Ydwine Zanstra

My work is a poetic meditation on how we connect with the animal as an ‘unknown other’ and it examines the language of connection from a posthumanist perspective I'm intrigued by our relationship with nature, and in my work I blend mythology, spirituality, psychology and scientific imagination. In my thesis I wrote about the ‘Interspecies interface’ as a space of uncertainty and creative potential, offering new connections and meanings. In the future, will we be able to truly communicate with animals using AI or through Intuitive Interspecies Communication?

 

I’m exploring the ways in which poetics and artistic research can provide a deeper and critical understanding of what ‘interspecies interfaces’ elucidate about how we relate to otherness. I speculate about more desirable forms of relating characterized by tenderness and by curiosity about the mystery of the unknown other.

 

In my work, drawing plays a central role. Drawing is the oldest and most primeval artform and it is also the art form I trust most. There’s vulnerability and honesty about a drawing – of making that mark – marks and tracks that can be traced and seen; you can see the journey the pressure of the hand has made. Each application of pen to paper is definitive; the ink is permanent, there is no possibility of correction. Drawing is a time-related act; it takes time and it contains time; it’s a kind of slow filming, the layering of images and marks reflecting the process of time’.

 

Metaphorically I think we need to go ‘back to the drawing board’ to redress our relationship with nature.