Ivana Filip

I had been already in the middle of the artistic research with free roaming cats when pandemic started.

All workshops with locals had to be canceled but I could continue working with cats. The notion of public space and its approachability became even more important because research was pointed at public space. Therefore, lock down stressed the prohibition of collaboration and gathering but that brought to my project even more personality and closeness with free roaming cats.

Nature is always available to us but we rarely recognize it.

As such suddenly humans were caged and animals allowed to roam. Those were the utopian aha moments that fueled into my practice. I wasn’t creating more during pandemic and especially not pandemic oriented works, in which I had no interest. The affect is visible in my approach to my work and pulled out even deeper importance of sustainability of my works, recourses I use and dissemination models.

“Once I could’t continue collaborating with humans my co-creation with free roaming cats deepened as they continued staying close to us in their home-our public space, no matter what”, – Ivana Filip.

“While I couldn`t collaborate workshops with human, I translated same tools but now to co-create with free roaming cats”, – Ivana Filip.

‘Freeroaming’ is a documentary film which I started creating in early 2020 and continued during lock down. It came out of experimentation and documentation of my artistic research project about free roaming cats’ agency and the use interdisciplinary art as an approach to the theme. The film is in the final stage of production. During the course of research I communicated with cats and local citizens so I used my findings to create stories that I used in film.