As Small As Eyes: Mariette Moor, Krystle Patel, Orsola Zane

About

Borrowing the way an octopus moves, thinks and feels, the artists (Mariette Moor, Krystle Patel and Orsola Zane) work with video, sound, performative writing and kinetic sculpture to investigate more-than-human ways of being. With eight of the octopus’ nine brains in its legs, the project asks: what does it mean to experience the world through a plural mind led by touch as language?⁠

The artists started this collaborative research project during their MFA that was born out of a shared interest in cephalopods. Positioning the octopus as both machine and method, its physical properties like elasticity, camouflage and regrowth destabilise neat categorisations in favour of complex and fluid notions of consciousness, the haptic and language. Its most recent common ancestor to the human dates back 600 million years, making the octopus the closest being to an alien on earth.