Speculative System, 2025

 

Animal Constitution is a post-legal system that looks at how language shapes the way we understand nonhuman life. The project starts from a simple idea: existence comes first, and the systems we build to define it come later. Today, animal rights are often framed as ethical progress, but the act of granting rights also pulls nonhuman life into human systems of law, governance, and representation. This work asks what happens when those linguistic and legal systems become the main way we see and relate to other forms of life.

 

The system is organized around twelve axioms, each presented as a Law Card. When a visitor selects a card, a creature appears and the surrounding environment shifts slightly. These changes are subtle rather than dramatic, as if the world is slowly recalibrating itself in response to each piece of legal language. After three selections, the system reaches a point of overload and collapses. There is no resolution. The environment simply stops functioning under the logic that once structured it. Visitors are not asked to play or perform, but to observe how a world built on legal language begins to break down under its own weight.

 

The project has three material layers. I designed the twelve Law Cards, sculpted and 3D-printed the twelve creature figures, created their transparent orb packaging, and wrote the system manual that defines how each axiom operates. I also designed the digital hall, including how cards are selected, how creatures appear, how the environment changes, and how the system eventually terminates. My role focused on shaping both the visual language and the system’s behavior, making sure each part reflects the tension between language and existence.

 

Animal Constitution sits between environmental thinking and post-human ethics. Rather than arguing for or against animal rights, the project focuses on how the language of rights reorganizes what we think we are seeing. When the system finally collapses, what remains is not a clear message, but a moment where existence becomes visible again, without needing to be named.

 

 

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