Marion Laval-Jeantet is a performance artist who is experimenting with the meaning of “trans-species” art. In her piece, Que le cheval vive en moi (the horse lives in me), over a period of several months, she was injected with horse blood plasma containing a spectrum of equine immunoglobulins. Her goal was to experience the body-mind of another species, which she described as a heightened sensibility and nervousness. After the final injection she performed a communication ritual with the horse, pictured above.
Marion’s work connects to the body art experiments of Carol Schneeman, Marina Abramović, one of who’s works involved dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion, among others.
I am interested in this work because it seems to be an effort to dissolve the prey/predator distinction between horse and human. There are horse whisperers and trainers who claim to “speak horse,” and yet when I watch, there is always that divide. The man/woman is still a meat eater.
The closest thing I have experienced in dissolving that divide is the work of Linda Tellington-Jones. TTouch, her radical work with touch goes “under the skin” – creating a borderless place of attunement where horse (or dog, cat, snake, bird, elephant) and human meet. I have been TTouching for about seven years, and I wonder if Marion would find that using touch in this way can carry her as deeply into the blood and bone of the human-horse bond.
How do you cross dress?
