[ISEA2012] Artist Talk: Rachel Mayeri – PRIMATE CINEMA

Artist Statement

Primate Cinema, by Rachel Mayeri, is a series video experiments on the subject of the primate order. Primate Cinema: Apes as Family is a two channel video installation: an original drama made expressly for a chimpanzee audience on the one side, and documentation of an actual chimpanzee audience at the Edinburgh Zoo, on the other. Chimps respond to the drama individually – some touch the screen, others ignore it, and some just sit and watch. The two channels create a prism for humans to learn about their primate cousins, who are, like us, fascinated by cinema.