Trout Fishing in America and other Stories

Through humour, wonder and surprise, this installation of photographs, videos and sculpture by Mark Wilson & Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir explored the complexity of human-animal interactions and their combined impact on ecologies. The pair explored the networked effects of conservation initiatives in Arizona: over two years they researched programs underway to reintroduce the California Condor and the Humpback Chub into the Grand Canyon. The installation included multiple independently identified and named works including You Must Carry Me Now, Knock on Wood, Field Marshal of the Animal Revolution (from insult to injury), The Species Wall. The work has featured in multiple international conference papers, presented both by the artists and by others including Cary Wolfe (Rice University, Houston), Steve Baker (UCLAN) etc. A film version of the work YMCMN featured in the environmental exhibition Challenge at the United Nations Building in New York in 2016.

Following discussions with scientists at ASU and beyond, the artists focused on the plight of two endangered species, indigenous to the Grand Canyon in Arizona – one, a fish (the humpback chub) living at the bottom of the canyon, in the rivers and creeks of the main stem Colorado and the other, a bird (the California Condor). Both species are sustained on human conservation life-support systems within an environment that, despite this care and ‘stewardship’, ironically and tragically, remains hostile by humans. Central to the research and to the resulting work is this paradox – that for a variety of reasons, whilst as a species we may recognise surmountable environmental problems, the cultural determinants are such that conservation practice must be maintained only as an additional layer to the problem, rather than as any kind of sustainable antidote. The human-environmental threat that prompts conservation action is sustained in parallel to a counteractive process. Whilst scientists are specific in their focus and much of the conservation work that is being done is driven or audited by the collection and processing of hard data, as artists, we approach the enterprise more broadly. We consider the science not as monolithic and unassailable in its authority but as being both within and a product of its cultural and social contexts. Accordingly, in this project, we were interested in allowing public conception and interpretation to resonate with the findings of science alongside those observations of field scientists which on one hand come as a consequence of their protracted proximity to subject, but which, not being central to their funded research, is therefore usually overlooked and consequently, lost. The research was carried out in multiple field trips during 2013, 2014 and 2015.