continues, 8:00 - 9:00 PM

Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art is a group exhibition of twenty international artists exploring human interaction with animals through a collection of provocative video installations, photographs, paintings, and sculptures.

Artists in the exhibition collaborate with cockroaches, pigeons, dogs, cats, ants, bears, baboons, rats, spiders, trout, and other species, which may be domesticated, imaginary, laboratory, modeled, or wild. Curious about the animal's point of view, artists design their projects as a form of conversation or inquiry about the nonhuman world. Their artwork challenges the anthropocentric perspective of the world, placing human perception on par with other animals. Inspired by Darwin, the environmental movement, and species collapse, Intelligent Design envisions a paradigm shift in which human beings are no longer the center of the Universe.

The exhibition will also stimulate discussions about the differences and similarities of how the arts and sciences approach the world, animals as products, animal rights, conservation, and speciesism, as a form of prejudice against animals. Intelligent Design will be the first exhibition in the U.S. to explore interspecies art, coming on the heels of several exhibitions and conferences in the UK this year that explored the topic in light of this year's 200-year celebration of Charles Darwin's birth.

Organized by UCR Sweeney Art Gallery, and curated by gallery director, Tyler Stallings, and artist/independent curator, Rachel Mayeri.

Curatorial Walk-Through
Walk Through
September 26, 6:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Co-curators of Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art, gallery director, Tyler Stallings, and artist/independent curator, Rachel Mayeri, will provide a walk-thru of this provocative exhibition that explores collaborations between humans and animals, the first such show in the U.S.

Animal Scores, a dance performance
February 4, 2009 Time TBA
Free
Dancers from UCR's Dance department will perform Animal Scores in the Sweeney Art Gallery during First Thursday Artwalk. Animal Scores is a series of movements originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2008 for the Whitney Biennial as part of the on-going Animal Estates initiative by Fritz Haeg, an artist in Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art. Animal Estates produces events and exhibitions to consider the animals that we share our cities with, and creates dwellings for animals that have been unwelcome or displaced by humans. Working with twelve New York based dancers, a 'score' of movements were created to evoke native animals that had been displaced by urban development.

Moving between character and caricature, personification and embodiment, the UCR dancers will explore the kinetic dimensions of animal instincts, gestures, and quirks as they have been 'scored' by Fritz Haeg and his original cast of dance artists. In the effort to recuperate movement languages of the 'non human,' however, how very human we become. This ironic reversal marks a certain impossibility of our creative project, as it reveals the frivolity of our attempts to strip humanness down to its animal parts. In our morphing from owl to monkey man, woman to squirrel, bat, bee, and Mrs. Turtle, we wonder how to move-literally and conceptually-through our mediation of nature and affect.

Organized by Hannah Schwadron

Performed by:
Ann Mazzocca
Natali Micciche
Hannah Schwadron
Crystal Sepulveda
Peter Witrak

Watch a preview of the animal movement rehearsals from the Whitney:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni_6gA_xSww

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhA_TPeor_A

http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/animalestates/prototypes/nyc-scores.html

Closing Reception
Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art
February 06, 2010, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM