Happy Integration

There is an elephant in the room. The elephant's name is Happy. Happy is waiting for an appointment at the fabled Personhood Integration Centre. Happy is trying to become a person.

Happy Integration is a bureaucratic fantasia probing the metaphysics of (legal) personhood and thinghood, (registered) names and bodies, and the fabricated worlds of (civic) integration. 

At its core is the dramatisation of a legal case involving one sad and lonely elephant. In 2005, the real-life Happy became the first elephant in the world to pass the so-called “mirror self-recognition test”, which later played a central role in her claim to legal personhood. The fictionalisation of Happy’s story is interwoven with Asya’s own experiences of passing tests and navigating appointments in the pursuit of Dutch citizenship.