Panther Owls Elk – Animal Stories

Designed by Wilson for the LAC Hall, Panther Owls Elk – Animal Stories is an environmental sculpture divided into three spaces: a high corridor from which fifteen snowy owls observe the scene and two rooms housing a Rocky Mountain elk and a black panther.

Made at different times, these video portraits were combined for the first time in a unitary design that requires the visitor to passing through the bright and noisy corridor inhabited by the owls, in sharp contrast with the two adjacent darker spaces, where a black panther and an elk immersed in fog require an almost intimate and meditative participation.

“Animals have been present in my productions since my first works, it is a distinctive trait of mine, you learn a lot from them. My father and his friends took me deer hunting. I hated hunting, I couldn’t stand guns, but I learned the art of observing in the silence of the woods. I like looking at things in silence.
How does a black panther look at you? When I made the 22-minute video with the black panther it was not in a cage, it was on a table, in a room with me and a group of technicians. When we were there none of us moved, we remained still.
A German actor once said that a good actor is like a bear, he never moves first. [...]
Looking at animals is, I think, part of my signature.”

Robert Wilson