ZHENG MAHLER: WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A (VIRTUAL) BAT?

Previously, Zheng Mahler studied the wild water buffalo population on Lantau, Hong Kong’s largest outlying island and the site of the artist duo’s home and studio; recently, their attention has turned to the pipistrellus abramus, a species of insectivorous bats also found on the island. Their research takes as its starting point the seminal essay “What is it like to be a bat?” by philosopher Thomas Nagel, which posits that we can only ever allude to the subjective experience of other creatures. “We can imagine what it might be like to be nocturnal, to have webbing on our arms, to be able to fly, to have poor vision and perceive the world through high frequency sound signals, and to spend our time hanging upside down,” Nagel argues. “But even if we can imagine all of these things, it only tells us what it is like for me to be a bat, or for me to behave as a bat behaves. It does not tell us what it is like for a bat to be a bat.”

Early stages of Zheng Mahler’s project comprise fieldwork, research, written materials, and exploration of the sensory environments in which the Lantau bats reside. Initially commissioned by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) Germany as part of the “Are You For Real?” web project curated by Paula Nascimento, Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse, this research is synthesized in later stages; in the main space, a large-scale video installation reveals a psychedelic Mui Wo, enlivened by phantasmagoric hues and overgrowths that serve as an attractive feeding site for bats. Referencing a common visualization practice in Tibetan Buddhism—in which a deity is called upon with mantras and mandala patterns—the video takes a first-person perspective and leads the viewer through a spiritual transformation, from human form into a bat and back again.

A nearby VR headset offers an embodied experience of the same journey, highlighting the possibility of simulation and the consequent successes and failures of grasping at subjective qualitative experience. Another video, screened in the back corridor space, is an abstracted color field video of a bat feeding site in Mui Wo’s wetlands, soundtracked by echolocation recordings taken by the artists.

Surrounding these video and audio components are new tile works produced in Jingdezhen, a city with historical roots in porcelain and the site of production for an earlier series, “A Season in Shell” (2013-16). Featuring different scenes or landscapes from the main video installation, the tile works perform as visual aids for meditation experiences—similar to the mandalas in Tibetan Chenrezig practices—and materially respond to the first “visual aid” recorded by the artists early in their research: a traditional bat mosaic seen in a Lantau temple. Formally, they also evoke the architecture of machine experiences; one imagines pixels, or the equirectangular grid that greets visitors when they put on a VR headset. The tiles are additionally framed by motifs that refer to the East Asian cultural phenomenon of wild bat sightings—considered a sign of good fortune or longevity—and which has resulted in popular dissemination of bat motifs in temples, amulets, feng shui objects, and spiritual décor.

Bibliography:

"What is it like to be a (virtual) bat?" by Zheng Mahler

"What is it like to be a bat?" by Thomas Nagel

IFA commission of "What is it like to be a (virtual) bat?"