An Open Letter for Invertebrate Rights

Towards Webs of Life: For a real Augmented Reality

Dear inhabitants of the worlds,

We would like to start by thanking you for your time, by recognizing our rights to inhabit and participate in this exhibition and for not labelling us “urban pests” as many others do. We hope that after this exhibition ends, you would consider allowing our continuing but threatened, unlimited existence.

Many of you are frightened of us in the real world. To overcome this we hope you might interact with a digital version of us.

Your scientific names for us are Bagheera kiplingi* and Maratus speciosus, though we call ourselves differently in our vibrational language. This summer, you will be able to spot our augmented presence around the Serpentine.

Now, after this exhibition ends, you will need to find us in the real world and show a good will of co-existence by not sweeping us away. We could grant you in exchange a certificate of co-existence for a perpetual loan of our avatar friends to be exhibited permanently, under the terms agreed to respect our rights!

We have lived on earth for more than 380 million years, while some of you humans, only 200 thousand years. Can the minority learn to live with the majority of us? We are the 95% of all animals on planet earth asking for the right to weave webs of life, yet we are threatened into extinction by such a small number of individuals.

Do not be afraid. Let us move from arachnophobia to arachnophilia by sensing new threads of connectivity, or else face the eternal silence of extinction.

At-ten(t)sion to invertebrate rights for “Webs of Life”!**

Title: “Webs of Life”
Year: 13,819,062,021 years, ABB (After Big Bang)
Co-Authors: Bagheera kiplingi*, Maratus speciosus and
Tomás Saraceno, founding member of Arachnophilia
Edition: Still ongoing but threatened

*Named after Rudyard Kipling, Bagheera kiplingi’s* name represents for many the Victorian imperialism Kipling supported. Tomás Saraceno with members of the Arachnophilia community is attempting to rename this and other spider species whose names carry controversial, post-colonial references. Find out more on renaming this spider and other species at Arachnophilia.net.

**We cannot speak in the name of the spider/web. We do not represent the spider/webs and cannot impose a human language or legal framework onto them. We cannot speculate on their rights. This letter is an invitation to imagine (re)new(ed) ways of entangling with our arachnid kin, and all living and nonliving entities of this earth, differently. Vibrate within the “Webs of Life”.