i o i o i e n e a p r o o e e a r n d

‘i o i o i e n e a p r o o e e a r n d’, Annie Ratti’s translucent artist’s book, invites the viewer to partake in a dolphins’ pod playfulness and apparent readiness to invite others to join in the fun.

In 2019 Annie Ratti travelled to join a pod of dolphins during their morning and evening swims. Using underwater film and photography she recorded the feeling of communality and trust that pervaded these daily encounters. Later, she traced the dolphin’s outlines on detail paper creating a book in which the visual and tactile fluidity of the semi-transparent paper allows the silhouette drawings to shimmer through the pages bringing back the fluidity of her own encounter.

As the dolphins’ outlines dip through the pages moving closer and further from us, occasionally almost disappearing altogether in a blank page only to reappear as we turn around, we experience a translucent world devoid of topographical markers, where social beings of two different species interact and shape each other’s encounter.

‘i o i o i e n e a p r o o e e a r n d’ heightens disorientation as an essential tool for approaching the entwined relations between humans and other species.

With her foray into the world of dolphins, Annie Ratti continues her transmedial investigation on forms of kinship and sociality that exist at the margins of traditional Western thought.

Edition of 65
Numbered and signed
Published in 2021