“Little Cryptid” for “EcoArt. art and (non)human agency'', Museum of Nonconformost Art, Saint Petersburg, 6.09.2025 — 09.11.2025.

“In April 2025, a Yekaterinburg resident discovered a kitten hiding in her yard. She fed it and later took it home. It soon turned out that the kitten wasn’t a kitten, but an intelligent creature of an unknown species. And it has something to say. Its homeland, like ours, is planet Earth. It’s genius and incredibly adorable. It’s a grump and a glutton, but kind at heart. Its desire to save its home and other animals proved stronger than its fear of humans. It came to our help, but can we do the same for it?” 

This interdisciplinary project is a reflection on animal agency and its means of communication with other living beings, including humans. To achieve this, the artist create a cryptozoological species and develops a language for it in the form of sound signals and their approximate decoding.

The project takes the form of a three-part installation, consisting of a stop-motion animation of the creature’s message, the terrarium it resides in, and a decoder that can be used to decipher the cryptid’s speech. To create the creature’s speech, the artist collaborated with her cat, Alzhbetka, who uses a wide range of sounds with varying durations and combinations to communicate with humans, depending on specific situations. 

In creating the decoder and visualizing the sound signals, the artist drew on David Rothenberg and Michael Deal’s article “A New Morphological Notation for Humpback Whale Music.” 

Many people still deny real animals a sense of self, both on a personal and global level. But they cannot deny this to a fantastical or magical creature, as this is the realm of symbols and meanings, which is anthropocentric.

Project Scientific Advisor: Cedric Sueur