66RECONFIGURING ANIMAL SKINSvalues in relation to specific cultural milieus. On these bases, the project
explores human/animal relationships in an attempt to disentangle the
“representational” animal from the living one: at stake is the possibility to
temporarily occupy the space of the other beyond the metaphorical or the
symbolic.^81 This operation is performed in consideration of the three reg-
isters of representation outlined by Joseph Kosuth in a seminal piece from
1965 titled One and Three Chairs. Kosuth’s installation comprised a three-
dimensional chair, its photographed image, and a vocabulary definition
of it. Next to each other, the object, image, and text pose ontological ques-
tions designed to heighten the viewer’s critical ability to recognize the to-
talizing force of the linguistic nature at play in realistic representation.
According to Kosuth’s installation instructions, the size of the photo-
graph of the chair must match the size of the three-dimensional chair
displayed next to it. Capitalizing on the one-to-one scale relationship, Ko-
suth leverages the indexical value of photography in ways akin to the role
of taxidermy. He produces an ontologically distinct copy of the referent
while retaining its original size. The relationships between object, im-
age, and text thus appear semantically problematized—their ability to
linguistically substitute for each other is exposed with seemingly natu-
ralized fluidity. This fluidity is what conceptually enables the formation
of metanarratives—it is the condition under which the material histories
of objects regularly dematerialize and congeal into symbolic form. But in
this instance, the proximity with which the three iterations of the chair
are displayed enhances their substantially different materialities and
their abilities/inabilities to connect with other objects. In this way, the
internal economies of this work of art deliberately orchestrate a tension
between the intrinsic role language plays in the construction of represen-
tation, our reliance on language, and the materiality of objects that
regularly is disavowed by language itself. Ultimately, the ontological
game staged by Kosuth is a contradictory minefield that simultaneously
works as a semiotic model that attempts to defy formal analysis. But
most importantly, this semantic short-circuiting is designed to question
subliminal notions of equivalency that affect our valuing of animal life.
This preoccupation with representation, realism, and materiality has
played a substantial role in Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson’s career, most visibly
in their epic project nanoq: flat out and bluesome, which brought together
thirty-four taxidermy polar bears in one museum display accompanied