Catalogue > At random

"De Anima" spans documentary and animation and features a dreamlike narrative examining how various gendered, racialized, economic, and metabolic systems embedded within the global health system—which have become especially apparent during the COVID-19 crisis—drive fear of contamination from the nonhuman world. The work’s departure point is Jo’s 2018 field research in Myanmar with Smithsonian wildlife veterinarians who were hunting for new strains of coronavirus to predict their pandemic potential. The sacred caves depicted in "De Anima" are both high-risk interfaces as well as sites of spiritual encounter between humans and animals, science and religion, nature and politics—interfaces where ecosystems cross and feed into global conflict. This behind-the-scenes work had been underway for years, and sheds light on the inevitable: not of a why but an unknown when—offering an ominous prelude to the current global health crisis. Recorded in Myanmar, Kenya, and France, the images and sounds featured in "De Anima" that once felt so ‘far away’ now deeply resonate in the everyday. The work exposes subtexts that reveal deeper issues embedded within society at large, namely the neglect and treatment of health beyond the human in an era of accelerated globalization.

Clara Jo's work has been exhibited and screened her work at Gropius Bau (Berlin), Centre Pompidou (Paris), ARKO Art Center (Seoul), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Spike Island (Bristol), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), and Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (Oldenburg). She has previously held fellowships and residencies at Art Explora (Paris), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (USA). She has presented her work for talks at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and King’s College (London).