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 history of science research on synthetic biology, mammoth de-extinction and catastrophic thinking, as well as an life-changing expedition to Svalbard, Wendi Yan created the animation film 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.
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.
Tale of the Mammoth Goddess
