A conversation between Dirk Snauwaertand Annie Ratti
Dirk Snauwaert: You have developed a project on an important aspect of the Ecocide by making an encyclopedia of extinct animal species. About what time did you decide to develop this repertorium and index? Was there a specific event that triggered your decision, or was it a logical aspect of an ongoing programmatic interest in the ecological and the biomorphic.
Annie Ratti: I would say that it was an inevitable development of my long-term interest in animals, and of the ongoing relationship with them that has shaped much of my work. My interest in extinct species developed alongside an interest in ‘becoming-animal’, in human–animal metamorphosis, from which the Dolphin, the Bombyx Mori and the Fox projects also emerged. All explore material points of contact between humans and animals. They are rooted, on the one hand, in myth, and on the other, in critical studies and practices that, in response to anthropocentrism, propose forms of cohabitation with nature. From this arose my concern about the damage an anthropocentric perspective can cause, and my research on extinct animals became part of a broader engagement with climate change and sustainable practices.
DS: The scientifical research follows a rationalistic logic which, critical voices could argue, serves to confirm anthropomorphic exceptionalism. Since a straightforward cataloguing and listing in the index is, on one hand, an objective approach to the cataclysmic dimension of extinction, the quantification of species, the naming, all stay within the realm of this rational objectification. That said, I can imagine that this list was also, in a way, a pragmatic decision, since our world has not retained images of all the species that are extinct, and many disappeared before the systematic or methodical photographing of animals in zoomorphic albums. The world only accidentally made images of rare species such as the Dodo, or the Tasmanian tiger.
AR: Scientific categorization—an expression of rationalist, modernist, and progressive thought whose extreme consequences have led to the extinction of animal species—has in some sense ‘closed down’ animal imaginaries by essentializing them into sets, subsets, and nomenclatures that are undoubtedly valid, but always partial. By treating animals as inert objects of study, scientific inquiry has, on the one hand, crucially contributed to their knowledge and recognition; on the other, it has in some way deprived them of their agency and, if you will, their opacity.
In the context of extinction, scientific lists are almost the only tools we have to imagine the vast biodiversity we have helped destroy. Using them does not mean being complicit with or endorsing a technocratic modernist mindset; rather, it acknowledges the cognitive horizons within which we, as human beings responsible for ecocide, move and have moved. This is also why, I would say, the register was displayed alongside the tapestries, almost as a counterpoint: the former is an expression of the rationalist logic at the origin of anthropocentrism and, by virtue of its exaggerated repetition, questions that logic’s authority and drains it of epistemic exceptionality; the latter, instead, express a memory that is not philologically documentary and that passes through the collective unconscious and the free, associative circulation of images.
DS: You have chosen to complete the index by the medium of banners, more specifically felt banners, accompanying the register, the index.
AR: Banners are used in ceremonies, processions, parades, protests, and socio-political movements. They belong to the public sphere and carry strong messages. In this project, they are accompanied by lighting and tower lights made from recycled public-lighting systems. The choice of banners is therefore closely linked to their public function.
The choice of felt is rooted in its distinctive properties. One of the oldest known textiles, felt was first developed in Anatolia and is formed when wool fibers compact under pressure and movement, such as beneath saddles or feet. Wool felt also references Montessori pedagogy: its tactility and softness make it especially suitable for contact with children.
DS: The compositions—if I can call them that—look like patterns, or ‘model patterns’, as if you draw or distill from the morphology of a distinct species the unique feature that one should conserve in order to keep a memory of this inalienable specificity of a complex organism. Can we read the felt banners as some kind of ‘model pattern’ laboratory of distinct forms?
AR: The patterns I created are based on details extracted from archival images of extinct animal species. My aim was to evoke the animals without representing them figuratively, translating their presence through fragments of their silhouettes. I developed the patterns by overlapping positive and negative forms to create cut-out motifs. These forms became evocative traces through which the animals’ presence could still be felt. To avoid a conventional composition, I arranged the cut-outs within a horizontal and vertical grid, giving the work a quasi-archival structure. Yet this archival order is also meant to be unsettled: the composition is not meant to be read in a single, fixed way, but remains open, intuitive, and perceptual. Its legibility depends on the viewer’s interpretive effort, almost like recognizing shapes in clouds—a process that combines personal imagination with shared cultural and unconscious patterns.
DS: This ‘patterning’ on the banners, with the positive forms on a darker background, inevitably make us think of another catalogue of incommensurable shapes, the Mnemosyne Atlas by Aby Warburg. Is the choice for a ‘modernist’ look and feel of a model of biomorophic abstraction – with it’s obvious links to Paris School vitalist or Orphic abstraction – a deliberate aesthetic choice, or is it a happy coincidence or consequence of the choice of materials, techniques and the felt banner support?
AR: Aby Warburg theorized that images never truly die: they survive in transformed forms, migrating across eras and cultures. In this project, images of extinct animals are not mere records of the past; they become tools to activate a continually transforming collective memory. The tapestries, the banners and panels I created do not only represent loss; they suggest the possibility of an ongoing dialogue between absence and presence, between what was and what might yet be. These animal images thus become Pathosformeln, formulas of pathos that carry emotions and meanings through time. They turn into universal symbols of the ecological crisis, prompting us to reflect on our relationship with the natural world.
The cut-outs generate abstract, organic forms that are sometimes uncannily familiar. The felt fragments resemble textile relics, evoking both memory and resurgence. Through the experience of absence, the works invite viewers to reconnect emotionally with what has been lost and to enter a deeper dimension of the natural world. This approach not only commemorates what is no more but also seeks to inspire a collective sense of responsibility toward the planet and its fragility.
Referring to Warburg’s concept of Nachleben (survival/afterlife), the project establishes a dialogue between past, present, and future, exploring how images can outlive the physical extinction of species and transform into symbols that transcend time and culture. Thus, the animals continue to “live” through their images and their names. Any reference to a modernist look or to biomorphic abstraction is purely coincidental; there is no intended connection to the Paris schools of vitalist or Orphic abstraction. The choice of colour is not symbolic, but practical and contingent: it depends on the wool felt materials available to me and does not aim to create an additional layer of meaning in the way vitalist or Orphic abstraction often does.
DS: The archive you constitute this way obtains in this exhibition its ‘spatial’ installational version, after a previous, more two-dimensional presentation. This presentation insists on a laboratory character, with old, sodium street lamps for halls and public spaces resembling as a whole environment a National History Museum display, where the morphological diversity is being preserved for posterity. It has this awkward and slightly gothic feel to it, these giant model patterns in an eerie halo light.
AR: Although I enjoyed creating the previous arazzi, which were hung on the wall, I felt the need to push the project further. Their two-dimensionality and their craftly finish gave them the status of tactile paintings, and I wanted to move beyond that formal condition. I wanted the works to come off the wall, to occupy space, and to allow the viewer to see both their front and their back. I therefore conceived a ‘dispositive’ capable of holding the tapestries in space and transforming them into banners. This shift gave me much greater freedom to experiment with their display and with the viewer’s relationship to them.
I like to think of all the banners together as a ‘chorus’ and as a single entity. The banners are displayed in parallel, facing one another at close distance. This arrangement allows viewers to see them from the side, at a diagonal, and to walk through the corridors
created between them, making the experience more active and physical. The banners function as a poetic commemoration of extinct species. The embroidered animal names on one side of each banner correspond to, and translate, the pattern on the opposite side of the fabric. The embroideredname side, derived from my handwriting, is more significant to me than the patterned side.
The lighting, made from refurbished public-lighting systems—some of which were formerly used in market contexts, such as at Spitalfields in London—also underlines the commemorative dimension of the installation. It illuminates the banners and their content almost as if lighting absent bodies. The devices that hold the banners, and in some cases the lights, are mounted on wheels, allowing the works to move. In this sense, they become performative machines, suggesting the possibility of them as instruments for a parade or procession. Even if they refer to the display of the laboratory of the National History Museums, at the same time the presence of the wheels makes them more vulnerable and precarious. They appear to be a temporary display.
The title of the exhibition, ‘Staging: again, again and again’ refers also to a certain mise-en-scène. It suggests the act, process or manner of presenting (a play) on a stage. What I wish to present here is the absence, the vanishing of those species from the earth.
DS: The pleasurable tactility of the felt patterns almost suggests that one could alter them and play around with these existing shapes, as if you hint at a didactic, laboratory-like aspect of an archive to invent new morphologies, complexifying the lost ones.
AR: The banners themselves are not meant to be handled. Their tactility is intentional, however. It invites closeness, attention and care. Viewers are encouraged to encounter the forms through a perceptive, intuitive play of association, which is the ‘laboratory’ I’m interested in; not one that invents new morphologies, but one that recombines and reactivates existing traces.
Your point is well taken. While cutting wool felt from hand-drawn paper templates, I stacked each banner’s colorful cut-outs in piles, overlapping positive and negative shapes, and realized they could be presented differently: as a didactic laboratory, a kind of game for imaginatively and materially reconnecting with creatures that no longer exist.
I am interested in that pedagogical dimension, the possibility that recombination sharpens perception and fosters a more attentive relationship to what has been lost, rather than producing something merely ‘new’. In this sense, I care more about what these shapes mean and carry than about inventing entirely new forms. It even reminded me of Enzo Mari’s didactic boxes—animal-shape puzzles for adult and children.
