TRANSZOO - ZOONATION
Spleen Touristique
1.
‘Before there was the railway, time was inaccurate and local. Before there
was the animal park, the exotic nature was wild and far away. … Zoo and
railway station became serving-hatches that brought the desire for distance.’1
2.
August 2001: Start of the Zoonation project.
During the summer I discovered the closed zoo in Zwartberg and the attached
file. I started to collect information about the fascinating, lost zoological
garden. Via Department Animal welfare, CITES, ISIS and other databases with
relation to fauna and flora I was able to trace the new destinations of the
remaining animals. By consulting archives, interviewing and infiltrating in
an environment I’m not acquainted with, namely this of the zoo world and
the taxidermy, a web arose, which branched off more and more. I bridged physical
and mental boundaries. I left for Spain, Germany, South-Africa, Taiwan …
. By this, I introduced myself in an unconventional way into a network through
the always-returning reference with the ex-zoo. The Zoonation project evolved
towards an artistic research in which I work with the concept of animal parks
in our society, a reflection of her identity and the reconstruction of the sketchy
remains of a disappeared zoo.
3. Intermezzo
During my search, new links are formed rather impulsively and on an arbitrary
way. The constructed world of the animal park is a geographical intersection
of different scapes. A meeting point between the commonplace and the exceptional.
‘The zoo is the place where the city betrays herself, where she tries
to deny her urban identity and pretends to be wilderness.’2 The visual
associations and observations arise from several lines of approach and are incorporated
through imageries, signs and texts which refer to other levels that are present
in a zoo. The symbolism of the animal park and the zoo-culture shows in an indirect
way strong similarities with certain tendencies in our society and is inextricably
connected with the society that brought these meanings about. Differences in
cage design with rock formations! From the Oral, artificial ice floes or hyper
realistic dioramas with desert landscapes. Indication-signs, painted ground-maps,
zoo shuttles and funicular railways with splattering wide views. These are visual
details that give a subtle inside in the genesis, evolution, ideology of animal
parks and their contact with economic and scientific aspects. Because economic
structures in a zoo are engaged in tourist standards and bear on the amusement
of their visitors. But entertainment is always related with the reporting and
information of research programs through which the visitor can form a picture
of the breeding programs, behavioural patterns, conservation and ecology. All
this means that contemporary policymakers of zoological gardens have to consider
subjects like infotainment, disney-ization and ecological architecture.
4. January 2004.
Until now, the Zoonation project has been, like former public projects and utopian
interventions, rather sound out. It has become the continuation of earlier themes
and fascinations for artificial constructions and theme parks. A lasting engagement
in the research for the occupation of public space and the relation with the
viewer. This is why the final result of Zoonation isn’t a report with
a concluding story. It is not the end. Through the visual associative approach
and a not specific directed angle of incidence, it did not end up as a scientific
result about the working of a zoo. Moreover, it’s too limited in clear
information to be a pure journalistic documentary. 5.
“Then, what is it?” It’s the story about the Zoonation project
that wants to be poetic, critical and investigating. A web of starting points
that concentrates on the contemporary visual culture, zoology, history, archaeology,
culture philosophy, sociology and geography. Through personal routes, the reader
chooses to form individual links and to reflect on non-sites versus tourist
hotspots. I also take the time to let my own explored, followed traces get a
chance. Zoonation is an absurd travelling guide, in which the visual saunter
balances on an edge between reality and fiction, between virtuality and the
concrete cases and that gives a chance to the all-embracing functions of an
animal park.
January 2004.
Filip Van Dingenen.
www.fantaman.net
1 David Van Reybrouck, De
dierentuin, een schitterend bedrog, De Morgen 03/08/2002
2 David Van Reybrouck, De dierentuin, een schitterend bedrog, De Morgen 03/08/2002