PROTOTYPE

THE MONKEY WOMAN

MONSTRUM

is derived from monestrum (moneo) and the basic meaning of moneo (radix menini, mens) is "to remind someone of something, to make someone remember"; then "to warn, to inform, to involve, to exhort, to urge.

"Monstro signifies "to show, to indicate, to designate,
to prescribe, to give advice."

 

ANIMAL

1: any of a kingdom (Animalia) of living things including many-celled organisms and often many of the single-celled ones (as protozoans) that typically differ from plants in having cells without cellulose walls, in lacking chlorophyll and the capacity for photosynthesis, in requiring more complex food materials (as proteins), in being organized to a greater degree of complexity, and in having the capacity for spontaneous movement and rapid motor responses to stimulation

2 a: one of the lower animals as distinguished from human beings b: mammal ; broadly : vertebrate

3: a human being considered chiefly as physical or nonrational ; also : this nature

4: a person with a particular interest or aptitude

5: matter, thing; also : creature

EXPERIMENT

1 a: test, trial. b: a tentative procedure or policy. c: an operation or procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law

2 obsolete : experience
3: the process of testing : experimentation

 

LANGUAGE

1 a: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community b (1): audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs (2): a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (3): the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings (4): the means by which animals communicate
(5): a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions (6): machine language

2 a: form or manner of verbal expression ; specifically : style b: the vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or a department of knowledge c: profanity

3: the study of language especially as a school subject

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MONKEY-WOMAN'S ARCHIVE

Research in progress

 

Monkey-Woman’s Archive is a material recompilation realised by the Monkey-Woman during her thirty years of life. The archive comprises a detailed study of the effects of humans within nature. The archive assembles objects, signs and images organised in a crosswise series, associating each element with another series. The totality of the archive presents a rhizomatic narration of the ways in which the Monkey-Woman analyses the state of nature.

The archive is structured and visualised by a map-landscape in which the Monkey-Woman indicates and connects the human signs invading her natural cartography. This cartography
corresponds geographically to the circumnavigation which the Monkey-woman realised since she was captured in Angola in 1621. She was then transported to Amsterdam, handed over as a present to Frederik Hendrik Prince of Orange and later donated to science.

The famous Dr.Tulp portrayed by Rembrandt carried out various surgical operations on the Monkey-Woman. Nicolaes Tulp refers to the Monkey-Woman in the third volume of “Observatorium medicarum” (1641), where he describes the “human qualities of an
Orang-Utang”. This was the first solid information about the presence of a simian in Europe.

The Monkey-Womans Archive was discovered by Tulp who, together with the other noblemen of Amsterdam, decided to hide it forever because it casts doubt on the dominance of human reason over other living beings.