Ground Ground

The domestication of animals for human use began between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago. Such domestication has been a trajectory in which humans have exerted an indelible influence on another species. Seen anthropologically, however, the process represents a mutual influence between animals and humans. Domestication also serves as a historical antecedent to the current human age of the ‘anthropocene’, in which humans are exerting an irreversible influence on the earth.

Xiao Yu’s Ground (2014/17) is a durational performance involving a donkey that has been brought from north of Istanbul and trained by two Chinese farmers. The animal, steered by a human, drags a plough through the exhibition space that has been filled with wet cement. The plough creates a furrow in this cement ‘field’ that extends throughout the space. The performance is a direct expression of an act of labour, one link in a chain of ecological and anthropological processes that persist widely though precariously, and are increasingly unseen by an urban public. With the furrows, the animal and human create what in a real field would be means for new life, but the use of concrete opens questions about urban expansion and development and their effect on rural land and agrarian tradition.

A plough led by an animal and a human represents one of the most ancient forms of agricultural activity. Yet in an increasingly urban world, many people have never experienced such labour. The work speaks to the interdependence of nature and agriculture, the taming of animals and their relationship to humans, as well as notions of labour. Increasingly, with ecological fragility and the threat of a coming age of water and food scarcity, it is perhaps no longer the human who controls nature, but the opposite: nature exerts it grip on humanity as the direction of the tracks reverses.