02 Tale of the Mammoth Goddess

Tale of the Mammoth Goddess

2023
Animation short
8 minute 11 seconds

Written, directed, filmed, animated, edited by Wendi Yan
Music by Bang Klang (AP Bergeron & Leander Knust)

Narrated from the perspective of a fictional resurrected mammoth, Tale of the Mammoth Goddess tells the story of how the mammoth escaped from the Pleistocene Park and is hiding in an abandoned coal mine to prepare for her natural death.

Inspired by her research on synthetic biology, mammoth de-extinction and the historical thread of catastrophic thinking, Wendi Yan created Tale of the Mammoth Goddess to draw out a broad historical arc about mammoth as a cultural species—a critical witness to human civilizations.

Using Unreal Engine, AI generated voiceover and 3D software, Yan mixes in folkloric elements in worldbuilding, presenting a mammoth goddess who involuntarily sits through rituals, who is lazy and perhaps aloof, who escapes the duty imposed on her to live a life she wants. The mammoth collects images and objects of wooly mammoths and asian elephants to assemble her ancestral altar, which also features many “Magic: The Gathering” cards and a pastel pink human anatomy chart carpet. Through infusing this mammoth with character “flaws” and unexpected traits, Yan subverts the sublime narrative around prehistoric megafauna.

Tale of the Mammoth Goddess explores a nonhuman perspective in a rather human-centric story: if the resurrected mammoth is a biotechnical object created to serve humans’ goal of preserving the tundra ecosystem, what would the mammoth offer, if she had memories from 10,000 years ago? This piece of wild fiction attempts to make sense of the new states of nature and technology we have already been living in.