Écosystèmes

‘Écosystèmes’ is a futuristic fable about the relationship between humans and animals. In exploring new relationships between the different species, Chloé Milos Azzopardi places connectedness at the centre – as a much-needed shift in our thinking to distance itself from the age of financial capital.

For a long time, Western thinking has done all it can to clearly separate everything. Man from animal, nature from culture, as though we humans exist above, or even outside of, all other lifeforms. This way of thinking has led to us seeing nature as subservient to humans, simply as an economic resource. The ‘Capitalocene’ is an era set in motion by man in the nineteenth century, which is now reaching an apotheosis with nature on the verge of collapse. Interdependencies between humans and nature have been forgotten, despite scientific insights into the fragile balance of our ecosystem: for example, humans are closer to chimpanzees in terms of DNA than chimpanzees are to gorillas.

Azzopardi projects herself into a fictional future, where our relationship with everything else that lives is rebalanced and where metamorphoses are a real possibility. ‘Écosystèmes’ is a surreal, dreamlike place, focusing not on what can serve us, but on what binds us. A reversal in our thinking about what life means.