Survival Instincts
Survival Instincts
by Lian Ryan
Survival Instincts
Video • Ireland, Malaysia • 00:50
Survival Instincts is a short, experimental stop-motion animation comparing human to insect to call attention to hierarchies of scale and the dissolving boundaries between human, organism, and the technological. Ryan visualises the hybrid as a metaphor for anxieties during a time of rapid technological change and shifting methods of identification and survival mechanisms, questioning how both cultural and corporeal structures continue to shape our societies during times of crisis.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Lian Ryan (she/they) is a London-based mixed media artist exploring mass uncertainties and anxieties permeating our increasingly digitalised, globalised world. Taking inspiration from science-fiction, post-human ecologies and the monstrous feminine, Ryan fragments and manipulates the body to consider humanity’s parasitic relationship to the planet, the self, and the ‘other’. Ryan graduated from Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 2022 and is currently completing an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art, London, where they have recently began working with stop-motion animation.
