Following from Tate Modern’s 2022 Counter Encounters series titled Several Encounters over Plants, A Cage Named Garden takes viewers to the zoo.
Conceived by writer and curator Filipa Ramos, the programme looks at the modes of observation and inquiry created by zoological gardens and how they influence both viewers during their leisure time and those artists who have chosen these environments as a source of intellectual, affective and creative input.
A Cage Named Garden brings together the work of artists Simone Forti, Patrick Goddard, Roman Selim Khereddine and Jeannette Muñoz to consider the artistic gaze towards the exhibition of nature and the complex and often troubled histories that surround the zoo as a place and apparatus for learning, entertainment and ideological aims.
The screening is co-presented with the Institut Français du Royaume Uni. A second programme curated by Filipa Ramos will be held on 31 October at the Institut Français du Royaume Uni.
Introductions
Patrick Goddard, Animal Antics, 2021, 4K video, b/w, 5.1 sound, 37 min 54 sec
Patrick Goddard’s Animal Antics is a philosophical and comical short story. Shot at the London Zoo, the film portrays the conversations between Sarah, a young human, and Whoopsie, her talking dog, about the troubled state of nature.
Roman Selim Khereddine, behind a thousand bars no world, 2023, colour video, 20 min 38 sec
Roman Selim Khereddine’s behind a thousand bars no world discloses the state of zoological gardens in Palestine through news and reports written about them in the media. The film reflects on the conditions of confinement, territorial deprivation and impoverished living conditions experienced by animals and humans.
Jeannette Muñoz, Strata of Natural History, 2012, 16mm film, 11 min 45 sec
Jeannette Muñoz’s Strata of Natural History poetically portrays the artist’s search for traces of the Kawéskar indigenous people exhibited in European zoos during the 1880s. Combining archival materials and present-day footage to entangle Chile’s past and present naturecultures (a concept, coined by Donna Haraway, that assumes that nature and culture are co-dependent and cannot be separated).
Simone Forti, Untitled, 1974, VHS tape transferred to black and white video, 29 min
Closing the programme, Simone Forti’s Untitled is a rare documentation of her engagement with zoo animals. Shots of animals in captivity alternate with images of Forti. Locked up in an empty indoor space, she moves like a zoo animal: crawling, striding, endlessly pacing back and forth.
Conversations between Filipa Ramos and the filmmakers
Lisbon-born Filipa Ramos, Ph.D., is a writer and curator whose research focuses on how culture addresses ecology. She is Lecturer at the Institute Art Gender Nature in Basel, curator of Art Basel Film and founded the online artists’ cinema Vdrome. She edited Animals (MIT Press/Whitechapel, 2018), curated “Animalesque” (2019) (Baltic, Gateshead), and in 2024 she curated “Bestiarium”, the Catalan Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale.
You can enter via the Cinema entrance, left of the Turbine Hall main entrance, and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner street. The Starr Cinema is on Level 1 of the Natalie Bell Building. There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Natalie Bell buildings. Alternatively, you can take the stairs. There is space for wheelchairs and a hearing loop is available. All works screened in the Starr Cinema have English captions.
- Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses.
- A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4.
- Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks.
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