The Hybrids & You! exhibition questions our ecosystems, our imagination and tells the story of how we are part of one living entity that combines coincidence and necessity.

We are hybrids by nature. There is no gap between the human being and the rest of Nature. The creative process is continuous one that surprises and marvels us. Haven’t you ever felt a bit like an animal or a plant? I have!

This poetic take on co-evolution and the odyssey of the living has inspired over one hundred “hybridizing” works – creatures drawn on Japanese paper or survival blankets placed in the museum’s collections and in the temporary exhibition room. They pay homage to life in its perpetual state of change and invites the spectator to stroll along the shores of the great atlas of biodiversity.

A hybrid soundtrack entitled Cantus Oceanumsilva – a true sound landscape – mixes recordings of cetacean and tropical forest songs created by bio-acousticians Olivier Adam and Thierry Aubin. This soundtrack offers the alternative experience of feeling a simultaneous connection with the depths of the Amazon rainforest and underwater life by irrigating the mind with an original terrestrial melody. The rorqual, sperm whale, pilot whale, beluga, narwhal, killer whale and humpback whale sing with the leks* of screaming piha (Lipaugus vociferans) against a backdrop of grasshoppers and crickets. These typically Amazonian birds are the emblem of the Indians. They are called “paypayo” or “Captain of the Forest” because their chirping helps Indians get their bearings and guides them to sources of clear water where the leks gather.

Link to the museum’s website : http://musee-angouleme.fr

• Émilie Salaberry : Director of the musée d’Angoulême, the museum policy department and municipal archives/li>
• The entire museum staff
• Luc Molleux and Patrick Blanchier for their photographs
• Olivier Adam : s– a bio-acoustics specialist who has studied various cetacean species since 2001. He recently described the different roles of the respiratory system of mysticetes to explain their sound production. He is currently working on the interactions between mother humpback whales and their calves. With some 40 articles written for science magazines, he organized an international conference on acoustics and cetaceans in June 2018 (http://sabiod.univ-tln.fr/DCLDE)
• Thierry Aubin : director of Research at the CNRS and team head of the UMR 9197 neuroscience institute at Paris-Saclay University. After studying neurobiology and ethology, he specialized in animal acoustic communication, particularly crocodiles, penguins, songbirds and sea lions. He has published over one hundred scientific articles and has carried out numerous missions in the Arctic, Antarctic and the Amazon rainforest.
• Ronan de la Croix for the composition of « Cantus oceanumsilva »
• Tatiana Seguin for her improvisational dances inspired by my drawings