viz.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

While in Star Wars, Lonesome Dove and True Grit we saw particular examples of the relationships humans have with horses —relationships that always seem to oscillate between recognizing horses as companions and treating them as bare property. And while with Jasha Lottin (NSFW) we saw in her slaughter and photo shoot the extent to which these animals are splayed out as props for both viewers and those actually interacting with actual horses. With a piece titled Que le cheval vive en moi, May the Horse Live in me in English, and created and performed by Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoit Mangin (together they compose Art Orienté Objet) we can begin to see the emergence of a differently possible relationship between humans and horses.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via plastik

What is especially interesting about Laval-Jeantet’s transformation is that it is largely hidden from view. As spectators we can see her prosthetic hooves and her interactions with the horse. We can partially see the process she has undergone; she presents that process as a documented and material aspect of the performance, but if we consider the actual performance the intimate relationship she is building with this animal, then we must admit that not only is her transformation private but that the core of her art is too. May the Horse Live in me, then, is ultimately an unseen piece of performance art that can only be gestured toward. The action of it, her feelings, her blood, the relationship (material and immaterial both) formed between her and the horse can only be speculated at. Unlike every other piece that I’ve considered over the past several blog posts looked at where and how the horse is deliberately captured as a spectacle upon which humans act. Laval-Jeantet does not seem to capture or use the horse; instead, she only hints at her relationship with it. 

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

About the performance they note that “As a radical experiment whose long-term effects cannot be calculated, Que le cheval vive en moi questions the anthropocentric attitude inherent to our technological understanding. Instead of trying to attain ‘homeostasis,’ a state of physiological balance, with this performance, the artists sought to initiate a process of ‘synthetic transi-stasis,’ in which the only constant is continual transformation and adaptation. The performance represents a continuation of the centaur myth, that human-horse hybrid which, as ‘animal in human,’ symbolizes the antithesis of the rider, who as human dominates the animal.”( Art Orienté Objet via BuzzFeed)

By slowly taking a horse’s plasma into her body Laval-Jeantet began to engage a very particular sort of becoming. Toward forming this new sort of relationship with a horse she had to acculturate her body to the particulars of the horse’s. And even while something like 95% of the cells (by count, not weight) in a human body are nonhuman and while our DNA can hardly be called our own—so much of it matches other organisms’, and it is streaked through with the remains of viruses—the process of welcoming more cohesive aspects of another’s body—the plasma and immunoglobins in this case--is still a violent act. It’s tricky enough just transferring blood from human to human, but interspecies transfers add another layer of difficulty.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

So that when Laval-Jeantet began welcoming in the horse’s plasma and immunoglobins  she performed a peculiar kind of autoimmunity. Looking toward autoimmunity broadly we can see an event where a body turns on its own protection and ultimately allows others entry. This occurs in cultures and institutions and bodies of all sorts. And in this case, where Laval-Jeantet underwent a months long process of slowly introducing horse immuniglobulins to her own bloodstream, rather than deliberately destroying her immune system she pulled the wool over its eyes—or, more generously, convinced it to play (nice) with the horse. 

Image Credit: Miha Fras via plastik

About the entire process she notes. "I had the feeling of being extra-human… I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.' (we make money not art via Centre Presse) 

While Laval-Jeantet worked at an intertwined horsey becoming HumanimalAlex, a youtube user and member of the ongoing art group HumanimaL, performs a different kind of transformation. If Laval-Jeantet’s relationship with the horse seems bound in blood Alex’s is skin deep. Through a blend of exquisite full body makeup, a mask and tail, and deliberate movements Alex, rather than appearing horselike, appears to appear horselike. So that even with the tail and hooves and mask his humanness shines through (with the explicit dominance of the human being, I’m sure, purposeful). Rather than moving toward a relationship with the horse this sort of transformation invokes the horse as an inspiration for particularly human behaviors. It’s noted on HumanimaL’s website that these performances are for hire and that “this undeniably unique act is guaranteed to turn heads, no matter what the occasion so use your Humanimal to show the wild side of your event, conference, opening or launch.” Here the specter of the animal is mobilized for the distinctly human designs. Like in Lottin’s photos the horse, here blended into human forms, is reproduced as a prop. Unlike Marion Laval-Jeantet’s private relationship with the horse Alex’s is formed entirely in the public eye. And while his work turns heads Laval-Jeantet’s gives us the opportunity to imagine what a differently organized relationship might look like.