Animal Influence II

AntennaeIssue 22 - Autumn 2012 ISSN 1756-9575

Animal Influence II

Merritt Johnson – This Was Never a Knife Fight / Marten Sims – Seal Sees the Sea / Giovanni Aloi – Animal-Human-Machine-Plant / Sandra Semchuck – Bison Crossing / Deke Weaver interviewed by Maria Lux – The Unreliable Bestiary / Karolle Wall – Mollusks / G.A. Bradshaw – Pas De Deux / Myron Campbell – Distant Air / Carol Gigliotti and Marc Bekoff – In Conversation / Paolo Pennuti – Rubbernecking / Julie O’Neill – A Compassionate 2012

Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Editor in Chief Giovanni Aloi

Academic Board Steve Baker Ron Broglio Matthew Brower Eric Brown Carol Gigliotti Donna Haraway Linda Kalof Susan McHugh Rachel Poliquin Annie Potts Ken Rinaldo Jessica Ullrich

Advisory Board Bergit Arends Rod Bennison Helen Bullard Claude d’Anthenaise Petra Lange-Berndt Lisa Brown Rikke Hansen Chris Hunter Karen Knorr Rosemarie McGoldrick Susan Nance Andrea Roe David Rothenberg Nigel Rothfels Angela Singer Mark Wilson & Bryndís Snaebjornsdottir

Global Contributors Sonja Britz Tim Chamberlain Concepción Cortes Lucy Davis Amy Fletcher Katja Kynast Christine Marran Carolina Parra Zoe Peled Julien Salaud Paul Thomas Sabrina Tonutti Johanna Willenfelt

Copy Editor Maia Wentrup

Front Cover Image: Julie Andreyev,2 Tom and Sugi Julie Andreyev EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 22

This issue of Antennae is the second instalment dedicated to Animal Influence, the theme of Interactive Futures (IF)'11, held November 17-19, 2011 in Vancouver, B.C. Canada at Intersection Digital Studios (IDS) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD). Funded by Canada’s SSHRC (The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), the BCAC (British Columbia Arts Council), and Consulat Général de France à Vancouver, this public outreach weekend of events included an exhibition in the ECUAD’s Concourse and Media galleries, a second exhibition at Vancouver’s Gallery Gachet, presentations, screenings, performances, live streaming of many of the presentations, and partnering with Antennae to produce this particular issue reflecting on and documenting this seminal project. Since 2002, IF has been recognized as an important international venue for new media artists and thinkers.

The resulting series of events, Animal Influence, engaged with the work and thinking of digital media artists whose work has been influenced by the growing wealth of knowledge on animal agency, cognition, creativity and consciousness emerging from such fields as ecology, cognitive ethology (the study of animal thinking, consciousness and mind), psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, zoology, and others. The workshop offered in- depth conversations and discussions between invited cognitive ethologists, biologists, psychologists, philosophers, artists and public policy makers. This second issue is a continuation of the diverse and compelling essays from participants in these fields, and the work of artists involved in the workshop, exhibits, screenings and performances. Carol Gigliotti’s more detailed introduction to the event can be found in the first issue, and we urge you to peruse both issues for a full picture of the Animal Influence Project. These innovative undertakings allowed us to see how crucial it is for us to open up our minds and hearts to animal influence.

We hope you enjoy this issue of Antennae and the preceding one, and take from it inspiration for your own shifts in consciousness, compassion and creativity.

Carol Gigliotti Guest Curator, Interactive Futures’11: Animal Influence

Giovanni Aloi Editor in Chief of Antennae Project

3 CONTENTS ANTENNAE ISSUE 22

5 This Was Never a Knife Fight Merritt Johnson earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005. Her practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance; involving the pursuit of survival, camouflage, disguise, hybridity and monsters. Her work is influenced by her mixed ancestry, including Mohawk, Blackfoot and non-Indigenous. Based in New York, she exhibits and performs and in traditional and nontraditional venues throughout North America. The stories related in this paper are the cultural property of the Haudensaunee (Iroquois SIx Nation) Confederacy and it's people. Text by Merritt Johnson

Artist’s Page: Marten Sims – Seals Sees the Sea

27 Animal-Human-Machine-Plant Through the disentangling of the dichotomic opposition of nature and culture proposed by Donna Haraway, the vision of boundary-breakdown between animals, human and machines is surprisingly guilty of a conspicuous omission: plants. Frequently studied for their medical properties and consistently exploited for their aesthetic, edible and malleable qualities, plants have played a defining role in the historical and cultural development of humankind. Why have plants then been ignored in the outlining of the cyborgian reconfiguration? To this point, plants have been silent witnesses of the animal revolution in the humanities and the arts. However, through the subjects of hybridity and interspecies communication they have come to occupy a more prominent place in the posthumanist discourse. Recent advances in plant molecular biology, cellular biology, electrophysiology and ecology, have revealed plants as sensory and communicative organisms, characterized by active, problem-solving behavior. Text by Giovanni Aloi

Artist’s Page: Sandra Semchuk – Bison Crossing

55 The Unreliable Bestiary Deke Weaver is an artist whose work is often realized as multi-media performances. Driven by narrative, the pieces employ strange and surprising fiction, and sometimes even more surprising facts, intertwined through Deke’s presence as an actor and storyteller. Using everything from video projections, retro TV footage, and claymation, to puppets, costumes, and sound, he creates unexpected relationships that are often described by audience members as both “disturbing” and “hilarious.” While his work touches on a surprising variety of topics, animals are central. Interview Questions by Maria Lux

Artist’s Page: Karolle Wall – Mollusks

59 Pas the Deux Art is considered a defining feature of the human psyche, a humanness that distinguishes us from all other creatures. Scientists regard art – communication in word, paint, sound, and motion – fruit of the human brain’s sophistication. The desire to revel in self-awareness and connection with the world inspires us to communicate these experiences. This impetus to create has blossomed through the ages. Humanity knows itself through its traces of the muse. Text by G. A. Bradshaw

Artist’s Page: Myron Campbell – Distant Air

72 Carol Gigliotti in Conversation with Marc Bekoff Carol Gigliotti, writer, artist and scholar whose work focuses on the impact of new technologies on human relationships with animals and on the lives of animals themselves ‘rewilding’ with former professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and widely published author Marc Bekoff. Text by Carol Gigliotti and Marc Bekoff

Artist’s Page: Paolo Pennuti - Rubbernecking

80 A Compassionate 2012 The power of photography has always excited me. I am mesmerized by a camera's ability to capture a moment, a mood, or a beautiful light. Images have a limitless capability to inspire, frighten, educate and warm hearts. For me, photography is a tool to inspire change and awaken compassion within others. After obtaining a degree in Film Studies and English Literature, I decided to pursue my passion for photography. I then attended the Applied Photography program at Sheridan College. Upon completion I was on my way to becoming a "professional photographer". However, I decided to take my camera on the road before beginning a career as a commercial photographer. Since heading out over 8 years ago, I am still "on the road". I have now travelled to over 50 countries with my camera. Text by Julie O’Neill

Perception

THIS WAS NEVER A

KNIF E FIGHT

Merritt Johnson earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005. Her practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance; involving the pursuit of survival, camouflage, disguise, hybridity and monsters. Her work is influenced by her mixed ancestry, including Mohawk, Blackfoot and non-Indigenous. Based in New York, she exhibits and performs and in traditional and nontraditional venues throughout North America. The stories related in this paper are the cultural property of the Haudensaunee (Iroquois SIx Nation) Confederacy and it's people. Text by Merritt Johnson

When the animals talked to people, and people through the hole, or she fell, I’ve heard it told both could understand- is the way we begin some of ways; and on her way down she grabbed at the our old Kaniekehaka stories. Inherent in this roots of the tree, taking some of them with her as statement is the acknowledgement that in the she fell. passage of time, the other animals have Because the world down here was all blue stopped talking to us, and that for our part we at that time, and there was no ohontsya (earth), have stopped listening (with rare exceptions in the water birds flew up to help her. This first both cases). woman was very pregnant and the animals living Our stories have been told for a very long here saw she couldn’t live in the water, so time, longer than some people say we’ve been A’nowara, a turtle, agreed to let her sit his back. on Turtle Island. When I spoke at the Interactive The woman told the animals that if they could find Futures conference last fall, I told some stories, some earth she could plant the roots of the tree and while writing them here is not the same as and something would grow. telling, the following is an attempt to relate the So the animals went deep below the important information. The stories I want to share water, they took turns going down to bring some position people as helpless, or hapless, up. Some floated back lifeless, until Anookyen, a dependents on the non-human world. They are muskrat, returned with small bits of mud clutched old stories, and because they are so old, they in his hands. tell us something about where we come from, The woman put the bits of roots from the and remind us of what our place is. Sky Tree in the mud on Turtle’s back and she It’s said that there was a time when began to walk around, some people say she everything here was blue, all water and sky. danced. Everyday she went dancing or walking. During that time there were people living in the The land grew larger until it became the land we Sky World, not people like we are, but something are on now. So we call this Turtle Island to honor like us. There was a big tree up in the Sky World, the Turtle who offered his back to support the first and a man had dug a hole down through the woman. roots. There are different explanations about When I was in grade school, I remember why he dug the hole. He pushed his wife listening to one of my Aunties talking out loud to

Merritt Johnson Split, 48 x 72 inches, oil and alkyd on canvas, 2011 Merritt Johnson

whoever was listening. And she said something old stories, animals and people are talked about about doing this because that’s what kind of in the same way. One of my children’s favorite animal we are. So I told her, “at school they say stories is about a boy who went to live with the we’re people, not animals.” I was going to a Ohkwari (the Bear). Christian elementary school, and there were A long time ago when the animals spoke some curricular problems. to the people, and the people could understand, there was a boy whose parents were dead, so he My Auntie laughed at me and she said “Are you lived with his uncle who was a great hunter. He a rock?” was a good boy and respectful of those older “No” I said. than himself, but his Uncle didn’t want to take “Are you a plant?” care of him. “No.” There was a day when his Uncle woke up “Well then” she laughed “you’re an animal, with a bad idea. He told the boy they would go because that’s all there is!” hunting. The boy was never allowed to go hunting with his Uncle, so he was very excited. This Auntie was a science teacher, so she knew The Uncle led the boy a long way from the about the ways we divide and classify the world. village in a direction the people didn’t go, and he But she also remembers the stories she grew up left his dog at home. The boy worried and asked with and she remembers we’re all related. In the why they left the dog. “Today”, said his Uncle,

Merritt Johnson

High Winds (blue tarp), 60 x 72 inches, oil on canvas, 2011 Merritt Johnson

“you will be my dog”. He tricked the boy by told how he lived in a nice burrow and tunneled sending him into a cave and trapped him there. under the ground, and ate juicy grubs and The Uncle left, and the boy was afraid. He worms. The boy thanked him, but said he didn’t thought about his parents, and he sang a song have claws to tunnel through the ground, and he remembered from his mother. He sang until smartly said nothing about his feelings on the he heard sounds from outside the cave, like worms. Beaver told how he swam out to his someone was singing with him. The boy was warm, safe lodge in the middle of a pond and rescued from the cave by animals living in the about eating the best tree bark. The boy thanked forest. When he came out into the clearing, a Beaver too, but said he would freeze in the cold Grandmother Groundogh said they had heard water, and didn’t have strong enough teeth or a him singing for a friend and asked what a child belly for eating tree bark. Deer and Wolf told the was doing alone in the forest. The boy boy how they went swiftly over the land, eating explained he had no one, and was alone in the new leaves and little rabbits respectively. The boy world. So the Grandmother Groundhog told thanked them as well, but said he would be too him, “choose any of us grandson, and we will slow to keep up. adopt you.” Then a Mother Bear said, “My boy, you There were many animals gathered would like to be a bear. We take our time going around the boy, and he didn’t know how to through the forest, we eat sweet berries and choose. So the animals decided to tell him how honey, and my children will be your playmates.” they lived, so he could make a choice. Mole The boy agreed he would be a bear, and things 8

Merritt Johnson Crow Booming the One Big Water (Gulls flying away), 36 x 48 inches, oil and alkyd on canvas (courtesy of the Birmingham Museum of Art) Merritt Johnson were just as the Mother Bear said they would be. run, and as fast they went, the sounds came The Bears took their time going through the forest closer. Finally they hid in a big hollow log and and the boy played with the Bear Children. waited. Smoke came into the log, and the boy Something strange happened as the was afraid. Then he remembered - he was a boy, seasons passed. When the Bear children’s claws and that outside was a man with a dog and a fire or teeth scratched the boy as they played, thick blowing smoke into the log, and he called out. hair would grow in that place. And soon the boy “Stop, don’t hurt my family!” looked like a skinny bear himself, all covered in The smoke stopped and the boy crawled thick dark fur. out, and standing on two legs he approached Sometimes the Mother Bear would tell the the hunter. The man couldn’t move seeing this young ones to be quiet and listen. Then she strange creature coming towards him. When the would laugh and tell them about the hunters boy was an arm’s length away he reached out they heard passing through the forest - she told and touched the boy. His hand brushed the fur them about Heavy Foot who walked so noisily he away from the boy’s shoulder and the boy would never catch a bear, and Flapping Jaws recognized the man as his Uncle. As the fur who talked to himself about how great a hunter came away from the boy’s body his Uncle he was as he went. She also told them about recognized him; and he told how he’d gone back the Guy Who Falls in the lake, and The One Who for the boy. But when he returned to the cave he Runs into Trees. But one day she told them to found nothing but animal tracks and thought the hush, and they listened for a long time and the boy had been eaten. sound they heard was not two feet or four feet; it The boy explained how the Bears adopted was two feet and four feet coming together, him. The Ohkwari, he said, were now his family, softly and very fast. Their mother told them to and must be respected by the people. After that 9

Merritt Johnson Blue Cover, graphite and spray lacquer on vellum, 36 x 47 inches, 2012 Merritt Johnson

they were one family together, and since then service of some kind or another. We are not the we tell this story to remind parents to treat their only organism to do this. These expenses have children with as much love as a Mother Bear been generally balanced until recently- they holds in her heart for her children. And that is maintained healthy herds, kept one Animal how the story goes. Survival isn’t easy. To stay Nation from over running another, supported warm, dry, fed and healthy- as hairless, clawless, growth in forests and kept the plains from turning animals with mediocre teeth, and limited to dust. Since then however, there has been digestive capabilities is a great effort. We are some kind of declaration of sovereignty, or dependents. But from the time when animals perhaps a series of declarations of sovereignty, talked to people and we understood, we’ve over the world by human animals. made changes. We replaced the old cooperative and We shoot down clouds to effect snow and rainfall collaborative survival methods as practiced by with anti-aircraft guns. everyone else (and by everyone else, I mean plants and other animals). Our replacement I won’t tell a story about Buffalo, I didn’t grow up in approaches have positioned us with advantage, their territory. My Grandpa was Blackfoot, but he but are clearly less sustainable for the larger non- was adopted, and I don’t think he knew his stories. human community, and eventually for the He didn’t raise my mother, and I only met him human community as well. briefly as a kid. But I reference the Buffalo in my We all survive at each other’s expense in work, because they belong here, because I’m some way. To eat, to feed our children, we kill connected to them, and because as much as other things, stunt their growth, or press them into they’ve been romanticized, they continue to 10

Merritt Johnson Swallowing a Swallower, 24 inches square, oil and spray lacquer on panel, 2012 Merritt Johnson

be mistreated, and to live as a landless Nation. charges of spreading brucellosis to cattle. While Buffalo are not known to have a knack for they continue to graze in view of passing camouflage, or to show an interest in stealth. motorists, this is only to maintain a healthy profile But recent events in our collective history have for tourists, and the effort is rotated among all the required changes in the Buffalo Nation’s Buffalo residing in Yellowstone. However as more approach to everyday living. Disguise has methods of disguise and camouflage are become a keen interest among the Buffalo, and innovated, and fabricated, there is a question as despite their size, they are quickly becoming to whether the Buffalo will determine it best to adept at camouflaging themselves so as to remain out of view entirely. It’s appropriate also, move about freely while evading baseless that I acknowledge the Clouds, as they feature

prominently in my work. The Clouds migrate like writes “[t]he hero must be a half-breed, half white the Buffalo; but the clouds are migrants outside and half Indian, preferably/ from a horse culture. land-based travel, which has afforded them He should often weep alone. That is freedom and protection until recently. Their mandatory....If the hero is an Indian woman, she insistence on maintaining their rhythms and is beautiful. She must be slender/ and in love with routes, rather than complying with ours, has a white man. But if she loves an Indian man/ then increasingly put them in danger of being shot he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse out of the sky by our anti-aircraft artillery. culture.” This desire for a protagonist who is more As a result, Clouds have begun hurling familiar to the viewer is based on understanding, themselves to the ground to find alternative or more accurately the assumption that the routes of travel, and possibly, though we have familiar is easier to understand, because it is (at no proof, to intentionally target things here. least in appearance) more like the self. Noam Communication with Clouds has not been Chomsky founded modern linguistics on the idea developed, so it’s difficult to determine if Clouds that speech/language is what separates us from on the ground have been shot out of the sky or if them - that it makes us, as humans, unique. they’ve intentionally crashed here. I’m interested Whether or not this is true (and I don’t think in clouds because they are unlike us. Even it is), the ability to speak is not the issue of more than other animals, they are difficult to importance for me. My position is that our inability anthropomorphize - to us, they seem incapable to understand does not preclude their ability to of benevolence or violence. To call a cloud speak. This is to some extent accepted among inhuman is difficult. But Clouds are like anything: different human languages, a precedent we they are capable or their own kind of survival. might build upon to include the non-human world Clouds can swallow up, and that swallowing up as well. It’s important to draw attention to the is the heart of our fears in relation to the animal, non-human, non-citizen, non-member, and or as Derrida calls it, the Beast. We are afraid of enemy as all being placed together as one being devoured. In Derrida’s last seminar, The group, through lacking the ability to Beast and the Sovereign, he examines man as a communicate. In collapsing them, the process political animal. The focus, in large part, is on of justifying selfish action and cruelty is the Wolf as Beast, and particularly on the streamlined. There is an argument that animals Werewolf as the man/beast Hybrid. I always find are ignorant of law, and cannot be held myself feeling like the wolf when werewolves are responsible before the law, but this is in regard being discussed. only to human law and determination of crime. Derrida addresses the hypocrisy of moral The removal of another’s ability to recognize law position on the political and war: even in warfare and crime is equivalent to, and in some cases and in the violence of the relation to the enemy, dependent upon, asserting the same other’s lack European right must be respected, beginning of capacity for language. with the law of war; the absolute enemy must be Rather than arguing for, and locating treated without hatred, political hostility is not examples of non-human law and crime, I think it hatred as a psychological passion, war must be should be noted that humans, for the large part, declared from state to state, sincerely declared, wouldn’t care anyway. Perhaps the others don’t the rights of war must be loyally respected, and want to talk to us anymore, and it should be must oppose armies and not terrorist partisans pointed out - that is their right. The challenge it attacking civilian populations, etc. At bottom, seems, the thing that is actually important- is when a hypocritical imperialism combats its whether or not we can extend ourselves to enemies in the name of human rights and treats acknowledge the rights of those with whom we its enemies like beasts, like non-men, like don’t, or cannot speak. We have a long history of werewolves, it is waging not a war but what doing exactly the opposite of this, so to call it a would today be called a state terrorism that challenge is perhaps an understatement. The will does not speak its name. to make other animals, and non-human systems, He goes on later to talk about the wolf in subject to force is the same will used to subject Machiavelli, again a man who is part animal, a the human other to force, and to justify that force. man like a wolf-, a man-wolf, or werewolf. I can’t In removing rights from non-human animals on help but connect this shift of focus from Wolf, to the basis of being non-human, we reinforce our werewolf, to the convention of the white (or human position by reasoning that the non-human whiter) protagonist in literature and film that is also, by nature, inhuman. It then follows that claims to be about non-white experience. I’m the same reasoning, if we can call it that, is reminded of Sherman Alexie’s poem, “How to applied to the human other. Positioning the Write the Great American Novel,” where he human other as inhuman, in regard to actions 12

taken or imagined against the self by the other, founds the justification for the denial of rights based on the already established lack of protection for the non-human due to its perceived inherent lack of humanity. To be clear, justification of mistreatment and subjection to force is often dependent upon the slippage in describing an animal, (human or otherwise) as non-human to describing him or her as inhuman. To be non-human is simply to be something other than human, physiologically of a different structure. To be inhuman however, is to lack qualities of humanity, like compassion, and to be cruel. But the exclusion of everything non-human from characteristics like compassion is deeply flawed. In doing so, we deny rights to existence from all but a few of us; allowing for a rapid move to denying the rights of even those few who remain. In fear of being devoured by the other, we risk devouring ourselves. Imagining the way it would go if what is left of the Wolf Nation and Buffalo Nation were brought into the U.N. reminds us that the way things were long maintained worked out for much of the non-human world. To survive has Merritt Johnson always been a messy, ugly business - it involves Underpantsface Monster Imposter blood and guts, swallowing eggs, mowing down acrylic on paper new shoots and literally tearing each other 40 x 29 inches 2012 Merritt Johnson apart. But we survived together and in spite of each other, striking balances that sustained countless variations of life for longer than many of us can remember our stories.

We find ourselves though, standing in a place where our ability to compete and control outweighs our needs for survival, despite our physical shortcomings. We’ve developed methods that make us capable of demonstrating compassion - of doing less than we are able. The wolves don’t take more than they need to survive, but I suspect there are places they could. It turns out we’ve brought guns to what was never really a knife fight.

Marten Sims

SE AL SEES THE SEA

Marten Sims Seal Sees the Sea, still from video, 2011 Marten Sims

Harbour Seals form an integral part of both the tourists’ and residents’ impression of the

Vancouver seascape. Walking along the seawall, we humans are often surprised by the sudden appearance of seals, who seem just as curious about us. Their sudden materialisation is often just as swift as their disappearance (frequently with no indication of where they might reappear – much to the annoyance of photographers). This piece reverses the perspective by following the journey of an inquisitive harbour seal as she visits a variety of sites around the Vancouver shoreline and seawall throughout the day – watching us humans as we go about our various activities and sightseeing.

Marten Sims grew up in Dorset, a county on the south coast of England. Living in an area of outstanding natural beauty, Marten spent much of his childhood in, on, or by the ocean, and more recently has begun exploring under it. It was while volunteering and scuba-diving on the Galapagos Islands in 2008 that he found out what we – as a species – are doing to the ocean, and that it can’t continue, for all our sakes. For eight years he has worked on branding projects, campaigns, and in advertising for environmental, humanitarian and sexual health organisations. In addition to his professional work, he also co-directs a non-profit ocean education organisation called “Wake Project” here in Vancouver. Although Marten produces work in a variety of mediums, often his primary objective is to communicate something about his love for the sea, and to raise questions about our own15 actions towards this, our most precious natural resource.

Marten Sims

Seal Sees the Sea, still from video, 2011 Marten Sims

Marten Sims Seal Sees the Sea, still from video, 2011 Marten Sims

ANIMAL-HUMAN -MACHINE-PLANT

Through the disentangling of the dichotomic opposition of nature and culture proposed by Donna Haraway, the vision of boundary-breakdown between animals, human and machines is surprisingly guilty of a conspicuous omission: plants. Frequently studied for their medical properties and consistently exploited for their aesthetic, edible and malleable qualities, plants have played a defining role in the historical and cultural development of humankind. Why have plants then been ignored in the outlining of the cyborgian reconfiguration? To this point, plants have been silent witnesses of the animal revolution in the humanities and the arts. However, through the subjects of hybridity and interspecies communication they have come to occupy a more prominent place in the posthumanist discourse. Recent advances in plant molecular biology, cellular biology, electrophysiology and ecology, have revealed plants as sensory and communicative organisms, characterized by active, problem-solving behavior. Text by Giovanni Aloi

Through the disintegration of the dichotomic foundations that still support our daily lives, the opposition of nature and culture proposed by acts of decentralizing, questioning, fragmenting Donna Haraway, the vision of boundary- and reconfiguring have largely taken place in breakdown between animals, human and front of the botanical world. This leads one to machines bears a conspicuous omission: plants. question how much of the humanist approach to Why have plants been ignored in the outlining of the hierarchical is retained by posthumanism. the cyborgian reconfiguration? To this point, they Is there an interest in exploring different relational have been silent witnesses to the animal opportunities involving the botanical world? Could revolution in the humanities and the arts. we even bring ourselves to think about plants as Frequently studied by science for their medical companion species? And what would a different properties and consistently exploited for their consideration of plants bring to our well under way aesthetic, edible and malleable qualities, plants revisioning of our relations with animals? have played a defining role in the historical and The controversial 2009 film Avatar cultural development of humankind. Just as this directed by James Cameron, envisions a world in role comes increasingly into focus, the botanical which neural connections amongst different world is seriously threatened by the same agents beings are formed via interlacing membranes affecting animals. Forests are razed at an that literally plug one body into the other. These alarming rate as large seed-banks scramble to connections are capable of supporting preserve the genetic material of the world's flora everlasting interspecies relationships, effectively before it is lost. Why then plants have not yet trespassing the boundaries of identity in the become part of the current humanities’ creation of expanded sensory awareness. The discourse? And how could we justify the fact most interesting aspect of this interconnectedness that the current revisionist wave responsible for of living networks is that the bond transgresses the reconsidering of our relations with animals evolutional bio-proximity, joining members of draws a line at the botanical point? As substantially different species and orders through posthumanism challenges the humanist a symbiotic connection that leaps beyond 17

James Cameron th Pandora’s Hometrees in Avatar, 2009 20 Century Fox

anything we have thus far experienced in In the middle of the 1980s the development of organic life. In Avatar, the Tree of Souls (Vitraya Deep Ecology, an alternative, holistic ramunong) is a bioluminescent weeping willow, understanding of the cosmos, emerged to guiding force and deity of Pandora. It allows the challenge Shallow Ecology, the archaic establishment of networks that enables anthropocentric approach that conceives nature Pandora’s inhabitants to communicate through as a resource to exploit. In Deep Ecology, also a an expanded and shared sensory awareness. central theme in Avatar, a sense of The Tree of Voices functions, instead, as a connectedness and belonging to the cosmos is historical collective memory that allows natives imbued with a spiritual quality. This element to hear voices of their ancestors. Most visible of heavily features in the film as a variant form of all in the film is the giant Home-Tree, standing at Pantheism. In Pantheism, nature and God are roughly 460 meters tall, where the leading clan indissolubly one, defining a spiritual bond that lives. On Pandora, it could be argued that plants replaces the worshipping of a supernatural have overtaken animals in the forming of vital external God. Pantheistic ideas are pre-Christian, relational modes. One key aspect of the dating back to Heraclitus and the philosophy of characterization of Pandora’s natives is their the Stoics, therefore bearing relatively solid connectedness with animals and plants: they connections to Paganism. It is not therefore much are at one with ecosystems. How would a of a surprise that the reviews Avatar received from different consideration of plants contribute to the L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican shifting of human/animal relationships and newspaper, directly pointed the finger at the moreover so to our relational with the pantheistic content of the film. A remark made in ecosystems we live in? a review broadcast by Radio Vaticana (the official What is offered by Avatar is the Vatican radio) more directly addressed the challenging vision of interspecies inappropriateness of the pantheistic sub-text of communications, surpassing the devising of a the film: shared language (like for instance the use of American Sign Language for the deaf adopted Pandora is a planet which cleverly in experiments with primates), and that reaches winks at all the pseudo-doctrines to establish such communicational ties through which have made ecology the religion a permeability with more remote living beings. of the millennium. Nature is no longer 18

James Cameron th Trees of Voices in Avatar, 2009 20 Century Fox

a creation to be defended, but a delivered in the Vatican reviews, the remark that divinity to be adored, while “transcendence is emptied by incarnating itself in transcendence is emptied by a plant,” is of particular importance. It is clear that incarnating itself in a plant and in its the idea that a plant could be envisioned as a white vines which nourish spirits, transcendent entity is implausible and branching off into real pantheism. inappropriate. Let’s not forget that Christianity and Avatar seems harmless, and certainly anthropocentrism are indissolubly bound; after all, is not the first to propagate the eco- it is indeed in the Genesis that God says: “Be spiritualist tendencies shown through fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it the beauty of the planet Pandora; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and tendencies born in the Age of over the birds of the heavens and over every living Aquarius and seemingly confirmed thing that moves on the earth.”[ii] Plants are only in 2154, the year in which the entirely omitted here too. Why is the idea that a story takes place. [i] plant could be much more than a passive and static being be so discomforting? Statements such as these capture the underlying What makes Avatar’s plants so insecurity that pervades the current Catholic seductively interesting is their ability to move at a approach to global culture, but also highlight visible speed, to establish active defining traits of general attitudes towards the communicational bonds with animals and environment. The use of carefully selected humans, and to molecularly merge with human- reductionist labels like pseudo-doctrines or animal forms. By discussing a selection of fashions of our time clearly denote a lack of contemporary works of art, I wish to demonstrate understanding of the current ecological that plants on earth are capable of exactly the paradigm and the urgency to engage same, and that, therefore, the opportunities for audiences, in one way or another in the different relations to be established between ecological debate. Unfortunately, it seems that plants, humans and animals are closer than we on holy grounds at least, a revisitation of the may think. Christian-Cartesian relational mode with nature Suspicion that there is much more to seems not only impossible, but is condemned a plants than meets the eye was raised by Charles priori as a direct threat to God. and Francis Darwin who conducted a series of Of all the questionable statements experiments on plants between 1850 and 1882. 19

In The Power of Movements in Plants (1880), of the inkjet print restitutes livingness to the Darwin presented the discovery that movement otherwise relentlessly objectifying history of in plants is much more than the result of growth. representation of the botanical world. His theory was discredited by other scholars, Only a few plants are capable of leading botanists of the time, including Julius moving fast enough to be perceived by us, thus Sachs, to abandon this path until the dawn of insistently prodding the boundary that separates the new millennium when these ideas begun to them from animals. Shy Plant (Mimosa pudica) be reconsidered in the sciences, as well as in and the famous Venus Flytrap (Dionaea the arts.. muscipula) are amongst these. Mimosa pudica is a small plant with compound leaves capable of Movement as intelligence folding shut when touched. The movement is smooth and immediate, and the leaves part One of the main issues related to the again when the plant is not disturbed for a few understanding of non-mammals and plants minutes.[iii] This behavioral trait may have been alike revolves around the fact that these beings developed to discourage grazing animals or even operate on different time-scales from our own. to shake off parasites. This is the result of an In animals, behavioral responses are identified evolutional adaptation that tells us one very and measured through actions that materialize important thing: that the plant is able to feel in rapid movement. The main difference being touched - the plant is sentient. How far between animals and plants here is that could we take this statement is entirely up to how movement in plants appears to us to be willing we are to embrace a re-visiting of the intrinsically bound to growth, and as growth is boundaries that conveniently separate us from something humans and animals do not animals and plants. Venus Flytrap, has developed consciously have control over, then plants’ ability apparatuses that are capable of closing shut to move is automatically discounted, perceived extremely rapidly to imprison and then digest as a result of involuntary drives; the equivalent in small insects. Native to Carolinas, the plant may us of hair and nail growth. However this is not have evolved in order to supplement nutrients entirely the case, as it has been shown that that are scarce in the soil on which it grows. In this plants have control over their movements and case too, the plant is clearly sentient and has that growth in plants is the result of carefully developed, through an evolutional process, an gathered and processed information. original and far from passive approach to feeding In 2007, Growth Rendering Device, an as it captures insects in its multiple ciliate mouths. installation by artist David Bowen, brought to the Movement and speed are not however just gallery space the seemingly imperceptible problematic elements in the observation of plant- process of plant-growth and movement. life, but also become challenging quantities in the Traditionally, representational tropes of the understanding of non-mammals that operate at botanical world have largely been developed considerably different speeds from ours. For through the static nature of illustration and instance, most insects are too fast for our painting. In opposition to the fixity of the perception and their behavior therefore amounts innumerable paintings of plants which have to what seems to us to be non-calculated, but made the history of the still-life genre, and in mechanistic, unmediated responses. In 1974, in contrast to the tradition that, mainly in that The Evolution of Intelligence, Stenhouse defined context, understood plants as a memento mori, the expression of intelligence in animals as that in this kinetic installation, a robotic armature delay needed for responding to a signal. This holds a vase with a pea-plant whose daily delay is erroneously understood as the presumed growth and movements were captured and act of cognition required to appropriately assess documented over the length of the exhibition. A external circumstances, resulting in pertinent, rasterized inkjet drawing of the plant’s profile is calculated behavior.[iv] Which perspectives could created every twenty-four hours. In doing so, its be adopted and how may we depart from our movements, those that belong to a range that own established cognitive sets is the key we only seem to appreciate as growth, were challenge ahead. made visible. These diagrams clearly show how Although we may not be able to witness the leaves shifted in time to capture the best the responses of other species of plants, the possible amount of light, and by doing so, allow experiments carried out by Sir Jagadish Chandra us to appreciate how the plant continuously Bose, in 1902, showed that responses are not balances its whole structure, weight and mass in exclusive to the species just discussed. A physicist response to external stimuli. This kinetic sculpture and plant physiologist, Bose used electric waves in which the plant has control over the final result and wireless transmission to explore the 20

David Bowen Growth Rendering Device, 2007 Bowen

Guto Nobrega Leaves System, 2007 Nobrega

phenomenon of “contact-sensitiveness” in In 2007, artist Guto Nobrega began work on metal, animal muscles and plants. In 1903, he Leaves System, an aesthetic experiment, but also conducted experiments on Mimosa pudica and a methodological tool for practical investigation found that other plants too respond to stimuli by that seeks to explore how it may be possible to contracting, even if in ways that are almost integrate new digital technologies and natural imperceptible to us. systems in order to highlight subjective aspects of communication and interaction. Monitoring Communicational potentials electro-conductivity of the plant’s leaves and using data to feed an interactive computerized During the 1960s and 70s, experimentation with system, Leaves System aimed at using plants as plants went as far as attempting to demonstrate, organic sensors, measuring how attuned to like in the case of Cleve Backster’s and Marcel people and environments they may be. Through Vogel’s experiments, that plants could even an adapted electronic circuit connected to the attune enough to perceive the essence of plant, small variations of electrical conductance visualized images in ones’ mind. These claims in leaves are registered. These variations are have been repeatedly tested over the past forty translated into analogical signals that once years, but evidence has failed to entirely amplified, construct an audio/visual disprove or confirm Backster’s theory of “primary representation of the plant’s dialogical space perception.” Nonetheless, these tests have based on the current perception that electrical greatly influenced the work of some signaling in plant response is of paramount contemporary artists who have decided to relevance. This project echoes others in which continue the research in the remit of the gallery animals have been wired to machines and space following similar lines of thought to those humans in the attempt of defining a dialogical that have seen other artists engaging in field, like in the case of ENKI Project by Antony interspecies communication. Hall, where it was a ghost fish to communicate 22

Eduardo Kac Essay Concerning Human UNderstanding, 1994 Kac

with a human via electrical impulses; or even located. […] In New York, an the work of controversial artist Eduardo Kac, electrode was placed on the whose experimentation in transgenic art, most plant's leaf to sense its response to notably with GFP Bunny, has firmly placed him the singing of the bird. The on the map of the animal-studies community microvoltage fluctuation of the watch list. plant was monitored through a Mac In 1994, Kac devised a live, bi- running a software called directional, interactive, telematic, interspecies Interactive Brain-Wave Analyzer sonic installation, created in collaboration with (IBVA). Ironically, a program Ikuo Nakamura, titled Essay Concerning Human designed to detect human mental Understanding. The set-up allowed a canary and activity was employed to inspect a philodendron to communicate between the the vital activity of an organism 600 miles separating Lexington (Kentucky) and generally understood as devoid of New York. consciousness. The information As the artist describes the mechanics of coming from the plant was fed into the installation: another Mac which controlled a MIDI sequencer. The electronic Placed in the middle of the Center sounds themselves were pre- for Contemporary Art, the yellow recorded, but the order and the canary was given a very large and duration were determined in real comfortable cylindrical white cage, time by the plant's response to the on top of which circuit-boards, a singing of the bird. [v] speaker, and a microphone were 23

What did the canary and the plant say to each communicative organisms, characterized by other will remain forever a mystery, however it active, problem-solving behavior.[viii] Plants are was the outlining of a faint possibility that this not the passive, ultimate automata which many communication may indeed take place through like to think they are – there is a lot more to them. technology that was important. But of course, a new understanding of plants The title of the work, directly references would come with a set of new and challenging John Locke’s work in which he says “... it is the ethical issues to address, some of which may hit Understanding that sets Man above the rest of hard at the foundations of veganism and sensible Beings, and gives him all the vegetarianism’s quasi-certainties. Advantage and Dominion which he has over The research of Stefano Mancuso, director them ... "[vi] It is specifically this thesis that Kac’s of the International Laboratory of Plant work attempts to subvert in the configuration of Neurobiology in Florence, has suggested that: a communicational relationship in which both parties involved, the bird and the plant, are active, and in which neither is objectified or pacified. This, I argue, is one of the main issues Plants recognize self from non-self; at stake when relating to plants and a large and roots even secrete signaling number of non-mammals; one key issue that exudates which mediate kin needs addressing. How can we support active- recognition. Finally, plants are also active models with more taxonomically remote capable of a type of plant specific beings? Seemingly, Kac’s project references the cognition, suggesting that human desire to overcome isolation by bridging communicative and identity the gap between self and other, species and recognition systems are used, as species, subject and object. they are in animal and human Over the past twenty years, the societies, to improve the fitness of interaction of art and science has allowed artists plants and so further their evolution. to further problematized scientific perspectives. Both animals and plants are non- However, in the botanical field, scientific automatic, decision-based research has too begun to think in more organisms.[ix] imaginative and open ways. The Laboratorio Internazionale di Neurobiologia Vegetale (the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology), Genetic proximity founded in 2005 in Florence, has greatly contributed to the scientific debate on plants’ The levels of proximity between the botanical, the cognitive and sentient qualities. In 2003, the animal and the human are also further exposed provocative essay by Professor Anthony Trewavas by the work of artists involved in transgenic art. (University of Edinburgh), titled Aspects of Plant Most notably it was again Eduardo Kac to cross Intelligence,[vii] ignited the debate. the “inter-kingdom boundaries” through the The essay bravely addressed the creation of a project combining human and concept of intelligence in plants and went on to plant genes. Hybrid plants have been created argue that not only are plants intelligent beings, since antiquity through the practice of grafting in but that they are also capable of learning order to enhance the quality of fruits and flowers. through memory. Defining intelligence in living However when mutations happen at the level of beings is a particularly difficult task, and the DNA, inside the laboratory, the overriding of the misconception that humans are more intelligent essential authorizing power of nature leads to the than other animals, for instance, is still emergence of anxieties. perpetrated even in the text by Trewavas. We Kac’s Natural History of the Enigma in have gradually come to realize that there may many ways presents a technologically updated be no such thing as one objectively quantifiable version of previous art installations involving plants type of intelligence (aside from that portrayed and genetic manipulation. The first ever exhibition through the arguable processes involved in IQ of genetic art to take place was staged at the tests), but that there are different intelligences for Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1936. Artist different inclinations and niches. If we can Edward Steichen exhibited a collection of recognize intelligence in animals, on what gigantic delphiniums he had bred over twenty six grounds would we deny this in plants? years, through a combination of traditional Recent advances in plant molecular methods of selective breeding and the use of a biology, cellular biology, electrophysiology and chemical that altered the plants’ genetic make- ecology, have unmasked plants as sensory and up.[x] It took some time, until 1988 in fact, for the 24

Eduardo Kac Natural History of the Enigma, 2003-2008 Kac

25 next noticeable evolutional step of genetic art to easily from one to the other, the surface in the gallery space. Again, it was an nuclei will combine, and it will experiment with plants, a selection of irises become, for a time anyway, a single presented by artist George Gessert (Iris Project) cell with two complete, alien that had audiences pondering the potential genomes, ready to dance, ready to impact of selective breeding and genetic multiply. It is a Chimera, a Griffon, a engineering on humans. The Iris Project was Sphinx, a Ganesha, a Peruvian God, indeed received with some controversy; a Ch'i-lin, an omen of good fortune, exhibiting these plants in the artistic context, a wish for the world.[xi] rather than in the more obvious one of a flower shop, made eugenics surface as a sub text. We Harris’ enthusiastic statement captures the glaring would hardly draw such considerations in a shop evidence of bio-continuity between animal and when purchasing a bunch of flowers for a loved animal, animal and plant. and us. In the one. evidence of all that has been discussed, we are Between 2003 and 2008, Eduardo Kac free to continue discussing animals as we have worked on perfecting a very special strain of for some time done, or we could decide that petunia, produced through molecular biology. time has come to further problematize the Kac isolated and sequenced the gene subject. responsible for the identification of foreign bodies from his own blood. As a result, the Notes Edunia (so the artist christened his creation) has [i] Pellegrini, Luca. “‘Avatar, il nuovo film di James Cameron: red veins on light pink petals where the artist’s effetti speciali e innocuo panteismo,”’, gene is expressed. At first glance, the petunias oecumene.radiovaticana.org, 09/01/2010, accessed on created from this experiment looks exactly like 11/06/2010. any other variety of petunias available on the [ii] Genesis, 1:28 (Original Latin Vulgate). [iii] personal observations on Mimosa pudica plants (summer market. It is, however, when we learn that 2010). human DNA is part of the tissue of the flower [iv] Stenhouse, David. The Evolution of Intelligence – A that, strangely enough, we cannot look at, or General Theory and Some of Its Implications, London, 1974, relate to the plant in the same way we would to George Allen and Unwin. [v] "Essay Concerning Human Understanding,", YLEM, Vol. 15, any other. The inclusion of a human gene in a No.4, August, p. 4; also published on the Internet in Leonardo plant, in this case a much loved mass- Electronic Almanac, Volume 3, No. 8, August 1995, MIT Press produced, selected and manipulated windowsill [vi] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. seasonal favorite, is a highly political gesture. This (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975): 43. Plantimal, so the artist calls his hybrid being, [vii] Trewavas, Andreas. ‘”Aspects of plant intelligence’,,” in Annals of Botany, n.92, 2003, pp. 1-20. violently blurs the boundaries between human, [viii] Baluka, F. Mancuso, S. Volkmann, D. and Barlow, P, animal and plant, troubling ethical and W. ‘The ‘Root-brain’ hypothesis of Charles and Francis Darwin, epistemological parameters. What ethical Revival After More than 125 Years’, in Plant Signaling & demands does this hybrid being make? Aside Behavior 4:12, December 2009, pp. 1121-1127. [ix] Baluka, F. Mancuso, S. Volkmann, D. and Barlow, P, W. from triggering anxieties, the creation of “‘The Root-brain’,” pp. 1125. transgenic organisms brings to the surface more [x] Gedrim, Ronal. J. “‘Edward Steichen's 1936 exhibition of distinctively the flux of bio-material that all living delphinium blooms: an art of flower breeding,”’, History of things belong to and that surprisingly allows for Photography 17, No. 4, Adingdon, Winter 1993. the mixing and functioning of these third entities, [xi] Roots, Harris. “‘Cell fusion’” in BioEssays 2: 4, Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company, 1985, pp.176 -– 179. even when plants are involved. It is this demonstration of the continuity of life — the interspecies genetic communication – that supports the validity of evolutional theories. This Giovanni Aloi was born in Milan, Italy in 1976. In 1995 he obtained surely is a remarkable underlying theme of his first degree in Fine Art – Theory and Practice, then moved to London in 1997 where he furthered his studies in Visual Cultures (MA) genetic art. at Goldsmiths College. From 1999 to 2004 he worked at In his essay titled Cell Fusion (2005), Whitechapel Art Gallery and as a film programmer at Prince Charles Regius Professor of Medicine, Henry Harris Cinema in London whilst continuing to work as freelance photographer. Today he is a lecturer in History of Art at Queen Mary observes: University of London, The Open University, and Tate Galleries. Since 2006, he also is the founder and Editor in Chief of Antennae, the Any cell […] given the chance Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. The Journal combines a heightened level of academic scrutiny of animals in art, with a less and under the right conditions, formal and more experimental format designed to appeal to wider brought into contact with any audiences. Since 2009, Aloi has been researching for his PhD at Goldsmiths College on the subject of “animals as art objects in the other cell, however foreign, will gallery space”. His first book, Art & Animals, part of the series ‘Art &’ (IB fuse with it. Cytoplasm will flow Tauris) was published in December 2011. 26

Sandra Semchuck

B ISON CROSSING

Sandra Semchuk Bison Crossing, 2011 Semchuk

Bison Crossing uses critter camcorders and sensors. The bison trigger the taking of their own images at the Sturgeon River Crossing. These images have been contributed to this project by collaborators: The Sturgeon River Bison Stewards, Joanne Reimer and Gordon Vaadeland.

Lenticular printing is a technology in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles. As an artist, I am using the new lenticular technologies with large lenticular printing presses to reveal glimpses of the complex specificities of the private daily lives of the wild bison that once more move freely across the landscape, including on agricultural lands, in Northern Saskatchewan.

Sandra grew up in a grocery store in the northern town of Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. Her father, Martin Semchuk, was a socialist who helped bring medicare to Saskatchewan. Sandra is a storyteller, photographer and video artist whose inquiry includes small animals that constantly count “coup” on her, coming close enough to make it impossible for her to video them. Her collaborations and video works use autobiography and dialogue as the basis for recognition and identity across generations, cultures and species. She collaborated with her father through four near death experiences. As a partner in Treaties (where there are Treaties in Canada), member of the settler culture, and widow of a traditional Cree speaker, artist James Nicholas, Sandra disrupts myths that historically have shaped settler relations to First Nations. She works with personal experience as a basis for storytelling. She and James collaborated for fifteen years on photographic and video works that use flora and fauna to consider possible relationships between the indigenous and the non-indigenous. Recent collaborations include a billboard on 20th street in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan made with Cree healer, Archie Weenie, and the Sturgeon River Bison Stewards. She currently teaches photography at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver.

Mindfulness

THE UNRE LIABLE BESTIARY

Deke Weaver is an artist whose work is often realized as multi-media performances. Driven by narrative, the pieces

employ strange and surprising fiction, and sometimes even more surprising facts, intertwined through Deke’s

presence as an actor and storyteller. Using everything from video projections, retro TV footage, and claymation, to puppets, costumes, and sound, he creates unexpected relationships that are often described by audience members

as both “disturbing” and “hilarious.” While his work touches on a surprising variety of topics, animals are central.

Interview Questions by Maria Lux

A resident at Yaddo, HERE, Ucross, and Deke Weaver: Animals have always been part MacDowell, and a Creative Capital grantee, his of my work, but you’re right, it never was interdisciplinary performance/video work has specifically about animals. However, even the been presented at The Sundance Film Festival, earlier stories pivoted on some event involving a South By Southwest, The New York Video Festival, non-human creature. That being said, even with The Berlin Video Festival, The Museum of The Bestiary as a frame, the stories often boil Contemporary Art (LA), The Edinburgh Festival down to what we learn about ourselves through Fringe, and many others. the animals. It comes back to humans. The He also teaches in the School of Art & project became a way to frame the animals, our Design’s New Media Department at the University lives with them and our shared habitats in a way of Illinois, which is how I know him. As an art that illuminated just how deep these relationships graduate student, I have the fortune of having are entrenched. Deke as one of my advisors. Because we share an interest in animals (though our work takes very Maria Lux: And how did you start to connect with different forms), we both found ourselves at the animal studies people? Vancouver conference. And for a wonderful and refreshing change of pace, I finally got to talk to Deke Weaver: Through Una Chaudhuri. I met him about his work. Una in New York. I was hunting down audience members for a show I was doing by trolling Maria Lux: Your early work included animals in through the websites of university some odd and interesting ways, but it wasn’t departments/classes/professors that might be specifically focused on animals. Now, you are interested. Una was teaching a class about in the midst of an ongoing project called The experimental performance so I invited her to bring Unreliable Bestiary that will amount to, as you her class to the show. We kept in touch after that. describe it, an “ark of stories about animals, our She told me about the animal-studies thing, so I relationships with them, and the worlds they started poking around. inhabit.” Can you talk about how animals became so central in your work? Maria Lux: What do you think your unique blend 31

variations of it, before. How was it different performing it for an audience of people specifically interested in animal issues and new media art?

Deke Weaver: Going into it, I was nervous that it wasn’t going to be “animally” enough or “new media”-ish enough. While listening to the various presenters I started worrying about whether it would be too “theatery” for the conference audience. Some of the stuff I do is usually considered funny. But if an audience is uncomfortable - even if something’s funny - they won’t laugh. They’re not sure what to expect, they’re not sure what’s expected of them. They need permission to laugh. So, this audience, needed permission. Nobody laughed. Or maybe it just wasn’t funny that night?

Maria Lux: Your last answer points to another issue: your work can be hard to categorize – it defies some people’s expectations of theatre, performance art, storytelling, new media, etc. How have you dealt with trying to find where your work fits in?

Deke Weaver Deke Weaver: Honestly, not very well. It’s a Self-portrait as a Dog Weaver problem. When I’m feeling optimistic, I like the old punk credo: do it yourself. I hate waiting for people’s permission to show something or do of approaches can bring to this field in something - but this impulse has got its limitations. particular? Of course, if I do happen to stumble into a situation where someone is producing my work Deke Weaver: I’m still unfamiliar with the field. and taking care of all the nudgey details, and the I guess what I have to offer is what live facility is good, and the equipment works, and performance can offer to any situation – if it’s there’s actually an audience, and there’s support, done right, it can split you wide open. As an and maybe I’m even getting paid – oh my God, audience member there is so much that is that’s amazing. When I’m feeling pessimistic, I possible when you’re vulnerable. Artists see big- think the lack of “pigeonhole-ability” has hurt me – picture connections that other people don’t. but this is my own fault for not packaging my work You have to be strategic and you have to trust in a marketable way. I’m trying to expand my that the little time bombs that you’re planting in ideas of where I could put my work up – let go of imaginations will eventually go off. the art/theater-venue thing – but still keep in mind that to really nail the experience I want people to Maria Lux: Can you talk about why you chose get watching the work; it often requires the kind of MONKEY in particular to present at the facility or support that art-venues have (lights, conference? sound, technicians).

Deke Weaver: Carol [Gigliotti] suggested Maria Lux: You mentioned that people tell you MONKEY after looking at some of my video clips your work would be great for kids. Much of the online. In some ways it was a practical decision. content of your work is SO not for children, yet I could do a solo version of MONKEY that was there is a reason you get that. Animal work in under 50 minutes, it didn’t take a lot of set-up general, as other presenters mentioned during the time, and it had hints of what the conference conference, runs into the danger of not being was about: animals and new media. taken seriously. How can artists and scholars combat this issue and get people to consider Maria Lux: You’ve performed MONKEY, or animals more critically? 32

Deke Weaver Monkey, 2009. Photo by Valerio Oliveiro Weaver

Deke Weaver: It’s a great question. It feels like taboo on so many levels. She spoke about this there are plenty of people trying to figure out the part of her work with a lot of integrity. She was answer. The conference was really nice that listening, not judging. way – such a relief hearing that other people I see it like this—there are experiences that deal with this. have been repeated for thousands of years but, at this point, are still too complex to be mapped Maria Lux: One of the surprises during the out by scientific method. So, as science and conference, I think for both of us, was the technology improve, many things that artists and inclusion of discussions about more spiritual ways poets and old-wives-telling-tales have always of knowing (Lisa Jevbratt’s conversation about known or intuited are being “scientifically proven.” shamanic practice intersecting with her animal And, suddenly, the experience is removed from perception work, for instance). This type of the “New Age Bullshit” category and enshrined in conversation is often taboo in academic or the “Validated by Science” category. Until then, if scientific, and even in art, contexts. What are you want to keep speaking to most scientists and your thoughts on this? academics, you keep your mouth shut about visions and dreams and hunches and Deke Weaver: I like how you phrased that: coincidences and trances. “spiritual ways of knowing.” I love that Lisa brought this up. It felt very brave and I admire Maria Lux: In your work, there are so many her for it. How do you talk about these things different approaches to representation - take (that have always been part of being human) ELEPHANT for example. One of the issues that and still maintain your credibility? The academic emerged from the discussion at the conference, white woman going into the heart of native to me, is what the artist’s responsibility is towards cultures—what she was talking about—was how animals are represented. It seemed that 33

Deke Weaver Elephant, 2010. Photo by Valerio Oliveiro Weaver

some people felt that artists have an obligation Maria Lux: I really like that way of thinking about toward “accurate” or “truthful” representations, representation – I don’t think I’ve heard it and others see room for more artistic liberty. articulated in quite that way before. What do you think about that? Deke Weaver: In some ways, this idea of Deke Weaver: OK, yes, with ELEPHANT there representation connects with cloning projects or was the claymation, the 12-foot tall mechanical “DNA arks” – saving frozen DNA of endangered elephant puppet (run by 5 dancers, one in each species. While a clone is genetically identical, it’s leg, one underneath), and other representations still only going to be a representation of the real – me in goofy elephant costumes, an animated thing. There are very strong arguments supporting Muybridge elephant sequence, stories about the idea that the teaching and learning and elephants, photographs and drawings of socialization that happen within families and elephants, video of elephants in Thailand, zoos, packs is as important to the individual animal as and the old Flaherty documentary Elephant Boy. its raw, inherited DNA. Nature and Nurture go In putting these pieces together I wonder what it hand-in-hand, you can’t have one without the will be like when these animals are gone. We’re other. A snow leopard needs to be taught how to going to be left with these fragments, shards, be a snow leopard. If they get around to cloning whispers and cartoons of what the animal must a mammoth, gestating in an Asian elephant - the have been like. As far as “accurate” and creature that is born will probably be more “truthful” representations, it’s always always elephant than mammoth (and a captive always going to fall short of the real thing. So I’m elephant at that) – there won’t be any mammoths more interested in the failure of representation, around to teach it how to be a mammoth. But, I as a way to point out the absence of the real suppose if I put some geologist or astro-biologist animal. 34

Deke Weaver 35 Elephant, poster, 2010 Weaver

goggles on, a “species” is a moving target. It’s I’ll get an idea for the way a story will end. never fixed. It’s changing all the time. Endings can be hard, so if one falls in your lap, it’s hard to send it away. In the past, the real ah-ha Maria Lux: Your work is sometimes described moments have come in realizing connections as “magic realism” with your vivid, fictional between unlikely sources. The full “Polar Bear stories, but you also incorporate a lot of factual God” monolog parallels the polar bear in the information. I’m wondering how you think about Central Park Zoo with an office worker stuck in a giving information, or how much you prioritize dead-end job, and a friend’s autistic child – all educating the audience in some way. It seems three creatures full of enormous possibility, but all very tricky – to not become some kind of trapped in different ways. On the evangelizing- edutainment, but that sometimes the best for-animals-and-their-habitats level, finding these stories also just happen to be true. kinds of unusual connections are incredibly important (by the way, I don’t like evangelists). Deke Weaver: One simple reason I Most of my audience will never see any of these incorporate a lot of factual information in some creatures in the wild. Out of sight, out of mind. If of my work (definitely not all of my work) is that these animals aren’t in your backyard, why does it certain facts are jaw-dropping amazing and matter if they go extinct? I feel like I have to keep hard to believe. Sometimes those facts can be finding answers to this question – visual answers, great building blocks for stories. Some of the storytelling answers. For many people it’s going to information is so incredible that it almost serves come down to a basic question like; “what’s in it as a bridge into magic realism. . . but, it’s not for me?;” or “how can I find connections to magic realism. As you said, the best stories are people that never go outside?” So, if I don’t want often true. Ah – and this: facts change. In Pliny to be an evangelist, how can I create the Elder’s Book “On Terrestrial Animals” (a kind of experiences that are moving, immersive, pensive, medieval field guide), he wrote a long detailed funny, shocking, and unforgettable – stories that description of elephants and their mighty connect directly to people’s lives? Because it’s enemy, the dragon. It was the truth in his day. about people. I imagine the animals would be fine without us. But in some ways I wonder what Maria Lux: Yeah, the difference to me is really I’m really contributing to the conversation at all. the WAY you use the facts that makes them Legislation, policy, science or bigger forms of something different than “educational material.” storytelling (television or film) would be more I often use your monologue about polar bears effective. And that’s where I circle back to my first as an example of how visual or performative identity: I’m an artist that likes live performance as means of communicating information can be a form. Yeah, there’s a lot of bad live so much more compelling than simple facts. To theater/performance – I think that’s why it often me, your analogy of the size of a polar bear’s has such a terrible reputation. But, of course, I’m home in a zoo compared to its natural range trying to make good live performances. being like you spending your whole life on top of a handkerchief was memorable in a way that Maria Lux: That brings us to the question of other things I’ve read weren’t. Do you have an activism. As I think you might agree, activism idea to communicate in mind and then seek seems really difficult to do in a way that doesn’t out the metaphors or stories that illustrate it, or compromise the creative power or potential in do you gravitate towards certain stories and then the work. Can you talk more about the role of figure out what they could mean? Or perhaps advocacy in what you do? neither, or both? Deke Weaver: It’s a tightrope, isn’t it? Rick Bass Deke Weaver: Probably neither and both. It is wrote a book called “The Brown Dog of the Yaak: about finding the right story/metaphor, but I Essays On Art and Activism.” It’s brilliant. The don’t think it’s about illustration. Well. Maybe picture he paints in the book, I think, is about time. not. I think it just depends on the story. Art can have tremendous long-term effects if it Sometimes it’s all there and nothing else matters. burrows into somebody’s imagination, like a seed It feels like the performances and stories have growing into an oak tree. But, if the chain saws different seeds and different ways of growing. are whining and the bulldozers are moving – a Sometimes a piece will grow out of a visual poem might not save the last acre of old-growth image. Sometimes it will start with a news article forest … but a human-chain might. On the other or story that I hear or read, or maybe hand, activism can eat people alive. The issues are bottomless.

Deke Weaver Elephant, 2010. Photo by Valerio Oliveiro Weaver

It seems like what’s needed are lots of there are a lot of people who write about animals voices. Lots of approaches. I’m never going to without spending any time with them, resulting in be bold or committed enough to live in the a lack of understanding. You have traveled to branches of a redwood tree for months on end. observe wild animals and have face-to-face But maybe some of my work will sink into one or interactions with them. How did these kinds of more people who might carry the idea interactions change your projects or your somewhere else. Like I’ve got this little flame understanding of the animals you have focused that I’m carrying in my cupped hands and I’m on? passing it along to other people that care about keeping it alive. I suppose that’s romantic and Deke Weaver: I love how no-bullshit Marc naïve, but if I started being practical – I’d seems to be. He’s a realist. One of my favorite probably shoot myself. It’s pretty depressing out moments is when he said something about how there. And there it is: nobody wants to sit and an “accumulation of anecdotes is called data.” I be told how terrible and awful things are. admire non-fiction writers and journalists. People will walk out, turn the channel, click on Experiencing something for yourself is always another link. So, you wind ideas into stories, you going to be different than reading about it or use humor, you make something beautiful, you watching it on YouTube. Journalists don’t sit at seduce, cajole, surprise, you take your audience home. They go to the place, they listen to what’s for a walk in someone else’s shoes. Or maybe going on, they talk to people. I wish I had more you just find a way of telling a truth so elegantly of this in me. Going to see it for yourself will start and honestly, that it sails beyond reproach. to change the assumptions you have about the situation – or animal. Maybe all the mythic Maria Lux: Marc Bekoff, in his keynote, said that attributes of wolves will drop away if you spend

37 more time where they live – more time than We moved quickly down, away from the reading about talking wolves, tricky wolves, bear. Jon was excited and a little freaked out. I hungry wolves, horny wolves. But even when was too much of a greenhorn to know how face-to-face, the cultural stuff is still pounding dangerous this was. I did not feel a rush of away. adrenaline. I did not feel euphoric. The main I took this wolf-management workshop in reason I knew I should be alarmed was because Yellowstone. We drove out to an old wolf den. Jon has the résumé of a guy who does not get On the way, we kept seeing a grizzly bear in the freaked out (worked in Air Force intelligence, for a distance. Sometimes he would run – like he had long time, trained pilots survival skills, now works as an appointment. From our distant vantage an EMT and mountain rescue worker, last email I point we could see antelope getting nervous, elk got from him had him fighting a wildfire in looking around, even bison were paying Georgia) … and Jon was freaked out. I looked attention to the approaching bear. We followed once, saw the bear – just a quick snapshot - his the bear from one pull-out to the next, watching face full of blood and sinew – then I moved, him with binoculars and spotting scopes. He looked one more time and then moved down always seemed to be sniffing something, nose with everyone else, maybe 250 yards away from up. Finally we saw him go up into the treeline, the bear. We all turned to watch him with our up into the treeline where the old wolf den is. binoculars. The wolf den that we were going to be walking The bear buried the fawn, built a small hill up to. We lost sight of the bear, assuming that, if of earth over it, lay down on it and seemed to fall he kept moving at the same speed, we’d be asleep. All of this 40 yards from where the other fine. fawn lay flat, stock still. The fawn that we had Watching the grizzly run made me think been looking at. Here are some elk calf facts: about this whole weird mix. These animals are when they are born they have no smell. Even so, living their lives out there, a lot of it in full view of bears eat 60% of all elk calves born in a year. all of the tourists on the Lamar Valley highway. We watched the sleeping bear for a little Why is the bear running? What makes it run now, while. And finally, we left. The bear slept. The elk trot later, run faster – what is it trying to catch? fawn that still lived, lay flat, and would continue to Time. Space. Perception. Food is there now. lay flat until its mother came and touched it. I Food moves. Catch the food before it moves thought about fear. These two small elk were – at too far. most – a day old. Not a whole lot of time to When we finally made it to the den there “learn” anything. The elk fawn laying flat was was no grizzly bear. No wolves. It was a hole in doing this entirely on instinct, reflex, primitive elk the ground, a former home for wolves. We genetic survival hardwiring. Did it feel fear? If it started to relax. With the charms of the den did sense something that you or I might absorbed, we started to drift down the hill. One understand as “fear” – is it entirely chemical? The of our number walked up the ridge. He comes smell of a big stinky grizzly bear equals fear? back. Very fast. “There’s an elk fawn, over that Why didn’t I feel any fear? A couple of bump – right there! It’s laying flat, completely days later, I was sitting on the back porch in still. It looks like a pile of sticks. I almost stepped Champaign, Illinois. I had gone out there to write on it.” We don’t want to disturb the fawn - the about this thing that happened in Yellowstone mother must be nearby. Jon, the leader, says National Park. As I sat down, in the warm sun, I it’s ok for us to go look at the fawn. So we walk heard a loud buzzing – FUCK! HUGE! BUMBLE BEE! up 30 yards, and look down on the baby elk with I bolted up, dodging, lurching, running. Fight or our binoculars, about 20 yards away. Sure flight. Because, you know, hell… it’s a bee! A enough, you can barely see it. It’s absolutely huge surge of adrenaline. flat, motionless. I wonder why it’s so still? I don’t think bumblebees sting. But, damn. Then Jon is saying, with alarm, “Grizzly. I was scared. I DO know that grizzly bears eat Back away. Don’t run. Move quickly.” I turn. I meat. I could very well be meat. But I don’t think look. And, yes, 25 yards away (Jon said 20 – but of myself as meat. Ever. My experience with I’m not giving in to any fish-that-got-away grizzly bears has been entirely on screen or exaggeration) was a grizzly bear eating another through lenses. A bee is real. A bear, well, it’s an elk fawn. He looked right at us. A mouth full of actor, a puppet, a Satanic Creature fighting Alec leg. If the fawn that we were looking at was at 3 Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins. That thing 25 yards o’clock, the bear was at noon. If you have a away that I only got two quick glances at before I minute, mark a spot, walk 20 paces – that’s how was 250 yards away, looking at it through a pair of far we were from this bear. lenses – well … c’mon.

There is a gap between domestic and the beautiful holy Native American maiden in the wild, myth and science, fear and comfort – but snow surrounded by wolves on another. the gap is probably all in our heads and differs There’s all kinds of awkward ethical with every person. With our escalating problems about spending time with these “not population, “wild” space is managed to reduce within easy reach” animals. A lot of wolf biologists human/animal conflict. So, in many ways, we will go out of their way to not see the wolves – end up with artificial spaces – gardens without they don’t want to disturb their habits or habitat. fences, zoos without cages. The time on the They’ll study them completely from scat, DNA from wolf-management workshop’s bus didn’t feel their fur, etc. Honestly, working on this project that far removed from a safe, controlled theme about multiple animals, you very quickly run into park tour. The time we spent watching these scientists who are involved with life-long studies of animals through spotting scopes felt like a single species. So while I might be lucky watching a disappointing show on Animal Planet enough to work at a school that supports me - disappointing because the animals were going to these distant places, I’m still only smaller, there wasn’t a soundtrack and then they spending a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of time with the would disappear into the trees. creatures. I’m a tourist. David Mech with wolves, So what do you do with something that Cynthia Moss, Joyce Poole, Katy Payne with doesn’t fit into a Narrative? Something that elephants – they are spending their entire lives doesn’t fit with your idea of the world? I imagine with these animals – every waking moment. It the adrenaline would have kicked in if the bear seems that for many of these workers it’s wasn’t happy with its delicious baby elk. I becoming less about science and more and imagine if he’d chased us and we’d lived, I more about fund-raising and activism. I’m not would fit it into my big important Story. sure if “pure science” exists when it comes to wild animals and habitat. It’s incredibly complicated. Maria Lux: You moved to Illinois (where there is There are too many of us wanting water and land. no shortage of domesticated/agricultural Scientists are constantly thrown into political animals) but the animals you have focused on arenas, right into human-animal conflicts, right so far tend to live in more far-reaching places. Is into class and economics and land-ownership there a particular reason that you choose and government policy. Who would think that animals that aren’t necessarily within easy wolf biologist Ed Bangs would actually need to reach? have more skill at conflict resolution (ranchers vs. environmentalists/NPS) than wolf knowledge? It’s Deke Weaver: For The Unreliable Bestiary almost like the biologists don’t have a choice. project I’m focusing on endangered species. With the on-again, off-again ivory policy, it seems One of the reasons endangered species are not that if elephant biologists don’t become activists, within easy reach is because there aren’t very the elephant families that they’ve studied for 50 many of them – even if I didn’t live in Illinois. Of years will literally be shot out from under them. course you can get into all sorts of political But, on the other hand, if you put yourself shoving matches about what “endangered” in the shoes of a human family where one single means, what “species” means … but I think most tusk will bring the equivalent of 12 years of income people get what “extinct” means. So when – well, as an activist, as a policy-maker, as a there are connections with domestic/ag biologist, as a community organizer – you better animals, it comes up as comparisons with wild come up with a pretty compelling reason, an animals. This has been interesting for both incredibly compelling story to convince people elephants and wolves. In Thailand elephants are why it’s a good idea to not kill the elephants. classified like cattle and horses – livestock. Anybody that’s working with these big animals and When you talk to someone at the Thai Elephant their habitats will tell you that you have to connect Conservation Center about elephants being with the local people – they’re the ones living with endangered, they’re talking about domestic the animals. It can’t be top-down policy. For elephants. Wild elephants in Thailand are like policy to be sustainable it has to be made from ghosts. Another split that’s interesting is between the roots on up. If someone wants to shoot a wolf “domestic” and “wild.” In the U.S., “wild” seems in Wyoming, it doesn’t matter what someone in to have wolves as its poster animal. People pour Washington says. all kinds of fantasies onto what “wild” means – pure, free, unfettered, direct, etc. Just Google Maria Lux: What are you reading or working on “wolf t-shirt” and look at the pictures - you’ll get right now that you are excited about? the whole thing – the menacing snarl on one,

Deke Weaver: The ELEPHANT piece took a lot out of me. The well is finally filling. I’m editing the DVD video documentation of ELEPHANT, designing the limited edition books for MONKEY and ELEPHANT. I hope to have all of these ready by Summer 2012. And then there’s the researching, writing, building and dreaming about WOLF, which we’re planning on putting up in the Fall of 2013.

Maria Lux: What do animals offer you that strictly human stories don’t?

Deke Weaver: For me it’s about truth and clarity. I want to make work about being alive – about dreams and coincidence, about moments where you know there’s something bigger going on - bigger than email and

Facebook, coolness and hipness, bigger than shopping, bigger than politics, bigger than power struggles, bigger than your career or your family. These are spiritual concerns and it feels like animals are so present, so tapped in … no, they’re not even tapped in, they’re it. My friend Laurie Hogin put it like this: “Animals are not worried about being fat.” Maybe that’s where the frustration about animal-work being for kids comes in. The spiritual stuff, for me, opens up during times that don’t jibe with what our culture feels is “good for kids:” during sex, during a fight, during times of high stress, or hard-to-pin-down moments like meditation, or moments out of nowhere that are really hard to describe. It’s not cute and fuzzy. It doesn’t have a high voice and it doesn’t like to add and subtract with big colorful numbers. It’s complex. It’s simple. It’s about the big questions.

Deke Weaver is a writer, performer, and media artist. Experimental theater, film/video, dance, and solo performance venues have presented his interdisciplinary performances and videos in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Europe and the United States. A three-time recipient of NEA regional grants in film/video making, a resident at Yaddo and Ucross and a four-time fellow at the MacDowell Colony, his work has been supported by commissions, fellowships, and grants from Creative Capital, the City of San Francisco, New York State, the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and other public and private foundations. He also contributes film and video to dance and theater works in the U.S. and abroad. He is currently an associate professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. unreliablebestiary.org

Maria Lux will earn her MFA in studio art from the University of Illinois in the spring of 2012. Her work can be viewed at http://marialuxart.wordpress.com.

Karolle Wall

MOLLUSKS

Karolle Wall Dandronotus Ballonis Wall

Karolle Wall is a filmmaker, photographer and writer whose work reflects her interest in marine biology, environmental ethics, indigenous ecological knowledge and water. Mollusks, be they one inch nudibranchs (sea slugs) or eighteen inch moon snails, feature prominently in her films, each drawing attention to humankind's inability to acknowledge patience, caution, and observation as significant forms of interacting with the non-human world.

Karolle is an Associate Professor in Critical + Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University, where she teaches courses in writing, literature, film, rhetoric, and environmental ethics. She is currently collaborating with Rita Wong and others on a SSHRC grant entitled "Downstream: the poetics of water," which will culminate in a symposium and exhibition on World Water Day 2012. Her film Imush Q'uyatl'un, made in collaboration with Penelaxuuth elder Florence James, has been shown at environmental and aboriginal film festivals around the world. She has published poetry, reviews and articles in numerous journals and exhibited her photographs and installations at various group shows throughout British Columbia. Land and ocean conservancy groups and even dance troops call on her to document everything from healing water ceremonies, to indigenous accounts of species at risk. She believes in social activism as much as she believes in bearing witness and cherishing the beauty and fragility of the non- human life that lives in that liminal space we littoraly call the intertidal zone. http:blogs.eciad.ca/karollewall 42

Karolle Wall

Imush Still Wall

PAS DE DEUX

Art is considered a defining feature of the human psyche, a humanness that distinguishes us from all other creatures. Scientists regard art – communication in word, paint, sound, and motion – fruit of the human brain’s sophistication. The desire to revel in self-awareness and connection with the world inspires us to communicate these experiences. This impetus to create has blossomed through the ages. Humanity knows itself through its traces of the muse. Text by G. A. Bradshaw

Every movement that can be danced on the seashore

without being in harmony with the rhythm of the waves, every movement that can be danced in the forest without being in harmony with the swaying of the branches,

every movement that one can dance... in the sunshine, in the open country, without being in harmony with the life and the solitude of the landscape –

every such movement is false, in that it is out of tune in the midst of nature's harmonious lines.

That is why the dancer should above all else choose movements that express the strength, health, nobility,

ease and serenity of living things.

- Isadora Duncan

G. A. Bradshaw Charlie Russell 45

And so it is interesting to hear Isadora Duncan, beings against their will, in cages vulnerable to often referred to as the founder of modern anything and anyone, summarily executing, dance, insist that art is more than human, in eviscerating, butchering and eating them at a fact, that art fails when disconnected from other community potluck, comprises “building a nature, when art and humanity cease to be relationship with . . . beautiful and unique nature. According to Duncan, without this divine creatures” that “transform[s] the contemporary awareness, any attempt at art reduces to a view of chickens as livestock”. This maze of “gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and twisted illogic out competes any Orwellian double graceful arabesques” or merely the insularity of a speak. Tragically, it epitomizes much of the “rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a perverse discourse surrounding nonhuman remembered feeling or experience.” Only when animals — and the way we imagine and live our we chose movements that “express the strength, lives. health, nobility, ease and serenity of living things” Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton described is it possible to “convert the body into a dissociative realities in his seminal work, The Nazi luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration Doctors. He called the mechanism that maintains of the soul.” Duncan’s descriptions suggest that conflicting ethical worlds of existence, “doubling”. dance is an extension, not suspension, of our Doubling falls within the same category as membership of nature. dissociation, splitting, and numbing that are A glance around suggests that Duncan’s mental methods to have your cake and eat it, or vision is not embraced by many artists in the in the case of Ms. Hansen, have your chickens main. Most western dance-as-formal-art is and eat them too. conducted within the confines of human co- Split-world living is accomplished by constructions: theatre stages and halls. Similar to creating two functioning, interdependent wholes what has come to be called “ the mind”, the within our self. These twin selves are independent body has become dis-embodied from nature yet connected. For example, the camp or by cultural and artistic objectification. Other “Auschwitz self” was autonomous, free of moral members of nature, animals, are made mute by standards that applied outside. At the same time, the insistence that humans are the only by switching over to his other “humane,” self after languaged species: the somatic and other “work”, the doctor could live a parallel, communiqués by elephants, frogs, bats, and untarnished life as a principled professional and lions are seen as primitive gestures that cannot family man. The camp self was able to perform hope to attain the refinement of human minds selections for the gas chambers and the humane and tongues. As a result, animals are kept apart, self was able to be the congenial host and father their roles subordinated to mute fodder for outside the prison. A psychological no-lose stoking artistic engines. A case in point is Ms. proposition. Amber Hansen. The two selves live like conjoined twins in Ms. Hansen is a resident lecturer at the their respective environments, neatly housed in University of Kansas who was in the middle of the same person. An individual can claim to be launching her project, “The Story of Chickens: A an artist seeking to enlighten humanity on one Revolution”, when she was stopped in her tracks hand, while at the same time committing by Lawrence, Kansas ordinances that protect atrocities in the name of said art, with no sense of animals from being harmed or killed within city ethical or perceptual incongruity. Doubling limits. At first, this ruling may suggest censorship permits us to imagine one thing, do another of artistic expression. However, we discover not completely in conflict, and regard diametrically only what Ms. Hansen considers “art” but also opposing concepts and actions as related and what her inspiration creates. Ms. Hansen congruent: assert that chickens are “beautiful proposed to display five chickens around town in unique birds”, butcher and eat them, and refer to a coop over several weeks then publically the experience as a “healthy process of caring for slaughter the birds and serve them up to the them”. community. Conjuring Nazism’s iconic image of According to Ms. Hansen, “By building a wrongdoing has an intrinsic danger. Its historic relationship with the birds, the project will remove can lend a mythical, today-we-wouldn’t- transform the contemporary view of chickens as do-that quality with the result that sins of the past merely 'livestock' to the beautiful and unique fail to convey the lesson: their ghosts are alive creatures they are, while promoting alternative and well. Dualism and its progeny, experience-by- and healthy processes of caring for them." She proxy technology, foster a Through the Looking asks us to believe that confining five sentient Glass ethics that shape our behavior. We blithely

G. A. Bradshaw Charlie Russell

watch intimate graphic violence of rape and who is has been paid by our own monies and mutilation in High Density, then, within a votes to learn how to double and kill.Doubling millisecond, change channels to an exercise culture is not an accident. It runs on parallel program where Lycra-adorned athletes work to worlds for a very concrete reason: profit. Ms. stay slim. There may be a contrail of ethical Hansen builds her livelihood as an artiste. Let us discomfort, but it evaporates in the rarified not forget that no less than three institutions, the atmosphere of normalcy. The witnessed Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the atrocities are neatly pushed into a mental side Charlotte Street Foundation, and Kansas’ University compartment, marked “To Dispose” or ”Save for Spencer Museum of Art, were cited as her funders Later Time”. The reality remains some one or of her project. Ms. Hansen was paid to terrorize, some time else’s, unclaimed as our own. demean and kill her victims to celebrate “art”. She Culturally-condoned doubling causes and countless others who profit from readers to recoil in surprise when learning that a institutionalized oppression and violence make a U.S. soldier, trained to kill, from “the most living, gratis doubling. troubled base in the U.S. military” and home to a There is no mystery to doubling. What was “kill team”, and who has served three military engendered writ large in the camps eighty years tours, allegedly went out and slaughtered sixteen ago now comprises the commonplace of Afghani civilians. After nearly a century of everyday life. It inspired the psychological scientific and medical documentation of the architecture that provides comfortable living at causes and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress the expense of victims who do not succumb to Disorder (PTSD), there is bewilderment that such a the convenience of raw survival of individuality person would be capable of what he did. We uber alles. are trigger-ready to mete out justice to a man On the other hand, animals refuse to 47

double. They are too sensitive, too aware, too thought of itself apart from nature: a perspective embodied, and too practical. Dissociation of reflective of Isadora Duncan’s own sentiments. any sort creates vulnerability. Even when What the dancer knew about the body, is now genocide created by the human mind known about the mind. She was prescient of becomes unbearable, animals do not split the current neuropsychological models that radically world. Instead, they split inside. The signs challenge modern culture. become more evident daily. Philosopher cum neuroscientist at the Humanity’s unrelenting violence has University of California Berkeley, Alva Noë, is very finally penetrated the animal mind. The great much a part of Duncan’s choreography. He Elephant civilization that has graced African asserts that consciousness ignites in the space savannahs and the imagination for millennia has between, not in our heads but out of our minds. In been driven to its knees in anguished surrender so doing, he joins a brace of new and old to human brutality. Mass slaughter and perspectives: complexity theory, Gaia, quantum decimation of their homelands have caused physics, psychoneuroanalysis and the myriad elephant society and those of other wildlife to other interdisciplinary amalgamations that implode with epidemic Post-Traumatic Stress describe a vision of unity. Trans-species Disorder (PTSD). psychology is part of this new reality. Never-before seen symptoms of infant Since Charles Darwin, and before, it has neglect and elephant-on-elephant murder are been tacitly understood that, similar to physiology, reified by what science knows: human and there is psychological continuity across species. nonhuman animals share the same structures Animal and human minds are not distinct and functions of the brain that make us human. neurobiological apples and oranges. Winged, These scientific findings are somewhat scaled, and feathered kin have the same disorienting. No longer the counterpoint to machinery inside their heads as we do. The new humanity, we are them and them are us. But the field of trans-species psychology is only an explicit real message is disturbing. Elephant symptoms acknowledgement of this knowledge, that all herald collapse of the collective psyche. The animals, humans included, share the same brain animals are leaving. structures and processes governing cognition emotions, and consciousness. Psyche, soul, is not An Indian Elder dreamed only continuous but democratic. There is no apex that the animals of the forest, skies, of evolution that humanity may claim as its own. and waters came to say goodbye. What goes on beneath the skull beneath the skin One by one they gathered round: conforms to what is observed–the tender the stag, the bear, the mountain ministrations and cooing of a mother parrot sculpt lion, the birds, the snakes, and the her peeping infant's neuroendocrinal pathways in otter. They spoke of their broken the same way that a human mother and baby hearts as they witnessed what dialogue. humans were doing to the Earth. Similar to Duncan’s dances, science has Their grief was so great that they gradually dissolved a series of Cartesian had were leaving. They had a no constructs: mind and body, human and other place in a world without soul, one animal. Art and science have arrived at the made bare by human destruction. confluence of a dramatic paradigmatic shift: a As the tribal members listened to radical epistemic, perceptual, political, cultural, the Elder’s vision, they too were and you name it change that is bringing together overwhelmed with sorrow. The elder what has been put asunder by what might exhorted the tribe to call the succinctly be called “ the western agenda.” It is animals back before it was too late. revolutionary in the Kuhnian sense because its vision and implications are orthogonal to dualism —Sioux Elder and human hegemony. Nearly everything about us as modern How then to call back the animals? Re-learn to humans, the way we make decisions, make a hear and speak with the animals. The seeds are living, structure our lives, and relationships, is there, waiting. Thoughts, feelings, and ways to based on the premise that we are each communicate with each other have ancestral independent. Meaning making and ethics are roots that extend as deep as those related in elective in modernity for this reason. For example, body. To dialogue with another species is a way the choice not to kill someone may depend on to remember who we were before humanity numerous reasons: fear of retribution, social contract, a commitment to virtue, and so forth. All 48

G. A. Bradshaw C & C Images

of these motives are based in the separation shared experience. To presume to know what your between us and an other. But today’s models of dog is seeing when he looks into your eyes, what the mind compel an ethic where altruism your cat is thinking when she looks out over the emerges as salvation of the self because the sunny meadow alight with butterflies, or what grips self does not exist in the singular, Instead, it is the elephant who stands, forehead pressed bound in multiples and relationship. against the zoo wall and sways back and forth endlessly, is no different than what we do with A pas de deux is a dialogue of love. another person. How can there be conversation if Try it. Take a few minutes, put this essay one partner is dumb? aside, and put yourself in your dog’s shoes, or those of your cat, or the butterfly, or the pacing - Rudolf Nureyev tiger confined behind the deadly cold concrete barriers at a zoo. Don’t try and be an animal, be How to begin? In openness and acceptance of yourself in a body of another animal and in the

G. A. Bradshaw Mercy for Animals and Karen Davis

circumstances that they are. Feel. Feel the is broad enough for both... We seek to space, feel the muscles, wings or whatever establish a narrow line between physicality they, you, are. Sink into this space. ourselves and the feathery zeros we Look out to the world around. Don’t think like a dare to call angels, but ask a partition tiger, a cat, a butterfly, just feel. barrier of infinite width to show the rest It does not mean that we can be of creation its proper place. Yet bears another person, or that we should suppose to are made of the same dust as we, know what another feels, Rather, such practices and breathe the same winds and drink cultivate openness, the possibility that we can of the same waters. A bears days are touch the space of another and vice versa. This warmed by the same sun, his is an exercise in empathy and subjective dwellings are overdomed by the same connection as we might do with another blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs human. Both are subject to projective error, the with heart-pulsings like ours and was interference of one psyche on another because poured from the same fountain. of a preconceived idea. But this is where intention comes in. The goal is to cultivate an - John Muir openness, not objectify but, to open our senses to discern what may come to us in Russell is the founding director of the Pacific Rim communiqué. In this interpsychic reality, Grizzly Bear Co-Existence Study and has spent the meaning is born in tandem as are ethics. better part of 5o years closely observing the Charlie Russell beautifully illustrates trans-species nature of these animals in their natural habitat — living—where ethics and identity emerge more time than anyone else in direct, peaceful organically and are mutually negotiated on relationship with wild grizzly bears. His experience common ground, literally and figuratively. includes an 18 year exploration of how grizzlies used and shared the land upon which he lives Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity 50

G. A. Bradshaw Sue Savage-Rumbaugh 51

situated on the boundary of Waterton / Glacier sensibility were conjoined. A world of oneness and International Park near the border between love. Alberta and Montana. From 1996 to 2006, Russell explored how human fear, anger and A Yup’ik Eskimo handed me a scrap aggression have shaped the human-bear of paper whereon was penciled, ‘I conflict. Determined to examine whether a am a Puffin!’…. Here was a man who prosocial egalitarian ethic could transform effortlessly negotiated the porous, human relationships with grizzlies, he lived at the wafer-thin membrane separating heart of a very dense population of bears in Homo from the Other...Still Kamchatka, Russia over a decade and raised alive...Standing before ten orphaned cubs rescued from a Russian zoo. me…Symmetrical, convergent Free living after six years, the cubs grew into consciousness: the world before… peaceful, prosocial adult bears who never showed violence or aggression toward humans. - Calvin Luther Martin When Charlie Russell raised these grizzly cubs, he was not only teaching them what to do, he told them how to do things grizzly-style. References There are a lot of ways to catch salmon but grizzlies do them in ways and with knowledge Blakeborough, J. 2012. Animal activists celebrate as Lawrence blocks chicken art project. The Kansas City Star, uniquely grizzly. Similarly when he warned off http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/28/3457554/lawrence-blocks-chicken-art- project.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy adult grizzly bears, he did it in such a way that made sense to both species. Intricate details of Bradshaw, G.A. in press. Living out of our minds. in P. Kahn and P. Hasbach (eds). Rediscovery of the Wild. MIT Press. bear etiquette and natural history were communicated to the cubs in ways that were Bradshaw, G.A. 2009. Elephants on the edge: What animals teach us about humanity. New Haven: Yale University Press. environmentally adaptive. All of this was only possible if there was mutual language and Bradshaw, G.A. 212. Fifteen minutes of shame. Psychology Today. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bear-in-mind/201203/15-minutes- understanding. Grizzly values, knowledge, shame culture, and feelings are conveyed to the cubs New York Daily News. 2012. Kansas officials halt artist’s plan to slaughter and other bears using a common language, chickens in public. New York Daily News; http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kansas-officials-haltartist-plan- one that Charlie Russell acquired through years slaughter-chickens-public-article-1.1030111 of living amongst bears and being appreciative Flock, E. 2012. Afghanistan shooting suspect came from Lewis-McChord, ‘most and respectful of their values. Identities troubled base in the military, The Washington Post overlapped in a trans-species realm; identities http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/afghanistan-shooting- suspect-came-from-lewis-mcchord-most-troubled-base-in-the were not a singular identity but shared. An military/2012/03/12/gIQApIdJ7R_blog.html animal (human inclusive) self is not monolithic, Lifton, R.J. 1986. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of but, as G x E experiments predict, fluid and Genocide, New York: Basic. particular. Here is a person who walks unaided Potts, A. 2012. Chicken. Rekation Books. by privilege. Sanchez, M. 2012. Artist’s message flew coop amid Lawrence chicken debate Trans-species living does bring with it http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/29/3460440/artists-message-flew-coop- vulnerability, not to bears, but to the present, amid.html ancien regime. Science and society are not tolerant of those who exhibit such ambivalence about human identity. But what is overlooked is the incredible liberation that comes with ditching western civilization’s possessive baggage. There G. A. Bradshaw Ph.D., Ph.D. is Executive Director of The Kerulos Center. She is a freshness and aliveness that blossoms when holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology, and has published, identity breaks out of its collective shell to live the taught, and lectured widely in these fields both in the U.S. and internationally. She is the author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about essence within. Instead of looking out onto a sea Humanity, published by Yale University Press, an in-depth psychological portrait of other faces, what meets our eyes is our own of elephants in captivity and in the wild. Dr. Bradshaw’s work focuses on trans- species psychology, the theory and methods for the study and care of animal visage. The Golden Rule “Do unto to others as psychological wellbeing and multi-species cultures. Her research expertise includes the effects of violence on and trauma recovery elephants, grizzly you would have them do to you” takes on a very bears, chimpanzees, parrots, and other species in captivity. She established literal meaning when “Other” and “I” fuse. the new field of trans-species psychology upon which the work and principles of The Kerulos Center are based. From 1992-2002, Dr. Bradshaw was a Western artists and scholars can play a research mathematician with the USDA Forest Service, holding faculty positions vital role in fostering trans-species pas de deux. at Oregon State University (Departments of Computer and Electrical Engineering; Environmental Sciences Graduate Program) and at Pacifica The élan with which Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Graduate Institute. In 2000, she was a Fellow at the National Science Nureyev danced Giselle together was possible Foundation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), Santa Barbara, California, USA. Her research has been featured in diverse because two bodies occupied a shared, media including the New York Times, Time Magazine, National Geographic, intersubjective space where sentience and Smithsonian, The London Times, ABC’s 20/20, and several documentary films. 52

Myron Campbell

DISTANT AIR

PRELUDE TO A MEMORY Michael Boyce

Our nature is a bird that does take flight in dreams and memories. We are complex and so we are not always in agreement with ourselves. It is in our nature to be what we are and try not to be that way. Our nature is a bird that's edited in flight. It is natural to do this. This is why we do tell stories, however we do tell them and in whatever form or style. Stories are a way to sort things out.

Memories and dreams do come to you like anything that is essential to your nature, whether you do wish for them, or it, to come to you or not. They are visited upon you like a ghost. They are haunting you. This can be disagreeable, but it also can be pleasant, or beautiful, or simply interesting. They come to you and you can then embrace them or reject them. You can also be like that with your own nature and with the nature that's the world outside of you. Both of them do come to you and both of them can either be embraced or be rejected as being disagreeable or pleasant, or simply interesting or not.

Once, when I was young, there was an owl on exhibit, sitting on a branch in a small container made of glass. I do remember this. I remember locking eyes with it and staring, looking deep into its eyes and being fascinated by the way it did not look away or blink. It had big yellow eyes. It registered on me that this was a different kind of animal. I felt the owl's individuality, I felt the spirit of the owl. I was transfixed and fell in love with it. The whole thing did impress me in some way. Thinking of the glass case now unsettles me.

A memory that comes to me is like a bird that comes to me. A memory I go to is a memory

I fly to and I am then the bird. A memory that comes to me is like a dream that comes to me, mostly when I'm sleeping. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a dream and a memory. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a bird and me.

Sometimes I am haunted and sometimes I'm a haunting, I suppose. A bird is like ghost.

The spirit is a ghost. Any dream and any memory that comes to you, that isn't sought by you, is a spirit that is visiting, is a bird in flight. Any story about any memory or dream like that is a bird in flight. The bird carries the spirit of the story, of the memory or dream, to visit upon anyone. Any story pays a visit with its memory or dream and it's thinking about anything. Any thinking about anything is like a bird in flight when any bird is like your nature.

Myron Campbell Distant Air, interactive animation, 2006 Campbell

CAR OL GIGLIOTTI IN

CONVERSATION WITH

MAR C BEKOFF

Carol Gigliotti, writer, artist and scholar whose work focuses on the impact of new technologies on human

relationships with animals and on the lives of animals themselves discusses ‘rewilding’ with former professor of

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and widely published author Marc Bekoff.

Text by Carol Gigliotti and Marc Bekoff

Carol Gigliotti: Marc, rather than start this be done to other animals, such as food, interview with the usual personal history question, laboratory, or entertainment animals. They almost I would like to ask you to comment on a very always emphatically say "no." And when I ask contentious issue in many circles, not the least in them why, after pointing out the similarities conversations among people who represent among all of these sentient beings, they fumble animals in their creative work. You wrote about for what usually is an inadequate answer or this issue in relation to a wider audience recently rationalization. Many people got very upset after on your blog on theatlantic.com. Its title was 50 animals were massacred in Ohio after they Dead Cow Walking: The Case Against Born- were released from a sanctuary by a man who Again Carnivorism. I found this blog post clear then killed himself and very helpful to the points I myself try to make (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- during arguments with fellow cultural workers of emotions/201110/bloodbath-in-ohio-numerous- many kinds when talking about eating animals. I exotic-animals-killed-after-being-freed), but they wondered if you could talk about what I consider don't hesitate to eat formerly sentient beings or to be a central concern in how we as artists, allow them to be used in horrific research. How scholars, and/or activists go about our creative we interact with other animals is indeed a messy involvements with other animals. and complex situation that continually puts us on a slippery slope. Marc Bekoff: Dead cow/pig walking: The Concerning food, the essay to which I food, who and that, goes into our mouth raises responded in my article in The Atlantic many, if not all, of the most important questions (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/1 about our complex, paradoxical, challenging, 2/dead-cow-walking-the-case-against-born- and frustrating relationships with other nonhuman again-carnivorism/250506/) was written by three animal beings (hereafter, for convenience, former vegetarians or vegans, one a livestock "animals"). For example, when people say they rancher who raises animals to be killed, and the love animals and then harm them I say I'm glad others, a hunter and a butcher, who came to that don't love me. I also like to ask people if decide that it was okay to eat other animals as they would do something or allow something to long as they were "humanely" raised. I was be done to their/a dog that they do or allow to offended by their hubris when they argued that it 57

Julie O’Neill Image from Photography for a Compassionate World O’Neill

was perfectly permissible to raise animals solely who we are as human beings. You can be sure to become meals, in most cases unnecessary that the cow, pig, or lamb who provided the meal meals. They gloss over the fact that even if the into which you're sinking your teeth suffered animals they eat are "humanely" raised and immensely during his journey from grazing to his slaughtered, an arguable claim, they're still home in a bun. The plate on which this taking a life. These animals are merely a means unnecessary meal is sitting is a platter of death. to an end: a tasty meal. I concluded my essay Surely anyone who supports these torture as follows: “No matter how humanely raised they chambers has no concern for the humane are, the lives of animals raised for food can be treatment of other beings and I can't imagine cashed out simply as ‘dead cow/pig/chicken how they reconcile the tension they must feel. This walking.’” Whom we choose to eat is a matter of also goes for conservationists, some of whom on life and death. I think of the animals' manifesto the one hand argue for the well-being of animals, as "[l]eave us alone. Don't bring us into the world and then on the other hand go out and eat if you're just going to kill us to satisfy your tastes." them. Even if you don't care about the ethics of Who's for dinner? I like to say who we eat is a eating a cow because you consider it sentimental moral question when we pop a dead or live or dismiss the possibility of getting seriously ill, animal into our mouth, or some product that consider the environmental impacts of factory came from another animal. I personally find it farms and what non-animal activists are saying difficult to imagine that anyone who cares about the well-documented and deleterious anything about animals could ever eat a former effects that CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal animal or animal product from a factory farm. Feeding Operations) are having on the land in The lives of animals on factory farms, their trip to surrounding communities, water, the air we the slaughterhouse, and their stay at the breathe, and climate change. slaughter house are filled with deep and I know I'm being very uncompromising enduring pain and suffering that is a blight on here and that’s the way I feel about the choices 58

people make in their meal plans. There I like pigs. A few years ago I had the great arealways more humane ways to get a meal, pleasure of meeting Geraldine, a rescued and while I choose to be "one of those vegans" I potbellied pig, on a visit to Kindness Ranch, a realize that others make their own choices about sanctuary that rescues and rehabilitates former how they sustain themselves. I know the entire laboratory animals. Geraldine behaved as a world will not "go vegan" or vegetarian, but we companion dog, leaning into me as I rubbed her all need to be very careful about the choices back and flipping over on her back as I rubbed we make in who and what winds up in our her belly. I couldn't imagine how anyone could mouth. do anything that would cause her to suffer. We Let's consider pigs. On a trip to Toronto, can learn a lot of positive lessons from pigs about Canada in October 2011 to celebrate World loyalty, trust, friendship, compassion, and love, if Animal Day with Jill Robinson, Founder and CEO we open our hearts to them. Calling someone a of Animals Asia, I first went to a protest organized pig is really a compliment. by Toronto Pig Save, a group founded by Anita Pigs are very intelligent, highly social, and Krajnc. This wonderful grassroots organization is deeply emotional animals. They display many made up of compassionate people who are different personalities. There's even scientific devoted to saving pigs from being tortured and research that shows that pigs can be optimists or slaughtered for food. They focus on Quality Meat pessimists, depending on whether they live in Packers, a slaughterhouse located near enriched environments or places where there's downtown Toronto, the horrific and pungent continuous stress and suffering. Pigs are sentient stench of which fills the local neighborhood. If beings who are capable of suffering incredible residents and others could also hear the pain. They not only suffer their own pain, they also unrelenting squeals of pain and bear witness to see, smell, and hear the pain of others. We grossly the incredible inhumanity of killing these pigs I'm underestimate animal suffering and many argue sure many would do something to end the that their pain is worse than ours in that they don't horrific practice of turning live sentient pigs into know when it's going to end, it's interminable, and ham, bacon, and sausage. they can't rationalize it. All they know is what 59 they're feeling at the moment and it's endless heard, smelled, and felt, first hand, the incredible psychological and physical abuse. pain and suffering that food animals endured before they arrived on your plate, you'd be Where's the animal? The words we use to horrified and more likely to change your choices refer to other animals often distance us from of food. You're essentially eating pain. By bearing who they really are. Dead pigs are called ham, witness to the pain and suffering of other animals, bacon, and sausage and dead cows become to show that this is a true state of affairs, a social meat, steaks, and hamburgers. They're wrapped movement can be born. I know none of you in packages that make it impossible to know would ever place your dog in the same situations, who they used to be. Kids usually don't know that so why allow pigs and other beings to be treated their bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich is in these thoroughly inhumane ways. It simply really a Babe, lettuce, and tomato sandwich makes no sense. and when they discover this, and that a So, what can we do? Each of us can hamburger used to be a cow, most are make more ethical, compassionate, healthier, surprised and some refuse to eat them. It's and environmentally friendly choices that do not important to refer to animals as who they are but cause unnecessary and intense pain, suffering I'm sure restaurants would never put "pig, lettuce, and death, unnecessary because no one has to and tomato" or "cow on a bun with fries" on their eat an animal. Excuses such as "Oh, I know they menu. suffer, but don't show me because I love my As I was standing at the Toronto protest, a burger," adds cruelty to the world because you're truckload of pigs (see accompanying photos) eating animals who do really care about what going to market appeared and the stoplight happens to them and to their friends. Indeed, as turned red just as the truck showed up. For the one of my friends who works "in the industry" has next few minutes I stared into the eyes and told me time and again, when you're eating faces of pigs on their way to being killed for meat you're eating misery. And, most likely, you're unneeded human meals. Transport is part of the also eating filth and disease. If you're all for highway of torture. After being raised on animals then it's double-talk to say you are and cramped and filthy pig farms they're loaded on then eat them, especially those who come from to a truck for their inhumane trip to the factory farms. It's easy to be vegan and surely slaughterhouse where they're brutally and vegetarian even if you travel a lot. I travel more mercilessly killed. On the crowded truck and than 100,000 miles a year all and can always find before they're slaughtered they're unrelentingly a lovely meal sans animals or animal products terrified. When I looked into the eyes of the pigs I wherever I am. I don't mean this to toot my own could feel their pain and panic. Their ears were horn. Rather, I get tired of hearing people tell me flopped forward, their faces drawn, and their how hard it is to be vegetarian or vegan when unrelenting squeals of protest pierced the air. they live in a developed country, including my The cacophony of protests brought tears to my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. I hope you can eyes. Their behavior pierced my heart. How see how choices in food bring up so many basic could anyone do this to these amazing beings? I questions that center on how we choose to could hear them asking to be freed from this interact with other animals. reprehensible treatment. If these pigs were dogs I'm sure people would vehemently protest their Carol Gigliotti: Much of your pioneering treatment. research in what is still a long illustrious career has Most people don't know the plight of the been about the role of play in understanding animals whom they eat. We must remember animal behavior. Would you be so kind as to that when an animal is on a plate it's a matter of summarize for us your most salient findings in this who's for dinner, not what's for dinner, as food research and how it might affect our view of animals are formerly sentient beings who were animal behavior as well as other aspects of unnecessarily tortured and killed for our palette. animal life? There's no reason at all to eat pigs. Indeed, there's no reason to eat other animals. We can Marc Bekoff: Thank you for most kind words. I've all easily expand our compassion footprint by long been interested in animal behavior and the making more humane choices concerning who study of animal minds (cognitive ethology). My we eat. It's simple to do and I humbly ask parents told me that I always "minded animals" (I everyone to remove pigs and other animals published a book in 2002 called Minding from their diet. This is not a radical move. Simply Animals), but I surely did not know back then that say "no thanks" when someone offers you one "cognition" was a word. I would always ask them form of animal or another. If you actually saw, what a dog was thinking, and my father recalls 60

Jeff Fifi, 2010 Jeff

that on a ski trip I once asked him what a red fox the surrounding land with many animal friends - was feeling when he crossed our path as we coyotes, mountain lions, red foxes, porcupines, traversed a frozen lake. I use the phrase raccoons, black bears, a wide variety of birds, "minding animals" in two ways. First, "minding lizards, and insects along with many dogs and animals" refers to caring for other animal beings, cats. They have been my teachers and healers. respecting them for who they are, appreciating They have made it clear to me that they were their own world views, and wondering what and here first and that I am a transient on their turf. I how they are feeling and why. The second have almost stumbled into mountain lions three meaning refers to the fact that many animals times and have watched red foxes playing right in have very active and thoughtful minds. front of my office door. Adult bears and their For more than three decades I've lived in young have played outside of my kitchen the mountains outside of Boulder. I willingly share window. I feel blessed to have had these and 61

other experiences and if I need to make sense of family values. I've studied coyotes for changes in how I live to accommodate my more than 35 years, and along with research friends, it is just fine with me. My encounters with performed by my colleagues, we've discovered numerous companion and wild animals have that talking about "the" coyote is misleading. The always informed my views of them and my moment one begins making rampant research in terms of trying to ask important generalizations they're proven wrong. For questions about who they are and how they live. example, in some areas, coyotes live alone, in My most salient discoveries have other locations they live with their mate, while in spanned a number of different sets of questions others they live in groups that resemble wolf packs and also species. I studied wild birds near my -- extended families of different generations. In home for around 15 years and coyotes outside these packs there are "aunts" and "uncles" who of Jackson, Wyoming for eight years and help to raise youngsters. And, coyotes are discovered they're really smart and adaptable sometimes territorial and sometimes not. In a and that there is an incredible amount of nutshell, coyotes are quintessential opportunists variability within species. who defy profiling as individuals who predictably I also learned how important it is to learn behave this way or that. And, this is one reason about wild animals living in their own worlds. So why they are so difficult to control. (To learn more many people who write about animals never about the amazing lives of coyotes and how we have studied them in detail and really don't get can easily coexist with them, visit the website of a deep feeling for how amazing they are. They Project Coyote, a national non-profit organization also often embellish the animals and there's no that is dedicated to fostering coexistence need to do that because they are amazing for between humans and coyotes, and advocating who they are, not who or what we want them to on behalf of America's wild "song dog.") be. Because of my interest in questions about I've also spent years studying the the evolution and ecology of social behavior, I've emotional lives of animals and their moral lives also studied play behavior in great detail. This (beastly virtues). Let me summarize some of this research, spanning more than forty years (my research here. In all honesty, just as beauty is in goodness, am I that old?!), has resulted in many the eyes of the beholder, the salience, or lack fascinating discoveries and scientific awards. I've thereof, of my research, lies in the hands, heads, also been working with people who are very and hearts of those who read it and what their interested in knowing how what we know about interests are and how they feel about other play in animals can be used to help humans animals. along. In July 2011, I had the pleasure of Let's begin with coyotes. Coyotes are attending an incredible meeting called "Playing amazing beings. Loved or hated and feared by into the future - surviving and thriving." The major many, coyotes have defied virtually all attempts theme of this international gathering concerned to control their cunning ways. William Bright, in his the importance of play for children and how we superb collection of stories titled A Coyote can create a future where play is valued and Reader notes, "Coyote is the trickster par where every country and neighborhood upholds excellence for the largest number of American every child's right for freedom and a safe enough Indian cultures." Native peoples have portrayed environment for playing, as they should. Boundless coyotes as a sly tricksters, thieves, gluttons, inspiration came from about 450 delegates from outlaws, and spoilers, because of their uncanny 55 nations, including areas where children ability to survive and reproduce successfully in a don't play because they're seriously ill, because wide variety of habitats, including major their parents, families, or communities can't afford metropolitan areas such as Chicago, Los to allow them play because they have to work, or Angeles, and New York City and under harsh because there aren't any safe places to play. conditions. Coyotes not only survive their However, play is also severely curtailed in affluent encounters with other nonhuman predators areas throughout the world. (although many lost their lives to wolves in I was simply astounded that an Yellowstone National Park after wolves were organization such as Play Wales (there are many reintroduced), but also with humans who like it throughout the world) and these sorts of attempt to control them using incredibly brutal meetings are even necessary so that kids can be methods, and who also hold well-organized kids. The situation is so dire that there also is community hunts in which the person who kills a United Nations Convention on the rights of the the most coyotes wins a prize. Often these mass child. Every country in the world except the United killings are considered to be wholesome family States and Somalia has ratified the convention. outings, quality family time. What a perverted Article 31 is specifically concerned with play: 62

‘Children have the right to relax and play, and to little variation. My students’ and my detailed study join in a wide range of cultural, artistic and other of the form and duration of hundreds of bows recreational activities’. showed surprisingly little variability in form (how Although play is fun, it's also serious much an animal crouched scaled to body size) business. When animals play, they are constantly and almost no difference between bows used at working to understand and follow the rules and to the beginning of sequences and during bouts of communicate their intentions to play fairly. They play. Bows are also swift, lasting only about 0.3 fine-tune their behavior on the run, carefully seconds. Over all, a threatening action, bared monitoring the behavior of their play partners and teeth and growls, preceded by a bow resulted in paying close attention to infractions of the submission or avoidance by another animal only agreed-upon rules. The study of play behavior in 17 percent of the time. Young coyotes are more animals tells us a lot about what human children aggressive than young dogs or wolves, and they need. Basically, we can learn about the various try even harder to keep play fair. Their bows are reasons why animals play (why it has evolved and more stereotyped than those of their relatives. develops as it does), including social One of the most significant findings is my development and socialization, physical exercise, studies of play centers on what I call "wild justice." cognitive development, and also for learning The basic rules for fair play in animals that also social skills concerning fairness and cooperation. apply to humans are ask first, be honest, follow Play may also be important as "training for the rules, and admit you're wrong. When the rules the unexpected." Based on an extensive review of of play are violated, and when fairness breaks available literature, my colleagues Marek Spinka, down, so does play. We also discovered that Ruth Newberry, and I proposed that play functions among wild coyotes, individuals who don't play to increase the versatility of movements and to fairly often leave their pack because they don't recover from sudden shocks, such as the loss of form strong social bonds. Such loners suffer higher balance and falling over, and to enhance the mortality than those who remain with others. ability of animals to cope emotionally with Play can sometimes get out of hand for unexpected stressful situations. To obtain this animals, just as it does for human beings. When "training for the unexpected" we suggested that play gets too rough, canids keep things under animals actively seek and create unexpected control by using bows to apologize. For example, situations in play and actively put themselves into a bow might communicate something like, "sorry I disadvantageous positions and situations. Thus, bit you so hard, I didn't mean it, so let's continue play is comprised of sequences in which players playing." For play to continue, it's important for switch rapidly between well-controlled individuals to forgive the animal who violated the movements similar to those used in "serious" rules. Once again there are species differences behavior and movements that result in temporary among young canids. Highly aggressive young loss of control. coyotes bow significantly more frequently than Detailed research on social play in infant dogs or wolves before and after delivering bites domestic dogs and their wild relatives, coyotes that could be misinterpreted. and gray wolves, shows how just how important Researchers who study child's play, like the rules are. Pains taking analyses of videos of Ernst Fehr, of the University of Zurich, and Anthony individuals at play by one of us, Marc, and his D. Pellegrini, of the University of Minnesota-Twin students reveal that these youngsters carefully Cities, have also discovered that basic rules of negotiate social play and use specific signals and fairness guide play, and that egalitarian instincts rules so that play doesn't escalate into fighting. emerge very early in childhood. Indeed, while When dogs and other animals play, they playing, children learn, as do other young use actions like biting, mounting, and body- animals, that there are right and wrong ways to slamming one another, which are also used in play, and that transgressions of fairness have other contexts, like fighting or mating. Because social consequences, like being ostracized. The those actions can be easily misinterpreted, it's lessons children learn, particularly about fairness, important for animals to clearly state what they are also the foundation of fairness among adults. want and what they expect. The study of animal play thus offers an In canids, an action called a "bow" is used invitation to move beyond philosophical and to ask others to play. When performing a bow, an scientific dogma and to take seriously the animal crouches on his or her forelimbs. He or she possibility that morality exists in many animal will sometimes bark, wag the tail wildly, and have societies. A broad and expanding study of animal an eager look. So that the invitation to play isn't morality will allow us to learn more about the confusing, bows are highly stereotyped and show social behaviors that make animal societies so 63

Dennis Maxwell Coyote resting in a MAX light-rail train at Portland International Airport, Feb. 13, 2002, Port of Portland/AP Photo Maxwell

successful and so fascinating, and it will also Carol Gigliotti: One of the first ethologists I encourage us to re-examine assumptions about began to read many years ago was Donald human moral behavior. That study is in its Griffin. Upon first reading Griffin's book, Animal infancy, but we hope to see ethologists, Thinking, I felt I had finally found a scientific like- neuroscientists, biologists, philosophers, and minded person from whom I could gain support theologians work together to explore the for my own ideas on animal cognition and implications of this new science. Already, consciousness. As one of the most well-known research on animal morality is blossoming, and and respected cognitive ethologists today, could if we can break free of theoretical prejudice, we you tell us about your role in this relatively new may come to better understand ourselves and field and what it might hold for the future of our the other animals with whom we share this relationships with animals? planet. Wild justice informs all sorts of interesting and "big" questions about the evolution of social Marc Bekoff: I answered some of this question justice. The discovery that animals really do know above, but let me say a bit more. First, let me say right from wrong and engage in fair play also that Don was a good friend and colleague and ups the ante in how we treat them. truly revolutionized the study of animal cognition.

Many people don't realize that Don essentially "legitimizing" the study of animal minds and that discovered echolocation in bats when he was this information will be used to make the lives of an undergraduate at Harvard University and was all animals much, much better. a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He wasn't a lightweight scientist and Carol Gigliotti: Artists have become fascinated didn't approach animal cognition and with science and have begun to not only consciousness frivolously. As an evolutionary collaborate with scientists but also have begun to biologist he was very interested in the evolution use scientific methodologies in their work. There of consciousness and boldly began to study it. are various reasons for this, along a continuum Don hesitated to get involved in the practical from the need to understand the practice in order and ethical issues that need to be considered in to critique it, to believing that only the practices of the study of animal cognition and animal science are what matter in today’s world. I would emotions and I thoroughly respect him for that. love to hear what you think of an early quote from Many people wrote Don off as being senile the late Stephen Wilson, the author of Information and/or out of touch when he started writing Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology serious essays and books about animal minds and Art + Science Now: ((including his ground-breaking The Question of Animal Awareness, 1976), and had he ventured There is a major categorical flaw in into the "animal welfare" side of things, more the way we commonly think about people would likely have dismissed him scientific and technological research because at that time any talk about animal as being outside the major cultural welfare and ethics scared the hell out of many flow, as something only for people. I was once accused of trying to put my specialists. We must learn to colleagues out of business and my response appreciate and produce science was something like, "well, if they harm animals and technology just as we do then they should be taken to task for doing so," literature, music, and the arts. They and of course I wasn't trying to put anyone out of are part of the cultural core of our business. Don and I talked about how matters of era and must become part of mind necessarily inform matters of welfare and general discourse in a profound way. animal protection on a number of occasions and in his 1992 revision of Animal Thinking As a scientist, what pitfalls do you see in our (1984), called Animal Minds, he did write a bit culture’s relationship with science and technology about Dale Jamieson and my ideas about and how might that relate to your own work as an reflective ethology and animal protection. Some ethologist. of my last conversations with Don centered on how we can use what we know about animal Marc Bekoff: I couldn't agree more! I think my cognition and consciousness to make the lives essay that I wrote for Psychology Today about the of animals better. It was to this end that Jane wonderful IF meeting captures much about this Goodall and I co-founded Ethologists For the (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- Ethical Treatment of Animals emotions/201111/animals-in-art-nonhumans- (http://www.ethologicalethics.org/) in 2000. benefit-responsible-representation). Gathering the Nowadays there are far fewer skeptics, work of media artists whose work has been and the field of cognitive ethology is influenced by the growing wealth of knowledge blossoming. Every day, it seems, there are new on animal behavior, cognition, creativity and and exciting discoveries about the amazing consciousness emerging from such fields as animals with whom we share the planet. Fish are ecology, cognitive ethology, psychology, now known to be sentient and very intelligent neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, beings, birds outperform chimpanzees in zoology, and others together with several making and using tools, rats like to be ticked biologists, like myself, active in these fields and laugh, and mice, rats, and chickens, have highlighted new understandings of animal life and been shown to display empathy. Highly animal cognition, consciousness, and agency. To respected professional journals such as Science, achieve the goals of this unique and inspirational Nature, and the Proceedings of the National gathering there were lectures and various exhibits Academy of Sciences publish essays that ten including hands-on projects. Two in particular years ago likely would have been rejected out caught my attention though there were many of hand. I like to think I've played a role in more wonderful projects on display, and I

65 encourage you to look at information about contribute to shifting our relationships with them? them. The first was the rocking robot, a robotic dog who looked like and acted like a cow by Marc Bekoff: I see artists as playing a key role in the eminent French artist France Cadet. Her significantly broadening the audience who can work makes "a critical social comment about enjoy the presence of other animals in their lives. ethical questions and possible consequences of And I really learned a lot that I've incorporated a technologically driven future, through ironical into my work on rewilding our hearts caricaturization but which is based on very-real (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- facts." emotions/201112/rewilding-our-hearts- While I watched the robot rock back and maintaining-hope-and-faith-in-trying-times) and forth, and I did so numerous times, I constantly compassionate conservation. I would love to found myself thinking about the various many believe that my scientific colleagues will be open and challenging relationships among art, ethics, to wonderful experiences like attending meetings and technology, topics that are given a lot of such as the IF gathering. I had a wonderful time attention in your book, Leonardo's Choice. The meeting wonderful people, including awesome other project that caught my eye involved the students, whom I never would have if I had not way in which various animals see the world by attended this groundbreaking event. Lisa Jevbratt. Called Zoomorph, this project The importance of animals and art has basically involved first looking at a colored also entered my life in an unlikely venue. I've been drawing on a board, and then on an iPad, teaching a class on animal behavior and selecting an animal to see how the colored conservation biology at the Boulder County Jail for image would look to them. What a wonderful more than 11 years educational tool for getting people to see how (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- animals see the world. It would be great to have emotions/200909/animals-and-inmates-science- a similar project dealing with the ways in which behind-bars0. Some of the inmates are awesome various animals hear and smell the world, artists and one won an award at an art festival for although the latter might be difficult to pull off a pencil drawing he did of Fifi, one of Jane given where the noses of various animals wind Goodall's favorite chimpanzees. Another made up. incredible sculptures out of tiny bars of soap, Still, it would be highly educational. All of using colors he got from his food and fabricating the lectures and exhibits really forced me and paintbrushes from toothbrushes and his own hair. others to think deeply about how animals are He used his nails for etching. Another inmate did a represented in art and who we are and who wonderful pencil drawing of hatching crocodiles. "they" are. For many artists in attendance, With very few exceptions all of the prisoners trust whether as presenters or audience members, and love animals as many see them as their best the goal was to find new ways, not only to friends because the animals don't judge them. represent animals, but also to consider new They love them for whom they are. ways to live with them. I really was pleased to see this practical side of what could have been Carol Gigliotti: You might remember the a more "academic" endeavor with little debates at Interactive Futures’11: Animal relevance to the "real world." Influence about the value and ethics of xxxxxxI frequently call attention to this truly representing animals or the minds of animals. interdisciplinary meeting because more and Your comments were particularly helpful in these more artists are focusing their attention on non- discussions and I wonder if you could “represent” human animals and we need to be sure that them again here. they are represented in responsible ways and also pay close attention to the ethical questions Marc Bekoff: Well I remember listening to many that are raised. The use of animals in art truly wonderful and inspiring talks and talking with sparks wide-ranging discussions that center on many wonderful and inspiring people about the human psychology and our often complex and importance of including animals in art. I stressed challenging relationships with non-human, or the importance of ethics - not harming any other-than human, beings, in an over-populated animals in any work of art - and of course and human-dominated world. everyone agreed to that. After his wonderful presentation, Iain Gardner seemed especially Carol Gigliotti: After being the keynote at IF, sensitive to charges that he was "too what kinds of roles do you see artists playing in anthropomorphic." I suggested that people not our relationship with animals? Did any of the work worry about people criticizing them because they shift your notions of what the arts might have to were "too anthropomorphic" because it's really 66 double-talk. For example, people who criticize she cites, that I am not anti-science and that me and others for saying animals such as science does indeed play a role in decisions elephants aren’t happy being cooped up in a about how animals can and cannot be used. Her cage at a zoo often say something like, "Oh, misuse of snippets out of context of what I've you're being anthropomorphic, she's happy," written is a serious misrepresentation of my views. without realizing that they themselves are being Dawkins' criticisms of my work distort my views on anthropomorphic. If an animal can be happy matters such as the role of science in learning he or she can be unhappy and suffer, end of about animal cognition and animal emotions argument. The bottom line is that it's a waste of and anthropomorphism. Dawkins wrongly claims, time to get into arguments about for example, that I believe "there are no limits to anthropomorphism. Charles Darwin forcefully how we interpret animal behaviour." Nothing can argued for evolutionary continuity, stressing that be further from the truth. She ignores what I wrote variations among species are differences in in an essay on animal emotions in BioScience in degree rather than in kind. Simply stated, if we 2000 in a section called "Biocentric have something, they (other animals) have it anthropomorphism and anecdote: Expanding too. So it's bad biology to assume that we have science with care": The way human beings rich and deep emotions or moral sentiments but describe and explain the behavior of other that other animals do not. animals is limited by the language they use to talk about things in general. By engaging in Carol Gigliotti: Having published more than anthropomorphism— using human terms to 200 papers and 22 books while a professor or explain animals’ emotions or feelings—humans professor emeritus at University of Colorado make other animals’ worlds accessible to Boulder, have you also considered yourself an themselves … But this is not to say that other animal rights activist? animals are happy or sad in the same ways in which humans (or even other conspecifics) are Marc Bekoff: Yes, I'm proud to be an activist, happy or sad. Of course, I cannot be absolutely and I'm also a card-carrying optimist and certain that Jethro, my companion dog, is happy, dreamer. I love organizing and being part of sad, angry, upset, or in love, but these words peaceful protests. I've always worked for the serve to explain what he might be feeling. protection of animals and dropped out of a However, merely referring acontextually to the Ph.D./M.D. program years ago because I didn't firing of different neurons or to the activity of want to kill cats or dogs as part of my education. different muscles in the absence of behavioral I've also done a lot of work on protecting wildlife information and context is insufficiently and am outspoken about the use and severe informative. Using anthropomorphic language abuse of animals in education and research does not have to discount the animal’s point of and for food, clothing, and entertainment. The view. Anthropomorphism allows other animals’ excuse that someone is doing something behavior and emotions to be accessible to abusive to animals "in the name of science or us. Thus, I maintain that we can be biocentrically education" doesn't cut it for me. anthropomorphic and do rigorous science. I'm always careful about calling myself Dawkins also argues that we still don't know an "animal rights activist" because the word if other animals are conscious. Really, she does! In "rights" carries with it a lot of baggage and is my humble opinion, those who want to be able to poorly understood by many people. And the continue to abuse animals in all sorts of venues notion of "animal welfare" is too weak for me. So, will use her book against them. While I'm sure this I usually say I'm interested in animal protection, is not her agenda, the skeptics will argue but my views are surely over on the animal right's something along the lines if the experts still don't side of things. My current interests in know if other animals are conscious, then why compassionate conservation also center on can't we use them however we choose? protecting individual animals from invasive field My current activist interests center on the research. notion of rewilding our hearts A recent book by animal welfarist Marian (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal- Dawkins highlights the differences in various emotions/201112/rewilding-our-hearts- perspectives on animal protection. In Why maintaining-hope-and-faith-in-trying-times). Animals Matter (2012, Oxford University Press, The word "rewilding" became an essential New York), Professor Dawkins attacks me and part of talk among conservationists in the late others for being too soft and anti-science. I've 1990’s when two well-known conservation now written in many places, including those classic paper called "Rewilding and biodiversity:

67 biologists, Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, wrote magical, and magnificent. Alienation often results a Complimentary goals for continental in different forms of domination and destruction, conservation" that appeared in the magazine but domination is not what it means "to be Wild Earth (Fall 1998, 18-28. 15). human." Power does not mean license to do In her book Rewilding the World, whatever we want to do because we can. conservationist Caroline Fraser noted that Rewilding projects often involve building wildlife rewilding basically could be boiled down to bridges and underpasses so that animals can three words: Cores, Corridors, and Carnivores. freely move about. These corridors, as they're Dave Foreman, director of the Rewilding Institute called, can also be more personalized. I see in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a true rewilding our heart as a dynamic process that will visionary, sees rewilding as a conservation not only foster the development of corridors of strategy based on three premises: "(1) healthy coexistence and compassion for wild animals, ecosystems need large carnivores, (2) large but also facilitate the formation of corridors in our carnivores need big, wild roadless areas, and (3) bodies that connect our heart and brain. In turn, most roadless areas are small and thus need to these connections, or reconnections, will result in be linked." Conservation biologists and others feelings that will facilitate heartfelt actions to who write about rewilding, or work on rewilding make the lives of animals better. These are the projects, see it as a large-scale process involving sorts of processes that will help the new field of projects of different sizes that go beyond compassionate conservation further develop. carnivores, such as the ambitious, courageous, When I think about what can be done to help and forward-looking Yellowstone to Yukon others, a warm feeling engulfs me and I'm sure it's Conservation Initiative, well known as the Y2Y part of that feeling of being rewilded. To want to project. Of course, rewilding goes beyond help others in need is natural so that glow is to be carnivores, as it must. At the IF meeting we were expected. all treated to a wonderful presentation by Kelty xxxxxxxxPeople who care about animals and Miyoshi McKinnon on road ecology that entails nature should not be considered "the radicals" or building corridors for animals. The creative "bad guys" who are trying to impede "human design aspects of wildlife bridges and progress;" in fact, they could be seen as heroes underpasses floored me, and I loved seeing art who are not only fighting for animals, but also for being part of rewilding projects. humanity. Biodiversity is what enables human life The core words associated with large-scale as well as enriches it. It is imperative that all of rewilding projects are connection and humanity reconnect with what sustains the ability connectivity, the establishment of links among of our species to persist, and that we act as a geographical areas so that animals can roam unified collective while coexisting with other as freely as possible with few, if any, disruptions species and retaining the integrity of ecosystems. to their movements. For this to happen, There are no quick fixes and we need to realize ecosystems must be connected so that their that when animals die, we die too. integrity and wholeness are maintained or xxxxxxxWhen all is said and done, and more is reestablished. Regardless of scale, ranging from usually said than done, we need a heartfelt huge areas encompassing a wide variety of revolution in how we think, what we do with what habitats that need to be reconnected, or that we know, and how we act. Rewilding can be a need to be protected, to personal interactions very good guide. The revolution has to come from with animals and habitats, the need to rewild deep within us and begins at home, in our hearts and reconnect, and to build or maintain, links and wherever we live. I want to make the process centers on the fact that there has been of rewilding a more personal journey and extensive isolation and fragmentation "out there" exploration that centers on bringing other animals in nature, between ourselves and (M)other and their homes, ecosystems of many different nature, and within ourselves. Many, perhaps types, back into our heart. For some they're most, human animals, are isolated and already there or nearly so, whereas for others it will fragmented internally concerning their take some work to have this happen. relationships with nonhuman animals, so much Nonetheless, it's inarguable that if we're going to that we're alienated from them. We don't make the world a better place now and for future connect with other animals, including other generations, personal rewilding is central to the humans, because we can't or don't empathize process and will entail a major paradigm shift in with them. The same goes for our lack of how we view and live in the world, and how we connection with various landscapes. We don't behave. It's not that hard to expand our understand they're alive, vibrant, dynamic, compassion footprint, and if each of us does

something, the movement will grow rapidly. I'm happily involved in an international project that is devoted to developing an ethology and science of peace. Part of the rewilding revolution is to be gentle and kind (http://landofpuregold.com/gentlegiant.htm). Engage your opponents and listen to them, and on some occasions you might have to simply write them off and agree to disagree. We can never be too kind or nice. The time is right, the time is now, for an inspirational, revolutionary, and personal social movement that can save us from doom, and keep us positive while we pursue our hopes and dreams. Rewild now. Take the leap. Leap and the net will appear. It'll feel good because compassion and empathy are very contagious. I deeply believe everyone can easily expand their compassion footprint and that we all can do more to help other animals along. And of course, we can all do more to help other less fortunate human beings. Being deeply concerned about animal protection does not mean that humans don't matter. Let me end by saying I'm honored and flattered to have done this interview and was also honored and flattered to be invited to be a keynote speaker at the IF meeting. What I learned at this meeting will forever influence how I view other animal beings. Much of the material above has appeared in my essays and books including http://chronicle.com/article/Moral-in-ToothClaw/48800/ andxessaysxat http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions. Detailed information about me and what I do can be found at marcbekoff.com and at www.yourcybercourt.info/Bekoff/marcbekoffcentral.html

Marc Bekoff is former professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2009 Marc became a member of The Humane Society University and was also presented with the Saint Francis of Assisi Award by the Auckland (New Zealand0 SPCA. In 2000 he was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long- term contributions to the field of animal behavior. Marc has Dr. Carol Gigliotti, Guest Curator, is a writer, artist and scholar published more than 200 scientific and popular essays and twenty- whose work focuses on the impact of new technologies on human two books including Minding Animals, the Ten trusts (with Jane relationships with animals and on the lives of animals themselves. It Goodall), The Emotional Lives of Animals, Animals Matter, Animals challenges the current assumptions of creativity and offers a more at Play: Rules of the Game (an award-winning children’s book), Wild comprehensive understanding of creativity through recognizing Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (with Jessica Pierce), The Animal animal cognition, consciousness and agency. She is the editor of the Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint, book, Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals and and the Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships , the the author of numerous book chapters and journal essays on these Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior ), and two editions of the topics. Her work is supported by Social Sciences and Humanities. Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare . In 2005 Marc Research Council of Canada, The Sitka Center for the Arts, and The was presented with The Bank One Faculty Community Service Reverie Foundation, among others. She is Associate Professor in Award for the work he has done with children, senior citizens, and Interactive + Social Media Arts and Critical and Cultural Studies at prisoners. In 1986 he became the first American to win his age- Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada. Gigliotti is class at the Tour du Var bicycle race (also called the Master’s/age- on a number of international advisory boards concerned either with graded Tour de France). media or animal studies.

Paolo Pennuti

RU BBERNECKING

Rubbernecking (2010) is an ironic combination of visual and audio snippets, recorded in a documentary style. According to the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll, every creature lives only in its own Umwelt (its subjective subjective world), which is like a single single bubble of soap, pulled apart from the others. A landscape can be imagined as a collection of individual worlds, similar to notes on a musical score; every note is relevant in itself, and at the same time it is in relation to the others. Rubbernecking depicts a landscape-milieu ruled by forms of control, and by the lack of individual possibilities to escape from the dynamics of a society which doesn’t consider people and animals as individuals as such, but rather as elements of the system.

Paolo Pennuti is a visual artist, living in Vancouver. His educational background is in Philosophy and in Visual aArts. He works primarily with video, sound and photography.

His practice is mainly focused on videography and non-linear narrative structures. He combines visual, sound and text elements in order to construct new environments that disrupt narrative origins. This creates space for an encounter between the viewer and a personal, sometimes surreal, association of fragments from everyday life. His work is informed by experimental documentary. , hHe often employs cinematic techniques, such as voice-over, subtitles, long sequence and fixed shots, to challenge the concept of authenticity that is associated towith most documentary traditions. Within the scope of this practice, he addresses both political and philosophical questions as they pertain to issues of everyday life: each of his works areis the result of physical and theoretical journeys that explore interstitial spaces where apparently nothing is happening, but residues of experiences are deposited. In these liminal spaces, memories are re-edited and analyzed without following any preconceived order.

Paolo Pennuti Rubbernecking, 2010 Maxwell

A COMPASSIONATE

20 12

The power of photography has always excited me. I am mesmerized by a camera's ability to capture a moment, a mood, or a beautiful light. Images have a limitless capability to inspire, frighten, educate and warm hearts. For me, photography is a tool to inspire change and awaken compassion within others. After obtaining a degree in Film Studies and English Literature, I decided to pursue my passion for photography. I then attended the Applied

Photography program at Sheridan College. Upon completion I was on my way to becoming a "professional photographer". However, I decided to take my camera on the road before beginning a career as a commercial photographer. Since heading out over 8 years ago, I am still "on the road". I have now travelled to over 50 countries

with my camera. Text by Julie O’Neill

2012 is here and along with it came many resolutions. The resolutions this year seem to time to jump on board. Let’s stop allowing our have some common themes. It appears that traditions and old habits from holding us back 2011 has encouraged us to act. 2011 was a and let’s create a new, more compassionate busy year with people making waves and world in 2012. We must work to heal each other, making changes all over the world. From the the planet, and animals. It is time to make things protests in the Middle East to the occupy right in the most caring and conscious way that movement, to a list of new animal protection we can. legislature in the west, it was an action packed year. Is it possible that the eventful year behind us has inspired us to be better, to love more, We might as well start with breakfast! hate less, and to stand up for our rights as well as the rights of others? The resolutions that I have overheard others (and myself) making for When I was younger I regularly went out for the coming year are less about making money Sunday breakfast with friends. Especially, after a and acquiring more stuff and are more about night out it was so much fun to review the being better people. Being a better husband, craziness that had taken place the night before. volunteering, composting, consuming less, These famous breakfasts were always full of hearty being less judgmental and being kinder are all laughs, cups of coffee and eggs. I will forever examples of resolutions that are popular for this miss these moments but never again the eggs. year. Just in the nick of time! If the Mayans are Of the foods that I don’t eat these days I correct, this year’s resolutions will be our last, so find eggs the most offensive. There once was a we had better make them good! I can’t think of time that I loved eggs. I think mostly because I a more fitting time to start caring for one another associated them with these good ol’ days. This and our planet. The Mayan prophecies transformation didn’t happen overnight. As I predict that something big is going to happen began to learn of the horrible lives that chickens and if not the end of the world then a endure to produce my eggs I found myself transformation into a new age. While the world craving them less and less. Eventually, my tastes coming to an end can be a little dark and and habits changed and adjusted, like they gloomy, I think that the sound of a all can after time. Of all of the animals that suffer transformation into a new age is thrilling. Its for our food, egg-laying hens may suffer the most. Their lives are long and drawn out. They

Julie O’Neill Image from Photography for a Compassionate World O’Neill74

Julie O’Neill Image from Photography for a Compassionate World O’Neill

are kept imprisoned until their bodies and minds Julie O’Neill is a Canadian photographer who spends much of are so defeated that their egg production drops her time travelling the world documenting animal cruelty as well as showcasing organizations that are devoted to saving animals. She and finally then they are slaughtered. has worked with many up and coming NGO’s as well as some of xxxxxxxThese photos were taken inside of a small- the biggest organizations helping animals worldwide such as scale egg farm. These hens are typical examples “Animals Asia” in China, “International Animal Rescue” in Indonesia, “Animal Aid Unlimited” in India and “Farm Sanctuary” in the United of the billions that live under the same conditions States. Her work to help animals through her photography is driven around the world every single day to produce only by the compassion that she feels for those that cannot help themselves. Inspired by the loyal animals of her childhood and the eggs for our consumption. They spend every incredibly forgiving animals that she has met along her journey, minute of their lives within these small spaces, Julie is determined to do all that she can to make our world a more peaceful one for all. never able to feel the ground beneath their feet nor spread their wings. Although the living conditions of these hens is one full of only abuse and distress these hens may actually live in better conditions than many. They have access to sunlight and have not have their beaks trimmed which is standard in chicken farming practices.

Back Cover Image: Karolle75 Wall, Pipefish Karolle Wall

Julie O’Neill Image from Photography for a Compassionate World O’Neill Antennae.org.uk

Issue twenty-three will be st online on the 21 76of December 2012