The video work It grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them is dedicated to various forms of sensibilities and the science fiction literature of authors Suzette Haden Elgin and Octavia E. Butler, among others. The film moves through a series of stories, references, and retellings from various fields.
It begins by retelling parts of the novel Native Tongue (1984) by Suzette Haden Elgin, who also worked as a linguist, describing the constructed language Láadan, which Elgin created in 1982. Two years later, she published the novel, in which a fictional group of female linguists spend years secretly developing a language called Láadan as well: a language expressing what they think a language should be able to express.
It grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them is Villesen‘s third work, after Deeply immersed in the content of a learning stone (2016/2017) and There is an Affinity (2019), that references and retells feminist science fiction literature. All three video works contain passages from novels by Octavia Butler; their titles are also quotes from her novels.