How It Echoes
Miami, 2025, TRT 5`21``
Istanbul Zoology Museum (Eye Ear Claw) & Ferda Art Platform (How Many Legs?), 2026


 

This work brings together an identification between the experience of migration and an animal mode of existence. Starting from the motto “sometimes it takes being a mouse to be realistic,” it narrates a search for home within the roots of a tropical banyan tree through the video performance of Ozan Atalan’s persona, Mousehelm Attari.

In this process, displacement and estrangement are approached not only as a loss of physical space, but also as a rupture and reconfiguration of belonging; “home” ceases to be a fixed place and becomes fragile, temporary, and open to negotiation. Here, home is not a point of arrival, but a process that is continuously deferred, fragmented, and reconstructed.

The identification with the mouse is deliberate: mice are widely used as experimental animals, situating them within human systems as controlled, displaced, and instrumentalized beings. At the same time, newborn mice possess a unique and temporary ability to fully regenerate heart tissue after injury, pointing to a form of existence that holds both vulnerability and the potential for healing. This dual condition renders visible the emotional and biopolitical layers of the migrant experience through both fragility and the capacity to rebuild.

Through this animal identification, the work develops an alternative to anthropocentric perspectives and observes human systems from a critical distance.