Diana Thater

For the 2011 collaboration with our farm, Diana Thater (b. 1962) presented an image of her cat Augustus Caesar with “Somebody quick! Oil my Olives!,” on it, as a kind of playful reference to male genitalia. The edition was realized in an edition of one, though a small series of certificates were issued. This edition was created in a prior version of the company, tentatively entitled Castellani Editions, and not released. However, we are tickled by the only edition realized.

Diana Thater is a Los Angeles-based artist whose mesmerizing and beautiful installations are often in defence of those who cannot defend themselves -- to be precise, animals. She is a pioneer in “animal cinema,” working with many species to relate the story of animals -- from their own perspective. This radical approach, already formed in the early 1990s, led Cornelia to invite the artist to produce a book publication, Electric Mind. It is a screenplay that relates the story of a chimpanzee with the mind of a girl, and is based on a novel by best-selling science fiction writer, Pat Murphy. Thater staged fiction as potential reality, which bears ever closer resemblance to what may be scientifically possible. The purpose of the publication was to stretch the idea of what constitutes an artist’s book, and bring the artist’s book into the realm of trade publishing.

Photo courtesy the artist