2024 - work in progress
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN (Anas oustaleti) a memoir/grimoire of falling together in time and going forth by day
This multimedia process-heavy project manifesting in video, text, and still images arose out of the collective artist project Delisted, stewarded by evolutionary biologist and poet Jennifer Calkins, "an emergent project dedicated to communal, creative, and essential grief work in relation to more than human bodies that were once, but are possibly no longer in the world." The entry point for all human participants in this project was the name of a species proposed for 'delisting' under the U.S. Endangered Species Act–we each were assigned a species that was to be removed from the US government's official list of beings considered endangered and therefore worthy of protection, due to no human going on record as having recently witnessed them–while also not being declared officially extinct. Calkins asked that we co-create with this species: connect and be with and bring attention and relationship to them. The process of my seeking relationship included ritual and pilgrimage in which my own personal grieving, healing, and regeneration intermingled with my devotions and acts of restitution paying respects to animist ecosystems, amongst general consideration of the sorrows and bad actors of the Anthropocene and mass extinction underway, while connecting to a being of liminal spacetime and in the process watery tutelary and patron spirits.
Full-length video is currently at 28 minutes—below is an 8-minute excerpt/trailer. First public exhibition installation of still images, text and mixed media appears in Interstitial: Rituals of the Betwixt and Between, May 4-7 at Safehouse 1, London.