Feast
The concept of Feast is to create small-scale land art installations in areas of the USC Roski campus that are rich in plants and wildlife, collaborating with campus animals in the artistic process. The aim of the work is to reflect on the relationship between human and animal needs, behaviors, and coexistence in nature by observing how animals interact with the art.
I used natural materials such as nuts, beans, leaves, wood blocks, and stones to create patterns around tree stump on the Roski campus, following human aesthetic standards. Over time, driven by their hunger for food, animals moved or took away elements of the patterns, gradually causing them to become incomplete. In this process, the human-created sense of beauty faded, while the animals gained nourishment and inner satisfaction. Their participation, evident through footprints and scattered materials, created a new kind of pattern, contrasting with the order and symmetry of human design. This invites reflection on the relationship between human-made aesthetics and nature's inherent dynamic processes.
One day later
A day after setting up the project, I was surprised to find that the patterns had been disrupted. This change made me realize that the forces of nature and the involvement of animals were far stronger than I had anticipated. Interestingly, the animals didn’t randomly destroy the entire pattern; they exhibited a certain ‘selectivity.’ They specifically took all the walnuts, almonds, and other food-related elements from the design. In this process, the animals were not merely observers, their participation directly influenced the evolution of the artwork. This led me to reflect on the core of the project. Not just about how humans define and shape beauty, but about how the participation of natural forces creates a constantly shifting ecological cycle.