Marcus Coates – The Shaman with the Long Lens

Coates’ particular interest in the animal world is also connected to his frequent performative participations in the role of a kind of modern shaman. We see him in this position in his videos, staged photographs, and live performances. His props are usually stuffed animals which serve as ritual dress or masks, but he sometimes also dons a grotesque bird costume made of cardboard (Human Report, 2008). Sometimes, he responds with ridicule to the anthropocentric view of other fauna, creating positions for himself which explore a different, animal perspective (Goshawk, 1999). At other times, he takes social behavior commonly found in humans—vocal utterances—and transposes it into birdsong within an installation (Dawn Chorus, 2007).

Ornithology is one of the artist’s great passions. In visual culture, bird observation and photography are closely connected to ornithology. The fact that the photographer often assumes the position of the hunter – waiting for the appropriate moment and situation to capture their prey on the artificial retina of their device – is nothing new. In Western culture, appropriating the hunted not through killing it and collecting the trophy but merely by capturing its image is in fact a hidden parallel to the well-known superstition that cameras can “steal souls”, mostly found in animistic cultures. Hunting for shots of wild animals doesn’t just present distant creatures that make themselves difficult to spot. It also evokes feelings of triumph and acquiring knowledge. In older biological and hunting traditions, both these functions were predominantly fulfilled by spectacular taxidermic tableaus.

However, it is precisely the immediate objectness of these tableaus which contemporary photographs lack. In his 2013 series Ritual for Reconciliation, Coates toyed with this opposition. He printed out his photographs of wild animals. Then he crumpled them up and laid them out on the floor. This process—as well as the resultant objects—can be understood as a coming to terms with the insurmountable distance created by two-dimensional images but also as a ritual attempt to renew the feeling of being together with the captured animal. These shamanistic elements in Coates’ work are linked to a conviction that artists, thanks to their imagination, partly inherited a considerable portion of that archaic social role. This is particularly poignant in his political project Vision Quest, a Ritual for Elephant and Castle (2008– 2012), in which he dons a horse head, taking on the part of mediator addressing a problematic development project in Elephant and Castle, a borough of London, and the fate of the relocated former inhabitants. He does all this through ritual and knowledge gleaned from visions in a trance.

Marcus Coates is not only an artist – he is also a kind of non-conformist social activist in shamanic garb. He mostly understands his shamanic practice from the perspective of their social impact and their innovative applications to the problems of contemporary British society. His methods —which he applies to wild fauna and human societies alike —turn to photography, video, and direct performative communication. The part played by photographs and objects is perhaps not that distant from the role of prehistoric artworks, also connected to the tasks of symbols, representation, and communication through the sphere of visions and animistic embodiment.