encountering the foxes
My parents bought their house in Toronto's beaches area 43 years ago. It has a steep backyard with an undeveloped wooded zone across the top and neighbouring properties, connected to a network of ravines in the area. Urban foxes, being nocturnal, seek safe resting places for the day, often in the sheltered yards of elderly people. Between 1999 and 2001, my parents' trimmed shrubs became a locus for them. As many as nine appeared in the yard at one time, and I videotaped them. Many have since succumbed to the disease called sarcoptic mange. Last fall, foxes were sighted only rarely in the area. The Urban Fox Project is a continuing exploration of their presence and issues. It takes the form of both art and academic research, investigating technology and human/animal embodiment.The Urban Fox Project draws on footage from my extensive archive of digital video of urban foxes, tracing peak population density in 1999-2000, through the decline in 2001 due to trapping and sarcoptic mange. The project includes the video animal Movies : fox past (2000) and the CD Rom fox : future (2001). Screenings for these projects include the Brooklyn Film Festival, Hot Docs, Pleasure Dome’s ‘Blueprint for Moving Images in the 21st Century, the Canadian Documentary Retrospective at the American Museum in Washington, the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival and Cinemateque Ontario
animal movies : fox past and fox : future were informed by the chapter Looking at the Non-Human in the book The Culture of Nature : North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez by Alexander Wilson (1989). This chapter explores how animal movies and TV have impacted on ideas of nature.