Marcus Coates: Tate Shots

For this film, we went bird-watching with the artist Marcus Coates. His new video, The Plover’s Wing 2008, was on show at Tate Britain during the Tate Triennial, so it seemed apt. Coates knows a lot about birds, he can mimic their calls, interpret their behaviour and, he says, even converse with them… in the spirit world. For his art, he films himself entering a trance like state that he calls ‘becoming animal’, and attempts to solve people’s problems by seeking answers from the animal spirits that he encounters. In this latest work, he visits the mayor of a town in Israel, and answers a question about the crisis there.