Where We Fit in the Firmament: A Conversation with Allison Maria Rodriguez

Boston-based artist Allison Maria Rodriguez critically examines the health of our planet and the interconnection between species. In this light, the extinction of animals and environmental devastation are not just ecological horrors. They are also failures of human consciousness and imagination. Rodriguez’s recent multichannel video installations combine scenes observed in the arctic, digitally generated imagery, green screen performances, and collaged photographs. Rodriguez’s Legends Breathe (2019–present) shows a human figure in a tent that floats over a herd of wild horses. In another scene, two human figures coexist with foxes, all surrounded by an outer-space purple glow. A video still from another work, In the Presence of Absence (2017–present), shows Rodriguez sitting on the ground grazing flower petals with her fingertips. Another woman stands in front of her, smiling and comfortable, a crocodile at her feet. In the sky behind them, the heat map of a hurricane.

I had two video conversations with Rodriguez, in February and April 2021. These conversations revealed that remarkably, Rodriguez is not completely despondent about our future. Suppose we can shift our values, attention, and focus—we might discover where we fit in a firmament that is immediate, everywhere, minute, and amazingly larger than ourselves. We might recognize the intelligence of other animals. We might be less self-centered, more conscious, aligned, and in tune with history and other beings. Although all that is now lost will not return, we might aspire to some healing, responsible growth, and reconnection. It is possible.

In my opinion, there isn’t this division of existence that we’ve created—to conquer, claim ownership, or create the notion of property. I think taking that away, even for a moment, can be empowering. My approach is an overall philosophical trajectory. We use the term “nonhuman” to refer to things outside of ourselves, but we don’t use the term “nontortoise.” That’s such a privileged way of looking at the world. In our world view, all of these other species are “nonhuman,” but there aren’t, from the perspective of a whale, “nonwhale” ways of being. When that comes to the surface in very obvious ways, that definite privilege and promotion of this aggressive ownership of existence, it really bothers me.

We have driven so many other species out of existence. We are the first species to really do that—to wipe out so much so fast. I think that’s why most humans see themselves as the center of the universe. Other animals build with an internalized knowledge of the ecosystem that we don’t have, that we could learn by watching. We don’t have access to that knowledge because we don’t pay attention. Destruction happens when we physically relocate animals, when we move them, when we put them in situations where they’re not supposed to be or we take away their resources, and they are forced to go somewhere else. Then, they mess up the ecosystem over there because they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. There is a way that they know how to be in harmony with the earth that we really could learn from.

I did an artist talk when I was there for the scientists and researchers who come to the research station from all over the world. I was really nervous. I thought they were going to ask me all these facts about the animals that were in my work, and I wasn’t going to know anything. They didn’t. They actually asked me emotionally driven questions. One scientist was upset and asked me, “Why don’t you have more invertebrates in your work? Why don’t you focus on these animals? Why do you only care about big things?” He didn’t quite word it like that, but that’s exactly what he meant. He was right. I needed to lean into it.

The Strength of Very Small Things is predominately about Daphnia. I did a lot of work with the women in the lab, took a lot of photographs under microscopes of Daphnia, took bunches of them and removed them from their photographic context, animated them, colored them, and made them large scale and also floating in the air. You experience them differently than you would in the natural world. And there’s also imagery of those two scientists going into the landscape and collecting Daphnia. To me, those images are really beautiful: two people in this vast landscape, looking for these tiny beings. I instinctively set up my video camera and let it run. They’re very stationary shots, landscape portraits of scientists working in the natural world with Daphnia. There is this sense of large and small. Also, these women are studying Daphnia as indicator species. They’re seeing how Daphnia respond to changes in water temperature and predicting how humans could potentially respond to changes in climate and temperature. We are interwoven with these tiny beings. We are intertwined. Scientists are searching for the survival of our species, and they know how profoundly connected our future is to these little water fleas.

There is also imagery of the beluga whales that go into Hudson Bay. I was juxtaposing whales with Daphnia. The time that I was there in July is when all of the whales migrate into the bay. There are tons of beluga whales in the Hudson Bay near Churchill at that time of year. It’s incredible. It’s part of their yearly migration to come to the warmer waters for the summer to eat and give birth, and that’s why they all come into the bay. I went out on a kayak, and they swam alongside and bumped us a little bit and interacted with us. Belugas really respond to music, so if you play music, they will come closer. I had a breakdown when I was out on that kayak. I started crying because I felt so connected to something that I felt was going to disappear. They told me at the study center that in twenty years, there will be no ice on the Hudson Bay in the summertime.

I think part of the reason we as a species are not responding to climate change is because we don’t see it in the same way. I shouldn’t say we don’t see it—obviously, folks who are less privileged see it sooner. But, it doesn’t always look like a burning house that you need to get in there to get the child out of. It’s easy to think, this isn’t pressing. The data we get is so difficult to conceptualize. And then, if you do try to conceptualize it, it’s overwhelming. There’s a point at which folks can also shut down. People who aren’t engaging with the landscape on a regular basis don’t see it. We’re starting to see all these storms and floods, and these are obviously impacting a lot of people, but being out on Hudson Bay, surrounded by these belugas, I felt my own as well as humanity’s destruction of the planet. I had this sense of things fleeting, of beautiful things disappearing. It hit me really hard. Talk about a whole other world existing! Underwater, there’s so much life that we could learn so much from. I saw these scientists coming back that summer to study birds or a particular species that they had studied the previous year, and they were reporting that they couldn’t find as many. They see it that rapidly, and that’s how fast it’s happening. As the ice on the Hudson Bay disappears, a part of ourselves is disappearing too, whether we’re aware of it or not.

I plan to return to Churchill and do an installation in the research center there. It’s not devastatingly difficult to get there, but it can be complicated and expensive. There’s a railroad that goes into Churchill that was the main method of transport, and it was flooded in 2018. You have to fly to Winnipeg and take a little plane. It’s really remote and isolated.

Then, I start to go out to explore and collect. I take photographs and video, and I collect objects. Often there are things that anchor it for me. They might say [of their fantasy], “I’m in a giant bird’s nest.” So, I’ll go out and look at different birds’ nests and think about how I’m going to create the nest, taking photographs and collecting materials. Often, the image will end up being a conglomerate. I will have photographed a couple of nests, and I’ll draw some things digitally. Some of the aspects that they don’t necessarily give me, I discover when I’m putting it all together. That’s where I make aesthetic choices. When I invite an artist to perform in the piece it is not the same individual I interviewed. I don’t tell them what it is that they are going to be doing exactly. They don’t prepare anything. They show up on a green screen location set. I give them a costume, then I tell them what they’ll be doing. I describe the fantasy in some detail. I direct them, but I also let them play with the idea. It’s important to me that the performers are artists in some capacity and also comfortable with the idea of performing and being in front of the camera.

I’ve started reading Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016) by Frans de Waal. Our language, our way of approaching the world is so specifically human. To try to think about the consciousness of these other beings is really complicated. This book goes into our value judgments around human intelligence versus the intelligence of different species. Certain species don’t need certain skills, so why would being intelligent in that area be valuable? They’re intelligent and created with the needs that they have. I think the individual identity is really human. Trees talk to each other and come together and make decisions for themselves as a group. There is a collective identity and collective consciousness for some other species that we as a species don’t have, potentially because we’ve never tried to cultivate it. In the Presence of Absence is very much about trying to find or explore individual identity. It’s very particular to Cuba. It’s very particular to my family. But, it’s also about exploring our ecological whole. The way that I present the piece is as a sacred space. I am thinking about the ways two things can coexist. Presence and Absence. Difference and universal wholeness.

I’ve also returned to the arctic research with a larger project in process entitled all that moves. It focuses specifically on the history embedded in the landscape of Churchill, Manitoba, and what is seen and unseen. It is another project about both science and spirituality, and is very focused on the specifics of the land—my personal experience of interconnection with the land and the profound impact of that experience. The grounds on which the Churchill Northern Studies Centre exists used to be the Churchill Rocket Research Range, an army research facility for both Canada and the US to study the upper atmosphere. There are rockets that have been abandoned throughout the landscape. There are not a lot of them, but against the starkness of the landscape, they are so blatant. They make so evident our touch on the land. The Sayisi Dene were forcibly relocated to Churchill. I have a lot of imagery from spaces where the genocide of these Indigenous people happened. Those places have this incredibly intense, heavy, potent feeling. I could physically feel the presence of the absence when I was there. I personally think there’s an energy that’s contained and then saved in spaces. That component is coming into my work in this project. I’m showing this terrain where something happened, but you don’t see it.