Artist Story: Alison Ruttan

"Favorite Ball" from series 'Bred in Bone'

I am a visual artist whose work interests have landed me in the field of Evolutionary Biology. I make work that attempts to understand human behavior by looking at what we share with other primates. I like to think of what I do as being part research and part comedy. This investigation initially started with the not so simple question, “Why do people behave so badly?” I wondered, how much of our behavior is rooted in the core of our biological identity, how captive are we to these impulses?

In trying to understand this question I began to look at primate behavior for answers. Bonobos and chimpanzees share 98% of the same genes as us and the neurons in their brains while quantitatively less are still identical to our own. As the noted primatogist Frans de Waal explains it, “Not only are chimpanzees and bonobos are closest relatives, the reverse is also true; that is chimpanzees and bonobos are closer to us than to, say gorillas”.

Over the summer of 2004 I had an opportunity to spend time in Atlanta at the Yerkes Primate Research Station. I went to Yerkes with the idea that I would be able learn more about primate social interaction and communication than I could by just reading. I was interested in observing the posturing, gesturing, timing and inter-activity within chimpanzee social groups. While I was kindly allowed to observe at Yerkes I was not permitted to take any of my own video footage.

In September 2005 I was granted permission to shoot video of the bonobo in the non-public sites at Wild Animal Park outside of San Diego, California. Although my initial interest in this subject focused on looking at the roots of human aggression found in primate social structures I have now become interested in the broader spectrum of behavior of which much is a kin to our own.

My project “Individuation in Bonobo Grooming Habits" playfully embraces an anthropomorphizing of the bonobos grooming habits but at the same time questions assumptions we have on how we measure intelligence. Traditionally tool making has been the sign of higher intelligence in species, but why not individuation and self-adornment. Bonobos it appears have distinct and individual “hair styles”.

One of the ways I initially learned to identify individual bonobos was by their facial hair grooming. The animal keepers would help me learn their names by pointing out the wide center part Akili was sporting or Loretta’s penchant for a severally plucked forehead. My series of “hairdo” drawings makes evident this expression of individuality found in many Bonobo groups. In the drawing "Bigger and Better” I document the adolescent bonobo Jumanji’s discovery that not only will a stripped palm frond fit into his “Kong” toy but so will his erect penis! Jumanji then takes what he has learned and makes a more elaborate penis extension by stripping away only the base of the frond that needs to be inserted into the “Kong” toy. This second attempt created a much fancier version. On completing this, he stood up and checked to see if any of the other bonobo were noticing. That moment is what I drew; the drawing also includes photographic evidence of the sighting.

A second ongoing installation project “ Bred in the Bone” is made up of a dozen paired videos and more than fifty paired photographs comparing primate social interactions with like behavior in humans. Some of the images are intimate, others playful and some aggressive. In addition to original work there are clips and images gathered from animation, movies, news and web sources.

At present I am working on several screenplays based on primate group histories I have been collecting from scientist and zookeepers that I have met. These narratives can be epic in scale and uncannily human in the way individuals interact with each other in their quest for power and position. The similarity of their stories to ours easily brings to mind the writings of Dickens and Shakespeare. Joseph Campbell, writes in “ A Hero with a Thousand Faces” that myths from all over the world seem to be built from the same elementary ideas" and that's why people who don't even speak the same language can enjoy the same stories. Perhaps it is true for other primates as well.

Alison Ruttan is an interdisciplinary artist working in drawing, photography and video of related subject matter. She has a long-standing interest in experimenting with the language and forms borrowed from one discipline that are then applied to another. Alison is particularly interested in the complex kinds of social exchanges that are best understood visually or at the level of physiological response. For this reason much of her work has focused on appetite, sexuality and aggression. Additional images from these series can be found on my website at www.alisonruttan.com