Shifters by Marta Bodganska investigates animals in military, animal spies, animal subjectivity, and new ways of looking at animal history. The heart of this project is this 14-chapter artist book, the author’s attempt to visualize the history of animals in military, police and in spy programs. The book uses archival & found footage as well as texts. SHIFTERS consist also of a 12-minute video essay, and a series of soundtracks created in participatory way during workshops.

“SHIFTERS is my ongoing project; a continuation of my interest in espionage and its legacies. This project started with a collection of articles (published between 2005 and today) that refer to animal spies. To name a few: suspicious squirrels, spying dolphins, misidentified stork (swan), nuclear lizards, photographer pigeon. They were all seriously accused of some kind of spying and the information about it appeared in mainstream media. Taking this as a somewhat anecdotal beginning I am investigating the use of animals as soldiers, spies, police, kamikaze. I am interested in tracing back the historical chapters about animals in war & espionage (more generally used by humans in their war machine).
A former CIA expert said in an interview that any animal, no matter how insignificant it might seem, can be trained and used. The term 'agent' is an interesting one: it means both a spy, an informant but as well a subject doing action. Taking this into account I want to relate this multifaceted story to the one of the liberation of animals, the ideas more and more common nowadays that 'our smaller brothers', and even nature, are agents, have subjectivity, should have more rights. This is as well a philosophical question for me: how to think of this kind of subjectivity? What form does it have? How can it be formulated in the language of law? New technologies will help us in developing more understanding of animal capacities for sure. The post-human & new materialist theories try to incorporate feelings and experiences of non-human actors into their realm of reflection, and philosophy tries to expand into seeing the Other as possibly not only human. How will it affect human societies?”
- Marta Bodganska