“Interspecies”
The domestic animal watches us more than we realize, always observing and acquiring information, hearing our voice tones, pondering our language. If this is truly a reciprocal relationship, what is it we have come to learn about our companions’ ways of communicating and being, their habits and routines? The videos try to capture a way into the animal world. Ritual is of my dog digging her sleeping hole – an evolutionary trait that continues to intrigue me.
In these videos I continue my work on places and spaces where we encounter the animal. Home, urban space, national parks, highways, aquariums, science museums, the zoo and natural history museums: each are sites in which we look at the animal and learn its place or non place in our environment. But what do we truly learn about the non-human animal? We look at the animal as our subject/object in these spaces; I take note of what is missing in the operations of those cultural practices that get played out in our society.
The animal is what Merleau-Ponty would call the “reflective subject” which begins with a concrete experience of a particular thing in order to understand the essence of a being. Essence for Merleau-Ponty is the durable truth of an experience that “interconnects within itself and connects with that of others by opening upon one complete world.” He writes: ”behind the idea, there is the unity, the simultaneity of all the real and possible durations, the cohesive form of sole being.” Below: a series of attempts to peer behind the idea.
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Compassion from whiteman on Vimeo.