A Secret Wilderness In Detroit

Artists Paul Elliman & Nicole Macdonald have been documenting the movements and sounds of the wildlife that has sprung up in the ruins of the now defunct Bell Isle Zoo of Detroit and they are now displaying them as video and audio recordings via a TV and large subwoofer installed at the Casco in Utrecht. The zoo was closed down a few years ago due to lack of funds but is now home to a thriving ecosystem consisting of a variety of wildlife and birds.

Here’s more about the project from Casco:

Populated with all sorts of animal families as well as an impressive range of bird species, here is a section of Detroit thriving in the secret wilderness that has replaced the public pleasure park. Elliman and Macdonald have set out to document the various calls, gestures, signals and songs of the former zoo’s current inhabitants, residing and resounding freely in the dense, jungle-like overgrowth of the city’s collapsing infrastructure. These are to be presented at Casco in the form of audio and video recordings, alongside several other references to the location and its inhabitants. Casco sets out to become a field trip camp from where a new urban language can be experienced, and where a city of “neo-liberal frustration”, in fact, provides many constructive examples from which to imagine the future of our own cities, intertwined as they inevitably are within dramatically changing economic and environmental conditions.

Casco projects: “Teach Me to Disappear”

[via Next Nature]