A ring species consists of several, formally independent species that change continuously in both directions of their ring-shaped distribution area. This is an interesting problem in biological taxonomy, questioning the doctrine of taxonomy of living things. (bionity.com)

My voice is interwoven with field recordings of birds, insects, frogs - creatures that move across boundaries between air, water and earth. In ring species, they find a utopian place of resonance beyond their natural habitat.

I mask my singing with bird whistles to create a hybrid vocal being with iridescent, whirling, trilling, shrilling, breathing, singing timbres. Some of these bird whistles preserve the voices of extinct species: although the bird no longer exists, its voice still sounds in the object. With my artistic practice, I establish relationships between the human voice and the object ‘bird whistle’, between remembered, imagined and extinguished birdsong.

Imaginary beings are created through transformations and mixtures: Snippets of bird and monkey songs intertwine with my voice or enter into call-and-response relationships. My voice pulsates with hard-to-localize, quasi-electronic-sounding cicada songs. Artificial-natural flocks of birds take shape.

Does the singer retain her identity or does she become the ‘other’? The boundary between the self and the environment becomes fluid, so that the latter becomes an illusion in itself, thus referring to a more complex reality. The binaries of animal and human, object and human, nature and technology are turned upside down in favor of interwoven, reciprocal relationships. ring species presents itself as an imaginary, unstable ecosystem on the verge of losing control.

Ute Wassermann