EVERYONE IS… situates language, repetition, and mimicry within human–beyond-human relations as sites of power and attention. Working with the African Grey parrot, Beuys, vocal repetition develops through processes of teaching and learning, in which human language is absorbed, transformed, and rearticulated through nonhuman intelligence.
Beyond simple imitation, Beuys’s speech reflects how another species learns, adapts, and reshapes human language—often in ways that exceed human expectation and resist complete predictability.
Through teaching Beuys to repeat phrases such as “Everyone is a contemporary artist,” the work confronts the limits of human intention and authorship. Beuys does not transmit fixed meaning; she vocalises according to her own rhythms, interests, and intelligence, resisting reduction to training, automation, or obedience.
Each utterance develops through daily cohabitation and sustained interaction. Voice becomes a shared field formed through presence, care, and mutual adjustment, where trust, meaning, and agency are continuously reconfigured across species boundaries.
By foregrounding these exchanges, EVERYONE IS… challenges human-centred models of creativity and expression. It reframes language as a contingent and distributed process shaped through sustained interspecies interaction, rather than individual authority.