FOXP2

Marguerite’s project FOXP2 derives its title from the gene supposed responsible for the development of language and speech, and so often regarded as a distinguishing feature of human intellect. An exhibition of two parts, the visitor first walks a corridor that sonically charts the origin of humankind before entering the principal room, where a clan of elephants are in the midst of grieving the slow death of their matriarch.

Devised as a walk through the ages, the corridor piece simulates the steps of a simian predecessor like Lucy, as she moves through terrain, weather and time. In its early portion, the visitor senses a vulnerability that accompanies her struggle to communicate. Toward the end of the corridor however, the piece graduates to whoops and other primordial sounds – the earliest suggestions of a word – until finally, the lone, first individual is joined by a chorus of 108-billion-some Homo sapiens, all who have lived on Earth since the beginning of humankind. On the other side of this sound work, Marguerite has conceived a ‘biological showroom’ and scene of mourning, one centred upon a clan of highly evolved elephants whose matriarch is dying. Working with palaeontologists, zoologists, psychologists and elephant behavioural specialists to speculate upon the development of complex emotions and communication in elephant families, the room is ensconced in the sound of a slowing heartbeat – a spatialisation of an intensely emotional moment, one that transforms the room into the matriarch’s body. As she dies, the development of new emotions and language in her family is triggered: individual chants engineered from scratch emanate from the elephantine sculptures, each of which embodies a specific emotion. All the while, a hydraulic system pumps various liquids containing hormones and elephant tears around a network of tubes – a biochemical expression of the mixity of emotions the clan is experiencing, be it sadness, anger, love.