Lyn’s paper ‘Still life; thoughts on human and non-human sanctuaries in a paranoid future’ explores the connections between human and non-human survival in our present and potential future worlds, by using the zoo as a metaphor and model for understanding what she terms ‘a human sanctuary’. In the context of this paper and her practice as an artist, this interrogation of a human sanctuary takes the form of an artist residency at a survivalist community called Vivos. In 2017, Lyn met billionaire founder Robert Vicino who had a vision about the end of the world and set about buying up Cold War bunkers in Europe and America, preparing them for an extinction level event. There is a proposed shared space for humans and animals at his Europa One site in Germany.
In December 2017, Lyn met with Professor Peter Singer, author of ‘Animal Liberation’ at Princeton University to discuss our relationship with other species and talk about the act of saving human and non-human animals in this paranoiac context. Her paper presents the discussion they had about the ethics of saving non-human animal life in modern day zoos; whether or not the animals can live out their species nature, if they are prisons or sanctuaries. They used the Utilitarian philosophical principle of the greatest well-being and the least suffering as metaphor for the discussion of Vivos, for both its human and non-human inhabitants. Are they preserved like anatomical specimens or Fabergé eggs in a museum; mere still life? If this were the only life that could be preserved would it still be worth saving, even in this fragile and solitary state?
Lyn Hagan is an artist based in Newcastle who has developed projects specifically connected to space exploration and survival instinct, using animals on board a zero gravity aeroplane with the Russian Space Agency (Cat in Zero Gravity, 2008), and people that have limited control and freedom such as a Death Row prisoner in San Quentin (The Mexican Mafia and Me, 2014). She has exhibited work both in the UK and Europe at galleries and internationally at video art festivals and on television. She has been commissioned by Channel 4, Tyne and Wear Museums, the Late Shows and completed artist residencies at Digital City. She was shortlisted by ArtAngel and nominated for Jarmin Selected and has been the recipient of numerous scholarships for her research including the Jean François Lyotard Award, and is currently funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
