OTHER NATIONS
“(animals) move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear…they are other nations” - Henry Beston
Other Nations, a collaboration with choreographer Darion Smith, composer Juliet Palmer, and perfumer Dannielle Sergent, extended the 2025 Oregon Contemporary Biennial’s themes of networks, community and care to nonhuman animal nations. Inspired by research on the discourse systems, social networks, and sensory modalities of California ground squirrels and their main predators, coyotes and rattlesnakes, Other Nations explored the interconnected forces of nature and culture between humans, animals, and language.
Informed by animal-inspired aesthetic strategies of un-knowing and un-naming, the exhibition’s elements included camouflage tactics of seeing and not being seen, an olfactory camouflage perfume, and a floor graphic based on the flow of trusted information within a ground squirrel social network that became a score for a scent sharing ritual and dance and vocal performance.
Although human ways of knowing through verbal language may exceed that of other animals, more-than-human animal’s ways of knowing through sensation exceed human language.
Other Nations: camouflage perfume
42”x7”x9” and 31 ½”x17”x9”
Perfume, glass, metal, cloth, shed rattlesnake skin
In addition to using scent to reinforce social ties, some species of ground squirrels anoint their bodies with rattlesnake scent (a smell reminiscent of cucumber) as a means of concealing their odor from their chemosensory rattlesnake predators. They do this by chewing on molted rattlesnake skins, then licking their fur.
Other Nations is a perfume for humans inspired by squirrel's use of olfactory camouflage. The scent, created in collaboration with Dannielle Sergent of COGNOSCENTI perfume, was shared during public events to create networks of community between humans and more-than-human animals. The perfume has animalic base notes of fur and musk, middle notes of acorns and prairie, and a whisper of rattlesnake.
Visual camouflage strategies borrowed from the animal world in the wall panels include disruptive coloration, background matching, visual distraction, dazzlement, mirroring and countershading, and invite us to learn to see through the noise.
Other Nations: left wall, perfumed fur
Digital print, wood, perfume, fur
The fur was sprayed daily with the scent of Other Nations.
Other Nations: jacket, middle wall panel
Digital print, Scent-Lok hunting jacket, fur
A species’ camouflage strategy is influenced by the behavior or characteristics of its predators or prey. In addition to visual camouflage, hunters mask their scent from their prey with special odor canceling clothing and sprays. Perhaps our current fetish with camouflage is symptomatic of our political moment, which is characterized by tactics of the misdirection of truth, the purposeful sowing of confusion, and dazzlement.
Other Nations: video, right wall panel
Digital print on Phototex, video screen
Dance by Darion Smith, Videography by Steven Myat. Vocal score by Juliet Palmer in collaboration with Lieke van der Voort, Andrea Kuzmich, Jackson Welchner and Elizabeth Lima. Recording engineer: Jean Martin.
Choreographer Darion Smith and composer Juliet Palmer invite ground squirrel, coyote and rattlesnake to flow through the human body as movement and vocalization. Moving then sounding, the singers responded to three choreographic sketches by Darion Smith. Unaware of the animals they were channeling, their voices betray an intuitive, embodied connection to the more-than-human. Dancing between traffic, grass, concrete, and water, Smith underscores the illusory separation between human and more-than-human beings, nature and culture.
Other Nations: floor graphic
dimensions variable
Digital Print on Phototex
Ground squirrels share important information about food sources and the kind, direction, and speed of approaching predators using complex vocalizations and gestures and maintain cooperative and altruistic ties with trusted neighbors that are reinforced by scent sharing during greeting behaviors that resemble kissing. Humans as well as ground squirrels rely on trust networks to convey reliable information about things we cannot ourselves verify, such as factual and scientific information. If the connections to the experts are broken, our understanding of reality becomes untethered. Society then begins a slide into “truth decay.” If we want to reverse that process, we need to rebuild networks of trust.
The floor graphic represents the flow of reliable information within a social network and serves as a score for a scent-sharing ritual and performance.
Other Nation: scent sharing ritual and performance
Carla Bengtson in collaboration with Darion Smith, choreography, Juliet Palmer, sound, Dannielle Sergent, perfume.
Research has shown that people subconsciously bring their hands near their nose after shaking hands, a socially acceptable form of reinforcing social ties and collecting subliminal chemical information about one another, just as ground squirrels do. The floor graphic doubled as a score for a scent-sharing ritual with the audience, followed by a dance performance choreographed by Darion Smith with sound by Juliet Palmer.
Sound: Juliet Palmer
Costumes: Carla Bengtson
Dancers: Caitlin Edwards, Sarah Gomez, Tom Resseguier, Darion Smith
Vocalists: Lieke van der Voort, Andrea Kuzmich, Jackson Welchner and Elizabeth Lima
Video: Seth Nehil
Other Nations was made by possible by grants from Canada Council for the Arts and Oregon Contemporary