Devon Pardue

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Inspired by the multispecies rat’s nest of the natural world, I compose animated works that remark on the effort of non-human being. Captured by the complexity and potential of nature, my work aims to explore these hidden worlds and encourage new ways of understanding the networks and relationships of organisms within our troubled Anthropocene. I was raised in the ecologically-vulnerable wetlands of Louisiana where I developed a deeply rooted interest in the science of natural phenomena. Digital animation is my language for communicating the often-enigmatic concepts found in such a field, and offers me an avenue to explore potential ecological futures. 
 
I earned my MFA in Visual Arts at Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2022 and my BFA in Animation from Kansas City Art Institute in 2019. Works take shape as experimental short films, immersive new media installations and other multidisciplinary projects.
 

research

research expositions

  • Peripheral Alacrity - Animation as entry into non-human temporalities (last edited: 2023) author(s): Devon Pardue This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
    A master's thesis culminating in a project called Peripheral Alacrity; an audiovisual animation installation utilizing animation at 60fps to investigate the temporal relationship between us and fast-moving organisms on the edges of our senses. My work is informed by a deeply rooted interest and curiosity in the biological sciences and uses ideas found therein to explore the complicated relationships between humans and the rest of the living world. I became particularly interested in the perception of time across species and the potential for animation to serve as an axis into nonhuman temporalities. How are our relationships with other organisms impacted by our bodies' unique temporality? Fast-living invertebrates like insects are of particular importance because their crucial role in a healthy ecosystem forces us to reconcile with our particular disdain for their speed and our desire for control over our surroundings. That desire to oversee and pin down a version of nature that is ideologically pure has roots in Europatriarchal power structures, so I sought to create a space to recontextualize these encounters as they naturally are in our day-to-day life. The work seeks to capture this particular interaction characterized by fleeting peripheral glimpses of fast-living organisms; from dragonflies to some we only see as a passing blur, and all the abstractions in between. You’re interrupted by a flash of motion and sound from the corner of your eye and by the time you crane your head to look, it is already gone. It is less about seeing, and more about our desire-to-see creating an asymmetrical dance between the viewer and the fleeting subject.
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