Fly-by-Night at Hundred Years Gallery

I was thrilled to participate in Fly-by-Night: A night of bats at Hundred Years Gallery on one of the longest nights of the year, that of 20 December 2019. The event was organised by friend and colleage Catherine Clover, with whom I have worked twice before on animal-and-art related projects (see my essay here and our essay here). Fly-by-Night was the collaborative effort of a dozen participants in and around the visual, performing, and sound arts, intended to illuminate and advocate the lives of bats around the world. Like many of the contributions, my own piece, "With bats on our side", was created specifically for this event. It reflects upon a disturbing, bizarrely fascinating historical footnote to World War II: the U.S. military's experiments with Mexican free-tailed bats as a method of bomb dispersal. Structured as a call-and-response between myself and primary material, the text warns of the dangers that curiosity can bring.