On Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

What follows are my notes from the lavishly photographed book by Frans de Waal (photos by Frans Lanting) called Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape.

Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

43 "Bonobos wave, beg, wrist-shake, or make threatening gestures predominantly with their right hands. This is the first evidence in a close relative of ours that a communicatory capacity other than language may be associated with the left side of the brain. The similarity in brain specialization hints at a shared evolutionary history between gesturing and language." OOOOOO.

One interesting thing he note about their sexuality is about inhibitions: 100 "Some of these moral constraints exist for good reason, and I am not questioning them, but bonobo society may quite possibly provide insight into how our sexuality might function without them." Another example is that sex is often used more literally as a currency - sex for food, or favors, etc. which we tend to look down on in our society even though it is arguably just a present. :)

"Face-to-face intercourse was long thought to be uniquely human." Nope, Bonobos do it that way :) (Apprently, there was all kinds of moral high-ground associated with this position as a distinguishing factor in making human sex less animal, so much so that its called the missionary position because it was thought that this should be taught of savages when converting them. :)) Also, female orgasm was thought to be uniquely human.

This also reminds me of a part in there that I now don't remember where it was, but he talks about how they seem quite interested in each other's facial expressions and whether or not they are enjoying their sexual experiences because if one of them seems uninterested, they'll just stop.

"some feminist scholars believe that bonding among women is uniquely human" but bonobos definitely appear to bond more than even human women do. 115

134 He talks about the significance of bonobos and their capacity for overturning or rehtinking some long-held beliefs . . . including an alternative evolutionary history or relationship that traces female importance instead of "macho' evolutionary models derived from the behavior of baboons and chimpanzees" (and elsewhere, he talks about empathy in a similar way), "Secondly, bonobos thoroughly upset the idea that sex is intended solely for procreation." Related to this is a comment he made in the lecture about how, though sex might clearly evolved from a reproductive function, it can be used for many more things, so that homosexual relationships are no less natural than heterosexual ones . . . which I think goes against this naturalistic fallacy or whatever Jacob calls it which is really surprisingly prevalant in arguments against all kinds of things. And this idea that if it doesn't happen in nature, it goes against God or something even though this stuff DOES take place in nature. So then they just change the argument so that now nature is animal and therefore against God . . .

He talks about our species and how we "value stable partnerships"

He does say that nuclear families are uniquely human -- "for which no parallel exists in the great apes" at least (i'm not sure about other animals. He offers this whole interesting idea of how we became these kinds of family units, based on the fact that the more males were invested in their offspring, the more interest they had in controlling female reproduction, but the more they could be sure the offspring were theirs, the more the would stick around and help to care for young. He talks about the role of infanticide (throughout the book, actually) and in particular how chimps utilize that to make sure their own offspring live and to increase the reproductive cycle of females to replace the young they lost . . . and how bonobos basically operate under the "if any of these could be my babies and we are all potential fathers, its probably best not to kill any of them" and for humans we just limited female reproductive freedom.

Progress: Ape Language Acquisition show at Figure One and State of the Studio

This is what preparing for the show at Figure One gallery did to my studio:

When I came in that morning, I really thought that someone had raided my studio or maybe tried to rob me, until I realized I did this to myself. 

Just a few images of what the show looked like.

Obviously, this isn't everything that was documented, but it gives a sense.

Some written description

And I thought this might be a good place to put the writing that I've done about this show since then. The following is the description I gave for this piece in a grant application written in June of 2011.

Language Acquisition Project
This solo exhibition was created as part of the University’s juried Ten to Watch series, and centers around representative individuals from each of the four great ape species (not including humans) to discuss controversial ape-language research.

Four small charcoal portraits of these legendary individuals are labeled both with their genus and species name, as well as their given name – Koko the gorilla, Kanzi the bonobo, Chantek the orangutan, and Washoe the chimpanzee. Each portrait has a corresponding text-based piece on the opposing wall, demonstrating the kind of language work done with that particular animal, such as a key of Koko’s American-sign-language-based signs, or anecdotes about Chantek’s conversations with researchers. These documents indicate the limitations of language as well as the difficulty in characterizing what can be legitimately said about interspecies communication.

On The Postmodern Animal, by Steve Baker

DOUBLE TIME! 2x's the Steve Baker!

(I've been reading both "The Postmodern Animal" and "Picturing the Beast" more or less at the same time.)

Here are some notes.

32 - he mentions how, in the "'postmodern' form of the novel (in which lists constantly fracture the narrative, and jokiness is more acceptable than seriousness" (which has something to do with something else he is saying, but is another example of people taking for granted something which I hadn't really noticed or identified for myself yet but which seems deeply true . . . about DWF and Dave Eggers and the like, who must very much be postmodernist novelists. I have much to learn. Also, makes me want to try doing things like that with writing, if only so that I can work through the phases of 15 years ago so that I can make something else now. :) At any rate, even if I never write anything ever, the idea of "fracturing narrative" with lists or breaks in the content would definitely be a useful strategy for me as well. If I made a narrative first, that is.

40 He talks about Csikszentmihalyi and then moves into the idea of the expert, and identifies how, in the postmodern world, its more favorable to the inventor rather than the expert (the continual dilletante? I wonder?) he uses the distinction between philosopher and expert . . . because there is "no creativity" in being the expert. It is not about knowing things, it's about finding out things, it's about creating a temporary break with order, breaking the rules, ignoring the "contract" and "seeing what follows from that." Which is certainly true of the kind of direction that we are encouraged to go in our art-making. Baker says this is the attitude of the postmodern artist. (This whole discussion of course surrounds where the animal fits into this, and I think he points out that the animal is in the position of the philosopher, by not knowing . . .) I think this is interesting in terms of my interest in knowing itself . . . in wanting to know, in wanting there to be experts and people who know, and then trying to resist this desire for things to be decided and to stop having to incessantly question. This un-decision, suspension of conclusion, which is pervasive in my life, doesn't seem to result in quite the kind of thinking that produces postmodern art in this way, but . . . it does seem that the more I learn about this kind of stuff, the more I realize how neatly I fit as a product of my cultural upbringing. Hmmm.

50 - 51 He talks about how the postmodern animal is most productively "thought of as embodied, and that this embodiment is felt in an encounter with them, so that it's most directly felt when the "confrontation" is "staged" in the work and it can actually happen between the person and the animal . . . so he goes on to say that visual arts have an advantage in staging this kind of confrontation over text, and that sculpture, installation, etc. are (3D work) an "edge" over painting, photos, etc. He admits that this sounds too prescriptive and that there are of course very "postmodern" encounters with animals in other work, but this does serve to explain a little why my professor said "I really can't think of any artists doing paintings or drawings of animals" in a significant way, and that "you are going to need to look at installation and sculpture."

This makes me think more about the way space is manipulated, or how to create an encounter (which I suppose happens in a painting, but not really since it's not "embodied" in that way.)

54 He talks about why straightforward, untroubling, pretty images of animals don't fit into the idea of the postmodern animal: "Why? Because the look of the postmodern animal--no surprises here--seems more likely to be that of a fractured, awkward, 'wrong' or wronged thing, which it is hard not to read as a means of addressing what it is to be human now." He says that another author describes the experience of people in the West from the 60's to 90's as "fragmentation" -- I think I am starting to be engaged with this in terms of breaking these images up into other things, and with the kinds of disjointed writing etc. It also seems a little too easy to put things together in a "purposefully" fragmented or unresolved way :) Anyway, "the postmodern animal appears as an image of difference, an images of thinking difficultly, and differently." and he talks about the heavy use of "botched taxidermy" as an example.

73 Later, another quote about botched taxidermy:
". . . as a whole, they might be said neither to be like what viewers do know nor to be like what they do not know about animals. To borrow a term from Derrida (a term he in fact applied to humans), these pieces might be called 'questioning entities.' In a field of many competing forms of knowledge and expertise--zoological, historical, anthropological, taxidermic, and more--these works are perhaps most usefully regarded as improvised knowledges, inexpert knowledges of the animal."

75 Even later, he describes the botched taxidermy as an "attempt to think a new thing" which, even out of context, I really like as a phrase.

93 He brings up Heidegger's discussion about "what is the world" from the 1920's in order to talk about it's attempt to "think non-hierarchically about the relation of humans and animals" . . . which I think sounds hierarchical, but I guess the eventual argument insists that it is not, but anyway, it's the delineation of groups as: "1. The stone is worldless. 2. The animal is poor in the world. 3. Man is world-forming." Anyway, I won't pretend to understand all that these three "theses" signify and the whole world of Derrida and other's use of this idea . . . but I do like these phrases as very poetic ones. And especially the idea that "man is world-forming" because I think this idea of the creative act (and I admit my clear bias in saying this) may be one of the enduring distinctions between humans and animals? And yes, I know, I keep talking about how our need to distinguish ourselves from animals is almost a pathology and probably something we should avoid and I continue to do it myself. Irony noted.

113 He quotes . . I don't even know . . . he might just be using quotes to signify that it's a casual phrase . . . but he says "You don't know . . . so experiment." talking about how the position of the artist or philosopher is allied with the animal in experimentation, trying things out, etc. I was kind of thrilled when I read that, though, because even though its such a simple set of words, it calls up this whole issue of KNOWING and wanting to know, and offers the sort of liberating: You don't know. With a solution for that.

Artist: Jean Lowe

Another artist featured in the "Next of Kin" show that I thought was particularly noteworthy was Jean Lowe, who created a room installation that was a "send-up" of French Rococo or Neoclassical Salons . . . she makes papier mache furniture, books, props, etc. and hand paints them, but in this very obviously hand-made sort of way, so that was looks like a big set piece sort of breaks down. For her installation in the show, she did one called "Gentlemen's Club" that discussed the use of apes in the medical research and entertainment industry by creating this club room with hand-painted books in it. Around the room, she created a "four paneled narrative" through the use of a faux wallpaper mural depicting "habitat destruction, transplantation, institutional settings, and species survival strategies" (30). The author, Ron Platt, says her use of this loose hand-made style is a strategy for being too over-the-top or direct with her message, saying"The humor and hand-made touch charm us into considering her environmentally proactive message which might otherwise be dismissed as too heavy-handed or didactic."

The particular piece in the show wasn't online, and the image in the catalog wasn't very interesting either, so I'll just stick a couple of other examples here.

Here's a blog with a few more images of her paintings of these proposed(?) (or maybe realized) because I may have seen a photo of the real thing . . . spaces of European elegance that she puts big-box store items into.

Artist: Richard Ross: Museology

As I decide how much I want to be engaged with this museum slash institutional conventions (and in what way) I think it would make sense to take note of a photographer who was featured in the "Next of Kin: Looking at the Great Apes" exhibition (and therefore that I found out about in the exhibition catalog, which had essays by Harriet Ritvo, Tommy L. Lott, and Ron Platt and artist entries by Ron Platt, from the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge,and the show ran from October 7 - December 10, 1995.)

The photographer, Richard Ross, travels around photographing museum displays as part of his Museology project. The photos in the show were American Museum of Natural History, New York, (1977) and Museum of Natural History, Cairo, Egypt, 1984. The New York one shows the image of the mountain gorillas exhibit done by Carl Akeley and show the triad of father, mother, and child that other people have talked about before in terms of the museum's reinforcement of certain societal values.

He talks about how Akeley was on the expedition to kill the gorillas, and then says: "Given the symbolic parallels between guns and cameras, and between taxidermy's and photography's bravura for freezing of time and matter, Ross' image provides a dizzying headful of equations masquerading as straightforward re-presentation" (22)

The second photo is described as depicting our relationship of disregard and care for other animals by leaving these "moth-eaten" specimens in such a profoundly un-natural and sad environment.

After looking him up, he apparently has a website where he shows all these Museology images, and they have been published as a book (which maybe I should check out!)

There were a couple that were really compelling to me, so I'll copy them below.

What I love about this one is that I still can't figure out what that thing is, or why someone put it on that hanger. It makes me think about the "unexpected" that was talked about in my review (or the loss of the unexpected, rather) and how much unexpectedness is present in these photos.

This makes me think about building things but leaving parts off, or having extra parts laying around.

This is just so strikingly beautiful. And with all of these its so interesting to look at the stands they are on or carts or cases. 

The thing I loved about this one is that it seems as though they are all coming towards the glass, like little delicate-footed zombies with beady black eyes, ready to investigate our interrupting them. 

On What is Wrong With Sentimentality?, by Mark Jefferson

Mind (I983) Vol. XCII, 5 I9-529
What is Wrong With Sentimentality?
MARK JEFFERSON
(I have the full article as a PDF)

“It is generally agreed that there is something unwholesome about sentimentality: it would certainly be a mistake to think it a virtue. But just what sentimentality is and why it is objectionable is something of a mystery. Of course we know that it is an emotional quality or range of qualities, and that it is expressive of (or in itself) an ethical or aesthetic defect; but we don't know quite what it is that makes certain emotions sentimental or why it is that certain emotion types are more likely hosts for it than others. Nor is it -clearwhat sort of objection we are making when we call something sentimental. Sometimes the charge seems to impart nothing more than mild ridicule; on other occasions it has more sinister implications. And between these range usages expressing more or less serious rebuke.” 519

“'Sentimentality' has undergone a rapid evolution since it first appeared, in the eighteenth century, as a term of commendation. It was then a fine thing to be sentimental-it set one apart from the coarser types. One had refined feelings, not brute passions.

So it is interesting to me that now it gets allied with animal representations a lot since before it was something “brute” NOT to be sentimental

Animals are brought up almost immediately in an essay not specifically devoeted to animals at all as a quintiessential definition of sentimatality: “At street level there is an insistence that sentimentality is the near exclusive preserve of those who buy Christmas presents for their dogs. With this goes the view that sentimentality is just a sort of silliness, not particularly damning and not worth much serious attention.” 520

. . .Mary Midgley's short piece, 'Brutality and Sentimentality'.1 Her chief purpose in this was to undermine the wantonly perverse suggestion that it is sentimental to attribute feelings to animals. I cannot see that this is a particularly worthy target thesis for her but, that aside, in the course of her demolition job she does make some promising remarks about sentimentality. In particular, she claims that being sentimental is 'misrepresenting the world in order to indulge our feelings' (ibid. p. 385).

This makes me think a couple of things. One is that, in an era (today) marked by multiple truths and subjectivity, the idea of one truth or reality seems pretty impossible, so is it really possible then to say that sentimentality mis-represents anything? If there is no true representation? And, what if it can be shown that the representations ARE accuruate? Are they still sentimental then? Perhaps I am mis-understanding the idea of mis-representing. :)

It is true that we misrepresent the world in order to indulge in many types of emotion-'soft' and 'hard'-but it is not true that every sort of emotional indulgence is equally objectionable. There are significant differences in the sorts of misrepresentation required for different kinds of indulgence. What gives sentimentality its claim to be properly formed is the peculiar nature of the misrepresentation it involves; and this is also what makes it more objectionable than many other sorts of emotional indulgence. (523)

. . .

My contention is that sentimentality is objectionable because of the nature of its sustaining fantasy and not simply because it must employ one. Indeed I am not convinced that there is a good moral case to be made against any sort of emotional indulgence that involves misrepresenting the world. (424)

“What distinguishes the fictions that sustain sentimentality from those that occur in other forms of emotional indulgence? Well, chiefly it is their emphasis upon such things as the sweetness, dearness, littleness, blamelessness, and vulnerability of the emotions' objects. The qualities that sentimentality imposes on its objects are the qualities of innocence. But this almost inevitably involves a gross simplification of the nature of the object. And it is a simplification of an overtly moral significance.” (527) and this: “Though the sentimentalists in the poodle parlours may have a morally warped view of their little darlings no- one need be too alarmed by it.” THIS IS SO DISMISSIVE. I kind of hate that. :)

“But sentimentality does have its moral dangers and these are rather more apparent when its objects are people or countries. For the moral distortions of sentimentality are very difficult to contain just to its objects. Frequently these objects interrelate with other things and sentimentality may impair one's moral vision of these things too. The parody of moral appraisal that begins in sentimental response to something, natur- ally extends itself elsewhere. The unlikely creature and moral caricature that is someone unambiguously worthy of sympathetic response has its natural counterpart in a moral caricature of something unambiguously worthy of hatred.” (527)

Oh, this makes more sense. Like, maybe the sweetification of animals is not necessarily so inaccurate, but that it creates a colloarary, the evil scientist, which is of course much more provable as inaccurate – and vilifying the researcher is certainly a tactic that takes place, allowing ALF to bomb someone’s house without feeling terrible about it.

“Sentimentality is rightly connected with brutality because it is a principal component of the sort of moral climate that will sanction crude antipathy and its active expression.” Not a thought I had before.

“For to maintain the innocence one has projected upon a favoured object it is often necessary to construct other, dangerous fictions about the things that object interacts with.1” (529)

Artist: Thomas Grunfeld

I came across the name Thomas Grunfeld and think his hybrid chimera creations are so lovely and strange that I wanted to collect a bunch of images of them here.

Also, there is this great website which I may have catalogued here before, Ravishing Beasts, that shows a lot of taxidermy images in its gallery, both of art taxidermy, but also museum displays. So this might be a really good place to look for reference images.

And now, some images.

On Picturing the Beast, by Steve Baker

I actually wasn't able to finish this book, even after having it for MONTHS, because I just didn't have time once the semester started again. So it might be good to return to it in the future. But here are my notes anyway.

Introduction:
He's talking about a previous version of his text and says

"There was no shortage of literature about Disney animation or about animal symbolism in political cartoons and wartime propaganda, but this book's more idiosyncratic purpose was to suggest that the animal could only be considered, and understood, through its representations. There was no unmediated access to the "real" animal. . . As the original preface concludes, 'it should not simply be a matter of our studying what animals already signify in the culture but rather, through a benevolent manipulation, of exploring what animals mgiht yet be made to signify" (xvi)

Later, he says "Instead, the point is to emphasize that representations have a bearing on shaping that 'reality' and that the 'reality' can be addressed only through representations." (xvii)

He says that keeping questions open about animals, or raising more questions rather than answering them, no longer seems so idiosyncratic, and that this is really commonplace today.

I guess there was a poster, which I can't find online, done by the National Canine Defense League in GB, timed to coincide with the release of Disney's 102 Dalmatians (2000) that used the old phrase "a dog is for life, not just for Christmas" and showed a live dalmatian (labeled "dog" and a stuffed one labeled "toy" which obviously has some relationship to this whole thing of toy and cuddly and [my stuffed animal paintings, etc.]  . . yeah.

Zoo photos by Frank Noelker mentioned in the Steve Baker text . . .

Baker also talks about a New York Times feature on "the ubiquity of the animal in contemporary art" which I should probably find and read.

"The second development in the 1990's was that artists began to take animals altogether more seriously, and in doing so found ways of avoiding the familiar accusation of sentimentality. For some artists, such as Mark Dion in the United States and Olly and Suzi in the United Kingdom, their work was driven at least in part by their concern with environmentalism and the conservation of endangered species. Others, such as Sue Coe, Frank Noelker, and Britta Jaschinski, used their art to address the confinement or mistreatment of animals. Then of course there were many others, from Jeff Koons to Damien Hurst, who made frequent use of animal imagery, or of animals themselves, without necessarily having anything to say about them." xxvii

He notes that in the 1990's there was surely and increase in animal art, but that it had precedents beginning in the 70's with the rise of the contemporary animal rights movement (Wegman, Beuys)
Eduardo Kac did a piece where he had a lab in France genetically modify a rabbit to include a jellyfish gene that made her (named Alba) glow green when put under blue light. It was called "GFP Bunny" and was controversial. The caption next to the picture of this rabbit asks "Is Eduardo Kac to be condemned for creating a green fluorescent rabbit in the first place or hailed for his subsequent effort to liberate her from the research laboratory?" xxviii

xxx - Talks about the Marco Evaristti exhibition piece with the goldfish in blenders that offered people the chance to turn them on. Apparently, Peter Singer supported the art as raising the question of the power we have over animals. But a group of Minnesota artists founded the Justice for Animals Arts Guild (JAAG) to question this idea of using live animals in art, and to support the notion that the artist's ideas do not neccessariiy take precedence over the interests of the animals being used. "Alarmed at the manner in which living animals were used in certain art exhibitions, they were convinced that 'much could be accomplished by sensitizing the arts community.' Believing that animals must be understood to be 'beings' not 'ideas,' their immediate goal was to negotiate with state arts organizations and funding agencies for the institution of policies that would prevent the cruel or degrading use of living animals by contemporary artists."

ANIMAL USE IN ART! It's no wonder that there is some similarity in the way that art addresses animal issues and the way science does -- in both cases, animals are USED to further ideas or progress, oftentimes at their own expense.

Robin Schwartz did a book of primate portraits (primates living in people's homes) that I think maybe I might enjoy looking at.

---

OK. I'm going to put this image here, even though I don't think this is quite the place where I thought of it. But I remember that, at some point, I had it in my head that I should make a dog that was big enough to lay next to or sit on, like a couch. I had this dog in mind:

But then I saw this thing, and this is totally what I was thinking:

Chapter 3 is about hatred of animals, use of animal imagery as derogatory, etc. Which I am not reading right now because I don't have time. :) A term I hadn't heard before is "theriomorphism" . . . a word that I am excited exists because its nice to have a word for this.

Chapter 4, is about the pleasure taken in animals, and in depictions of animals.
It reminds me of the idea of "talking animals" and how they abound in stories and narratives, and how truly strange it is when we refer to real living animals that can "talk" like parrots, or primates, dolphins, etc. Again, this connection to childhood. I think I do really want to make my puppet video. . . hmmm.

More on children and animals, "Received wisdom has it that the tendency to like, to care for and to identify with animals is essentially a childhood phenomenon, or, as it might often be more condescendingly expressed, a childish thing." 123

A love of animals is also often attributed to being "childish" and that animal lovers "never really grow up" (another slam on animal appreciation)

And I guess that's as far as I got.

On "Becoming Animal" -- Notes from the exhibition catalog

Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom at MASS MoCA
- exhibition catalog distributed by MIT Press, Massachussets Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass, copyright 2005

Exhibition organized by MASS MoCA and presented in North Adams from May 2005 through March 2006

---

Curator Nato Thompson: introduction called Monstrous Empathy

"Artist Kathy High unveils the biological and suprisingly personal connections between laboratory rats and herself."

"how do we incorporate the new knowledge that the human genome is only a few strands away from that of a flea?" (8)

"The exhibition Becoming Animal takes a cue from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their seminal book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). When Deleuze and Guattari write of "becoming animal," they destabilize the strcit (and possibly artibraray_ boudnaries modernity established between humanity and the animal kingdom. Their sweeping notion of becoming takes on diverse fields such as "becoming geology", "becoming woman" and becoming imperceptible," but it as at its most acute with anaimals. Rahter than fixed and discreet, for Deleuze and Guattari the individual is an ever-shifting being, "a desring machine," that can take on a new forms of animal-ness (or an animal capable of taking conforms of human-ness. Similarly the term becoming bekjdka;fdslajflksja;kfl kah crap super boring and I don't care. . .

Georgio Agamben, "The Open: Man and Animal" 2004, might be something to look at. Thompson says this book traces the discussion of what is animal and what is human throughout history and talks about how we derive our meaning of who we are by defining "non-human" animals.
He says that Deleuze and Guattari challenge the "Cartesian notion of individuality--I think therefore I am--" and that this can be both "liberating" and very disturbing and challenging, bringing up the fears of hybrid human-animal type monsters, freaks, Chimeras, etc. that are very distressing to us. He mentions animal/human relationships being taboo "ever since" Eve is seen talking to the snake in the garden. Monstrous.

Donna Haraway is mentioned again. Hmm.

9 "However, radically sympathizing with the animal has had some of its strongest historical advocates in both art and zoology. As Giorgio Agamben traces animal theories of the great philosophers, he often focuses on the perspective of famed zoologist Jacob von Uexkull.

I get the sense that art and science are often posited against one another, or that art serves in some way as a critical lens on science, and science certainly imposes a judgement on the subjective realities of art. In his introductory essay, Thompson kind of says something like that, or maybe something that eludes to that dichotomy, referring to a long and descriptive quote by Jakob von Uexkull in Agamben's writing, he says "This gross explanation provides a tangible example of umwelt, and the underlying empathy feels more in cahoots with the art in this exhibition than with science." (10)


Joseph Beuys is mentioned - apparently, he founded the first political party for animals ("over one billion members" . . . mcdonalds?) and the the intro essay talks about his 2 most "notable performance pieces" the coyote one and this one where he cradles a dead rabbit and talks to it with his head covered in honey and gold leaf. "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" which looks so sweet and super scary. There is a little more discussion of this piece, how it explores attempting to communicate with animals by first thinking like them. . . . (??)
10 - Commentary on Kathy High and work that specifically addresses lab rats.
"Leaving behind traditional categories for understand the 'other,' we enter a radical space of emptathy. Artist Kathy High evokes this territory well with her autobiographic project aptly titled "Embracing Animal" (2004). Over the telphone, Kathy High ordered a apir of laboratory test rats whom she named Echo and Flowers. The rats had been previously micro-injected with human DNA that caused their autoimmune systems to be weakened. Their incapacitated immunce systems are biolgoically re-eingineered to make them susceptible to dieases such as reactive arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammaotry bowel disease. In the normal course of science, the rats would be sued as test subjects for drugs to treat humans."

"High, suffering from a chronic illness herself, understood that these rats were being used to find cures fo rpeople. Echo and Flwoers were not simply becoming human, they had become integrally locked in a genetic relationship with humanity. As apart of the project High cares for the pair of rats, treating them with homeopathic medicines.(5) Her installation consistst of a lovely home for Echo and Flowers as well as elongated test tubes outfitted with LCD monitors displaying images of fear and anxiety that pervade phsyical crossovers between human and animal: footage of werewolves, vampires, and bvestiality flickers at the bottom of the tubes."

he then eludes to Nietzche's "last purported moment of sanity as he lurched at a horse being beaten, held onto its neck, and wept uncontrollably."

Thompson makes the point, and I agree, that after the mapping of genome in 2000 and other major advances in biotechnology, films, literature, and art began to play out our many fears this burgeoning science. Cloning and eugenics . . . this is another very close relationship to science but a slightly different one than the ethical quesiton of using animals for research . . . more like a broader ethical question of whether this kind of advancement is really as great as we think in general. He also says that "many artists have eagerly seized the tools of biotechnology" . . "to shock audiences" (12)

Then talks about Patricia Piccinini (Australian artist) that uses silicone sculpting to make those incredibly realistic "uncanny" sculptures of hybrids and genetic creations. He talks about the "Still life with stem cells" 2002 which shows the little girl holding onto a lump of fleshy thing and a few other lumps around, and he says that she looks fondly at them and "These lumps too can be loved."

Another comparison with womens' rights ". . . both feminism and the causes of animals must share a concern with the ways that the Other become subordinate." Lynda Birke and Luciana Parisi, "Animals, Becoming," 1999 (on page 12)

He talks about how feminisim and post-colonialism "provide a semiotic perspective" and talks about how "Theorists like Donna Haraway have used this analysis to interrogate both these scientific, as well as language-based, distinctions. In her groundbreaking Cyborg Manifesto, Harraway sews together ritical theory and science with a deft warning: "The degree to which the principle of domination is ddeeply embedded in our natural sciences, espeically in these disciplines that seek to explain social groups and behavior, must not be undersreestimated. Arguing that one cannot trust the claim of pure empiricism in science, she outlines a complex method for allowing hybridity between animal, machine, human and social politics in general--the cyborg."

"Connecting the 'animal' to that of the feminist and post-colonial 'other' can easily lead to ridiculous conclusions. However, cultural moments of debasement and exploitation have often found resonance with the phrase, "we were treated like animals." This refrain positions the becoming animal as the lowest form of human existence. But what does it mean to treat someone like an animal? In political terms it would bean to revoke a person's basic human rights." (13) And then of course he goes into Agamben a bit

Thompson says "if anything stands out as the most durable explanation of the difference between human and animal, it is the ability to speak." (13)

Quotes a book called "Why Look at Animals" by John Berger.

Talks about how Mark Dion "has been a major contributor o what is now a common genre in contemporary art, that of the exploded wudnerkammern."

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Second introduction: "Of humans, animals, and monsters." by Christoph Cox

"Christoph Cox is Associate professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College. . . . editor at large at Cabinet magazine and writes regularly on contemporary art and music for Artforum, The Wire, and other magazines."

He has the greatest little point at the beginning here. I went "ooo!" when I read it. :)

"An art exhibition that unsettles the boundary between humans and animals presents a paradox. Art--and culture in general--is supposed to be precisely that which defines the boundary in the first place. Whatever our similarities to animals, the argument goes, artistic creativity and aesthetic appreciation are uniquely human."

This essay talks about the hybrid nature of humans (have earthly, half divine, Adam as combination of earth and divine breath, Plato of soma and psyche, Descartes and physical/metaphysical, etc.) and then says that after Darwin, we are more likely to admit our relationships to animals than try to connect ourselves to the divine. He goes on to say that after the "death of god" something else came to fill in this hole . . "the machine" and then has a really interesting bit about how machines are sort of using us to evolve and that they are as much a part of us as the shells of oysters. :\

He points out that "religious doctrine, philosophical speculation, political thought, and biological classification" and "Western morality" have all been aimed at denying our animal nature and surpassing or showing how we are more. We don't want to be "merely" animals. Simon Critchley says "There is something charming about an animal become human. . . " but "when the human becomes aniaml, then the effect is disgusting." (19)

Remember that "the first human act is naming and classifying" the animals in Genesis (and that part about God presenting Adam with the animals as potenital mates or partners and to name them, which seems so sweet to me for some reason)

Oh, funny. Edward Topsell wrote a very "anthropocentric" "Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts" that classified animals as "edible/inedible, wild/tame, useful/useless" which is hilarious to me. "inedible." :)

20 - talking about Darwin's contribution to not only "eliminating the boundaries between species; he also flattened the ancient hierarchy that placed humans at the top" and was adamant that evolution is not progressive, it does not have long range goals or advancements, that humans are no more advanced than other creatures, and that "natural selection is local and temporary" which is actually not something I've ever heard anyone articulate before. Because people (even in science) still use "higher mammals" etc. even though Darwin apparently forbade the use of "higher" or "lower" since its misleading. :)

Talks about the Island of Dr. Moreau which is apparently about him trying to make a human from aniamls by reproducing evolution. So he uses a gorilla. Didn't know that. :) H.G. Wells.

talks about how Deleuze's philosphies are strongly "informed by biological thought" and that for him and Felix Guatarri, there are no distinctions between animals/plants/minerals etc. but rather a continuum . . .

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Some interesting pieces mentioned:

Rachel Berwick apparently did a piece called may-por-e in which she taught a pair of parrots to speak this dead language (of the Maypure tribe) in Venezuela, because the story goes that the person to discover this language (Baron Von Humboldt) learned the language from the last surviving speaker - a parrot. This is totally cool and something I should look at. Parrot as conduit and repository of our lost languages. Hmm.

Artist Brian Conley (the one that did this crazy frog balloon thing) used to be an animal researcher, monitoring negative-conditioning studies with goldfish . . . and since he was responsible for killing the fish, he decided to feed them to a larger fish, which then grew too big for its tank and broke it and got out. :) He said he believed in science then and its power for good, but developed issues with that idea over time. He is also a founder of "Cabinet" magazine -- page 44 of the catalog is his interview.

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Mark Dion Interview

There is an interview with Mark Dion, which I put in another post.

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Kathy High Interview

Kathy High interview (66-67) which I think really relates to this question of sentimentality:

"Nato Thompson: I would like to get your opinion of a quotation by Steve Baker from his book The Postmodern Animal. Can you comment on the following:

"What does it mean, exactly, to say that postmodern artists and philosophers fear pets? It is not that they fear the creatures themselves (though they may feel contempt for them). It is closer to what has been called"anthropomorphobia'--a fear that they 'ay be accused of uncritical sentimentality' in their depiction or discussion of animals. They seem almost unanimous in regarding sentimentality as a bad thing."

Kathy High: People are crazy about animals. And there is a lot of fear (by arts/intellectuals) of being sentimental around animals. People project all kinds of desires onto their animals--to make pets into 'little humans" I, too, suffer from this fear and am sometime suspicious of my own work with my pets. I try not to think of my pets as 'human' but rather as non-human. They represent extensions of ourselves, symbolic and archetypical.

There is a constant struggle for me between earnestness and irony when talking about pets. It is easy to describe them sincerely, but one doesn't want to appear to 'sappy' (picture wide-eyed kitties painted on velvet) Pets are, at the same time, paradoxical and difficult to unravel (picture twitching paws and gnarled teeth, tongues lashing). I think there is pressure on contemporary artists to be ironic and critical. Somehow, today, sincerity--to me00takes a certain amount of bravery."

(she uses her pets in her other work, and also uses animal psychics and a lot of new-age medicine type stuff (which is of course quite at odds with science and so plays against that. But she says "Day-to-day I'm very pragmatic, rational person, but even as a child I was fascinated by occult texts, and I practiced hypnosis, astral projection and telepathy. I don't know why I did that. Maybe it was from the influence of TV shows like Bewtiched or The Prisoner and movies like Wizard of Oz. These programs were psychedelic, dreamlike programs of people who were". . . (66) she says she has always been interested in that, looking at it in a sort of anthropolgical way as a possible way of coping with our "sometimes rootless" American culture or fulfilling our need to believe in something beyond ourselves (which she finds appealing).

She has been treated with homeopathic and alternative medicines.

Oh, she also said that she is not an animal rights activist, but feels that the animals used in research should be acknowledged for their contributions to science. 67 "The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals states that laboratory rats . .. and mice . . . are not covered by the national regulatory governances and the Animal Welfare Act amended in 1985, and are not reviewed under the Regulatory Enforcement and Animal Care Inspection. In other words, lab rats and mice are not protected in the same ways that other animals such as cats, dogs, and monkeys are. There are probably over 20 million rats and mice in use for research in this country, making up more than 90 percent of the animals used in research but they are undocumented--no one knows their exact numbers. This defies a kind of contract we have with animals who participate in our lives."

transgenic rats.

The word "undocumented" also reminds me of the undocumented workers, illegal aliens, etc. who definitely figure into Agamben. :)

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Natalie Jeremijenko

Natalie Jeremijenko did a project where she re-engineered toy robotic dogs to sniff for environmental contaminants and then releases them in a pack to roam around and gather data. "Feral Robotic Dogs" project. I don't care for what it looks like, but the title, and the idea of a pack of these things brings me so much joy. :) (68). This was not part of the exhibition project, but her piece for that one was the bird perches that tell people to do things (an experiment in modifying human behavior). I also like this idea of taking experimental techniques on a group of museum-goers.

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Nicholas Lampert

Lampert talks about the Machine Animal Collages in his interview on 80 --
"Loosely, the collages speak of a world engulfed in its own technology. An uncertain future where genetic engineering, robotics, and science have run amok." and talks about these questions of when and how animals and machines merge (which again reminds me of descartes and clocks.) He says "Locust Tank is metaphoric of industrialism and capital rolling over the planet," but says he's not as nihilistic as the interviewer suggests because there he doesn't think it's impossible to stop this and we should just give up. He is closely associated with the punk scene and anarchism, though, and does a lot of street art. The talk about the Locust Tank one also in terms of militaristic design and conquering (and he asks if progres smeans conqueiring nature or letting it be and existing in harmony)

He also did these "meatscapes" and they discuss monuments as physical cultural memories -- "a phsyical antedote for cultural amnesia' which I like w/r/t the monument project :)

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Michael Oatman (not so interested in his bird-related painting things) does something he calls "maximum collage" which is really when is collections of crap get so massive that they become installations, so that a collage breaks out of that and becomes like this environment. I like that idea.

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Motohiko Odani

- his work in the show, a taxidermy baby deer with legs in traction, called "Erectro" 2003, the deer is described as "what may be the cutest and most endearing of all non-human animals." :)

And more "Odani's cute aesthetic becomes a transformed Garden of Edan in the short viedo loop "rompers" 2003, also featured in Becoming Animal" which has this candy and sugar kind of look but very subversive because the little girl in it is mutated with long toes and scary forehead and her dress is "dangerously short" and there is honey leaking from an orafice in the tree . . . so (92) I can see how this might be using cute aesthic, but definitely not in the way . . . its much more disturbing and therefore sort of undermined.

They ask him about the notion of cute in the interview, which he is quick to say is more about disabilities:
"What do you think the relationship is between cute and animals, and how do you use this as a source of inspiration?"

"I don't think baby animals are pure and innocent. In the case of baby animals born with disabilities by inheritance, mixed feelings run through me." (96) the rest of the interview focuses on the sexuality at play in the video and the sexuality associated with animals.

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Patricia Piccinini

I think cuteness might kind of relate, or at least she kind of makes these things somewhat sympathetic "Piccinici confesses familial emotions toward her hybrid sculptures" (98) but they are still very scary, i think, or disconcerting. It says her sculptures began with this announcement of a laboratory-developed, fully-synthetic strange of DNA "[Synthetic Organism1] SO1 will have no specific function, but once it is alive we can customize it." so she made these silicon-based sculptures.

She talks about the sculptures as though they were alive, in reference to their introspective gazes "They have their own worlds and their own concerns. They are, in the end, less interested in us than we are in them."

She also talks about "becomcing animal" as being about learning that our place is not what we think it is, acknowledging that we have all this in common with animals and even plants, etc. and the well-said idea that things we call "human traits" that we find in amails are just animal traits that we share in common. I agree with and like her position a a lot and think that this fundamental anthropocentrism is something that continually needs to be subverted (this goes back to Carl Sagan!! ;))

Makes me think of the phenomenon of the blog "cute overload" which is a very apt word choice because oftentimes the insanity of how unbelievably cute some animals can be is definitely an overload. Not sure why that is. :)

More on Mark Dion

I watched the Art21 interview with Mark Dion, where he talked in general about his practice and also about a couple of specific pieces. Here are my notes:

"I really identify with the mission of the museum, where you go somewhere to gain knowledge through things." I think I very much agree with that too.

"There are a lot of tools that an artist has that the scientist doesn't have. Humor, irony, metaphor. . . these are sort of the bread and butter of artists."

he did this piece about puffin colonies being infiltrated by tag-along rats -- so he tarred them and hung them from a tree -- the rats themselves came from a biological supply company . . . which isn't what they are about. He said they aren't supposed to read as lab rats int his case.

"I think for myself and for a number of artists, science really functions as our worldview. our relationship to science is very much like the renaissance relationship to theology." He sees the role of contemporary art as functioning as "critical foil to dominant culture"

And here is a quote about him on the Art21 site:
"The job of the artist, he says, is to go against the grain of dominant culture, to challenge perception and convention. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between ‘objective’ (‘rational’) scientific methods and ‘subjective’ (‘irrational’) influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. "

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There is also an interview with him in the catalog for the "Becoming Animal" exhibition.
(His piece in that show was the Library for the Birds of Massachussets or whatever)

Mark Dion: interview with him on page 52, on didactic style

[about him and collaborating with Bill Scherrerine]
"We felt that certain ecological calamity could be avoided by access to knowledge; that if people understood situations like the crisis in biodiversity, though habitat loss, they would act to alleviate the problem. Our didactic style expressed the notion that somehow the information is just not getting out. Now I am convinced that knowledge is not hte issue and that there is a profound lack of will. I grossly miscalculated the power of ideology, desire, coercion, superstition, and pure greed."

Later, "The presentation of captive animals is little different than the display of other riches and trophies." he talks about museums and zoos and the way they function to display the riches, resources, etc. of their owners . . . which makes me want to make highly jeweled, gorgeous, GLITTERY animals in cages as trophy displays of wealth . . . (53) and he says that another relationship between art museums and zoos are that rarity brings value. "There are very few Vermeers. There are very few pandas. Both bring in the masses." :) MAKE A GLITTER PANDA? Damn. That would be great. :) 

He also describes himself as pessimistic now about the lack of forseable progress in the environmental movement, admitting that we will probably just continue to beocme a less diverse, more boring, and more preciarious sort fo planet. :( But he has a "glimmer" of hope that keeps him making this kind of work and being engaged with these issues.

I think this work relates more maybe to conservation than scientific research specifically, though his other work definitely references science more directly.

On Drawing as language

As I go back through old things I have written, I came across a bunch more references to drawing and language, primal sorts of stuff, that I really should have recorded here before and seems extremely pertinent to some of the stuff I've been thinking about lately.

OK. So thinking about language as a REFERENTIAL system, (see quotes from Savage-Rumbaugh for this)
and then given this:

- P. 9 “Like all language, drawing is an information storage system. In fact, drawing was used to codify and store information for twenty-five thousand years before phonetic symbols came to represent spoken language.”
From that "Drawing From Life" textbook that Patrick uses . . . Drawing From Life – third edition. Clint Brown and Cheryl McLean, Thomson/Wadsworth Learning, Belmont CA

How does drawing itself relate to this language stuff? I think I talk about this elsewhere - the potential for drawing as an "information storage system" . . . but I think at the moment I want to look at some of the ways that LINE specifically has to do with this, with drawing and language and primal sorts of development. Because I was reading in a chapter about line in that Drawing from Life book, and came across the following interesting thoughts.

Talking about line, they point out that line is really an imaginary idea, its not actually a thing. which is kind of great. Like, it doesn’t even really represent a thing, it’s just a surface transcribed to paper. Other artists also say very similar things – that lines don’t exist in nature, that lines are invented to create an illusion. I like that this book talks about line as a powerful “conduit” for information. . .

“Physically, a line is nothing more than a two dimensional mark on a surface. But when that mark stands for something or traces the configuration of an object, it traps within its confines the conceptual essence of that object, holding it through time.” 62

. . . they talk about how line/mark making gave us “the capacity for literacy, the development of language as an information storage system” I LOVE THIS. This primacy of line, or . . . ancientness of line, some other word I can’t think of. . . I think this is an interesting link with the topics I’m interested in right now . . . like the development of language and representation and its relationship to my paintings and animals etc. Because if lines are essentially about boundaries - demarcation, edges, that is also really in a sense what a lot of these studies are about - delineating boundaries between species that may or may not really be there . . . as lines are created by perceptible changes. . . enough of a difference to indicate some kind of distinction . . . to allow for a label . . . that's what happens on our spectrum of species and taxonomy.

It's interesting what role drawing itself may have had in our cognitive development, in as much as we think that language affected our development as a species. Because if language gave us the power for "rational thought" and information transfer in a way that far surpassed prelingual communication, and written language allowed us to store information in unprecedented ways, thus allowing for the building upon on knowledge from generation to generation . . . how much did drawing, which came before "phoenetic" and written language, affect these qualities? How much did drawing itself pave the way for representational or symbolic language? I assume that if we have shown the capacity and tendency to draw for so many thousands of years, that it has had enough time to have had an evolutionary or biological effect on human development? I'm not actually sure about this, but I'd love to ask someone. In the meantime, wouldn't one have to say that the ability to view a drawing of something as a symbolic representation of something else -- a reference -- a symbol, be just as significant a development as the development of a language that does just that? Researchers talk about how significant representational or referential aspects of language are in the defining qualities of language. Wouldn't the ability to do that VISUALLY be a vital precursor? I'm just wondering. I really want to read more research on these ideas and the use of drawings in developmental studies.

Regardless, I think this connection is an important reason for me to return to drawing, rather than more "advanced" or at least recent, painting, for these pieces. That the drawings themselves, and the qualities inherent in the simplicity of lines, relates to his progress and this distinction between humans and non-humans. :\ Hmmm.

I also have the big question of . . . what is thinking like when you DON'T have language to organize your thoughts. I mean, to what extent does our use of language effect the actual structure of our inner lives. ? Is this a Steven Pinker question?

What role does drawing or visual communication have to do with this? I mean, visual communication could of course include gestures and motions, but drawing takes the next step and becomes this REFERENTIAL and representational system

Cute little side note - back in the day when dissection was first allowed for medical purposes by the University of Florence, "both artists and physicians attended" . . . a meeting of interests in science and art that I like and makes me think about all our shared interactions as fields similarly interested in understanding, depicting, and representing the natural world . . . :)

And here are two links that seem to have something to do with this idea of symbolic thought, lanugage, etc. from NPR.

When did we become mentally modern? (a really good one about symbolic thought)

Signing, singing, speaking: how language evolved

And this one: The Evolution of Symbolic Language

And another NPR article, called The The I-Self And Symbolic Language, from which I took the following:

URSULA GOODENOUGH
"Human beings are unusual, and probably unique, in that they carry the sense that they consist of two selves — a bodily self and mind/spirit self. The seemingly non-physical spirit is given various names, like consciousness, I-self, narrative self, soul, and subjective/private/first-person self."

"Most organisms, even many kinds of bacteria, have evolved ways to communicate with one another, but symbolic language is in a class of its own, as expounded in Terry Deacon's classic, The Symbolic Species. Briefly, symbolic language entails relationships between signifiers (e.g. words) and what's signified (e.g. objects or ideas), but what's special is the construction of a system of relationships among the signifiers themselves, generating a seemingly unlimited web of associations, organized by semantic regularities and constraints, that generate endless narratives, stored and retrieved via the collaboration of both procedural memory and episodic memory. It's really fancy — there's nothing like it on the planet and possibly the universe — and while bonobo apes can acquire some of its features with lifelong human interaction and instruction, most toddlers are de facto geniuses, and infants are thought to experiment with its features as they babble."

On Old Bear, by Jane Hissey

I always forget that this is the author's name and the name of the series. But just so that doesn't happen again, I'm writing it down here. I also don't think that these little thumbnails do justice at all to how charming her books are, but I think re-reading them might give me a sense of how delightful I might be able to make something if I tried. :)

On Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, edited by Cary Wolfe

What follows are notes from the book Zoontologies edited by Cary Wolfe. There is a good introduction by Wolfe, and then subsequent essays by a number of authors. I didn't take notes on or even read all of them, but I broke down the notes by essay.

Introduction: Cary Wolfe

He notes the "steady influence of the "hard" on the "human" sciences, of late, and . . . ". . . the radically changed place of the animal itself in areas outside the humanities. Indeed, the humanities are, in my view, now struggling to catch up with a radical revaluation of the status of the nonhuman animals that has taken place in society at large. A veritable explosion of work in areas such as cognitive ethology and field ecology has called into question our ability to use the old saws of anthropocentrism (language, tool use, the inheritance of cultural behaviors in wild animals such as apes, wolves, and elephants, have more or less permanently eroded the tidy divisions between human and nonhuman. And this, in turn, has led to a broad reopening of the question of the ethical status of animals in relation to the human-- an event whose importance is named but not really captures by the term animal rights. Indeed, as I have tried to show elsewhere, one of the central ironies of animal rights philosophy--an irony that points directly to the pressing need for this collection--is that its philosophical frame remains an essentially humanist one in its most important philosphers (utilitarianism in Peter Singers, neo-Kantianism in Tom Regan) thus effacing the very difference of the animal other that animal rights sought to respect in the first place." xii

So my thoughts on that are that this shift in the sciences that they point out is relatively new, and that if, as Wolfe suggests, humanities need to catch up then . . . this is why there is the relationship with science? gah.

xiv - note about one of the other essays (by Roof) "As he argues, belief in DNA would seem to require as well a belief in the commonality of all life, but at the same time 'faith in DNA also provides the illusion of mastery of all life located, via knowledge of DNA, in science and in the human.'. . . " As I think of this, it relates to this strong desire to master and know and understand, the kind of ownership that knowledge affords, which is central to the use of animals in science.

The comment about the use of animal imagery to denote lesser humans is mentioned by Wolfe in his introduction w/r/t a quote by Etienne Balibar "As Etinenne Balibar has observed, for example, "Every theoretical racism draws upon anthropological universals," underneath which we find "the persistent presence of the same 'question': that of the difference between humanity and animality" that is at work in the systematic 'bestialization' of individuals and racialized human groups." xx and later (xxi) talks about this essay published in the New York Times called "At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die" that" shows how the relations of hierarchy, dominations, and exploitation between humans and animals are uncannily and systematically reproduced in relations of class, race, and ethnicity among humans themselves." It's the last essay in the book and I haven't read it yet, but I want to because I imagine that it must be very difficult to sensitively compare humans and animals in the right way like the essay sets out to do (unfair labor practices is its topic, I think)

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"In the Shadow of Wittenstein's Lion: Language, Ethics, and the Question of the Animal" by Cary Wolfe

Cary Wolfe also writes an essay called "In the Shadow of Wittenstein's Lion: Language, Ethics, and the Question of the Animal" which jumps off from a famous and "often misunderstood" statement by Wittgenstein : "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." She admits she's not sure if she understands it . . . and I definitely don't. But this reminds me that this idea of language and, what I gather as the generation of who we are as a direct result of language (gleaned from the possibly inaccurate use of Wittgenstein in DFW "Broom of the Sysytem") and seems like perhaps something I might want to know about.

One little phrase he uses in this article that I really loved, for some reason, was "about our failure to be god."

Ummm. I'm not sure why I put a post-it note here, but Wolfe talks about Hearne's "contractarian view" which basically says that morality is a set of rules (a contract) that we essentially sign, and if we are unable to sign for ourselves and to be covered directly, it is only through the fact that those who have signed "love or cherish" us that we are protected. And so, in Hearne's words, "Those animals that enough people care about (companion animals, whales, baby seals, the American bald eagle) though they lack rights themselves, will be protected because of the sentimental interests of people." (6)

9 He quotes . . . someone else (and now I don't know who . . .I think it is Cavell)
"There is nothing to be read from that body, nothing the body is of; it does not go beyond itself, it expresses nothing. . . It does not matter to me now whether there turn out to be wheels and springs inside, or stuffing, or some subtler or messier mechanism . . . What this 'body' lacks is privacy . . . ." blah blah after that. I don't even know what this has to do with anything, but what I liked about it is obviously the part about wheels, springs, and stuffing.

I am reminded yet again that I haven't seen Blade Runner but it gets brought up ALL THE TIME in issues of postmoderism? or . . . something. And again in this article relating to the difference between animals, humans, and androids. :)

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"From Extinction to Electronics" by Ursula K. Heise

She talks about electronically engineered animals that appear in films and literature, saying "Such representations of artificial animals touch upon a broad range of issues, from practical ones such as the domestication of animals, their use in scientific and military experiments, and their commodification in circuits of economic exchange, to more theoretical ones such as animal perception and cognition or the functioning of 'natural' evolutionary mechanisms in the context of technological innovation." 60

I should also think about how cuteness is justified by science, or explained by it, how science warns against anthropomorphization or "cuteness" itself as a pitfall of research and it is then used by people opposing scientific study -- the part of the reason for viewing animals so "callously" could be attributed to the fact that anthropormorphiszation is suspect and can skew scientific results . . .

Remember the "now classic science fiction novel" "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
In her section talking about Jurassic Park (which is really interesting, by the way) she points out how this idea of dinosaurs and ecology became so popular when we were becoming increasingly aware of our own impact on the world and the danger of continued extinctions. She mentions a book by W.J.T. Mitchell called "The Last Dinosaur Book" which I gather is a "survey on the long history of dinosaur representations" so this might be something I'd want to look at again.

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"From Protista to DNA (and Back Again)" by Judith Roof

Kind of interesting essay relating Freud to DNA. . . She makes a couple of really interesting points that I hadn't thought of before. One is that single-celled organisms (like I've talked about before about crocodiles but somehow neglected the fact that bacteria are gagillion times older than crocodiles) exist today unchanged by millenia of evolution. And not only that, but they are essentially undying, because when they reproduce asexually, part of them continues on basically forever. Maybe not 100% scientifically accurate, but as I understand it, importnat to Freud's theoretical ideas (I guess he "appropriated Darwin" :) Anyway, another thing that came up is a phrase that I've heard before but forgotten about, and since it's a particularly elegant way of saying something kind of complex, I think I should remember to use it" "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" or the development of an individual mirrors the development of the entire species development. So, noting this, "Freud believed that traces of an animal past not only remain in the individual psyche, but remain and are indignantly denied in human culture."

Humans are the only animals that . . .

I have had this desire to compile some kind of list of these anthropocentrisms (?) for awhile, and actually have been listing them in sharpie marker on that weird green graph paper I have laying around the studio. But one time I decided to look up the phrase "humans are the only animals that" and see what I got, and boy oh boy are there some absurd things in there. Anyway, here goes.

• "But humans are the only animals that symbolize water (as H20) and, critically, the only animals that magically empower water (by blessing it and making it holy)."
• Humans are the only animals that cook
• "Thus, Herzog believes that humans are the only animals that keep pets."
• "humans are the only animals that drink the breast milk of a different species. ...
• Scientists have suspected that humans are the only animals that can exactly keep rhythm with music. (not true)
• The only remaining behavorial definition would be that humans are the only animals that enslave each other.
• We are also the only animals who are aware we will one day we will die .. - aware of our own mortality
• HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ANIMALS THAT TRULY ALTER THEIR ENVIRONMENT AND MAKE THEMSELVES A COMPLETELY ARTIFICIAL LIVING SPACE.
• "Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs". - PJ O'Rourke.
• Humans are the only animals that cry tears and blush. )??) who can say that?
• Humans are the only animals that can learn behaviors merely by observing others perform them. (?)
• Humans are the only animals that do not adapt to the environment, but rather adapt the environment to fit their needs
• Humans are the only animals that drink milk beyond infancy
• "... they are so specific they cannot be refuted, like "humans are the only animals that have invented computers". yeah, well, cows have four stomachs.) ..."
• Humans are the only animals that make pizza, or buy stocks, or wage war. This hardly makes us better, morally speaking, than other animals. ...
• Humans are the only animals that can create art
• Humans are the only animals that ingest calcium; in fact, we go to the store and buy what animals consider a waste product and will not eat:
• There is an urban legend that dolphins, bonobos, and humans are the only animals that have sex for pleasure; in actual fact, what distinguishes these three ...
• Because humans are the only animals that use other animals as tools.
• "In addition to speaking through lexigrams, Kanzi has another remarkable ability—he can blow up a balloon. While this may not seem like a groundbreaking development, Sue says it's a huge step. "Humans are said to be the only species that have control of their own breath," she says. "But Kanzi obviously has control of his own breath." On Kanzi on Oprah
• "Only humans have spindle cells." but later, we have proved that they are in dolphins, elephants, primates.
• "Only humans can imitate" they used to say. Only humans have "tradition" or pass things down (not true!)
• "Only humans are altruistic." (not really, maybe not even true for humans :))
• Face-to-face intercourse was long thought to be uniquely human
• female orgasm was thought to be uniquely human
• "some feminist scholars believe that bonding among women is uniquely human" but bonobos definitely appear to bond more than even human women do
• to imagine the future. "Professor Nicky Clayton FRS, of the University of Cambridge, will present evidence showing that a large-brained member of the crow family, the western scrub-jay, is able to plan for the long term future. In a study with scrub-jays, which naturally hide food caches for future, the birds learned to expect breakfast to be served only in one of two rooms, the breakfast room as opposed to hungry room. When given a novel opportunity to cache in the evening, the birds preferentially hid the food for tomorrow’s breakfast in the hungry room suggesting that they can indeed plan for the future."
  
• "Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them." 63 (Jonathan Safran Foer book I think) 
• I clearly forgot some old, obvious ones too:
• Humans are the only animals that use language (written? verbal? symbolic?)
• Humans are the only animals have have? understand? create? syntax
• Humans are the only animals that pass the mirror test
• Humans are the only animals that kill for reasons other than food. Sport? Fun?
• Humans are the only animals that have sex for fun (reasons other than reproduction?)
• Only humans suffer
• Only humans have feelings / feel pain
• Only humans have empathy
• Only humans have rights
• Only humans have rational thought
• Only humans have duties 
• “Humans are the only animals that draw. While showmen and hucksters have gotten elephants and chimpanzees to drag paintbrushes across paper and canvas, so far as we know the animals are simply manipulating materials and not making representations of things. As rare as the ability is in other species, drawing is almost universal among humans; it is as human a quality as speech and bipedal locomotion. Practically every human being draws at some point in childhood. As adults, we draw maps to direct people to our houses, diagram schemes for seating guests at a dinner party, sketch plans for the bookshelves we intend to build, make graphs of corporate performance.
• "Man is the only animal which can deal with almost any size of food, and even he has only been able to do this during the later part of his history." (Biologist named Elton said) . . . interesting point.
• "Humans are the only animals that cry emotional tears."

I think that the exploration of the specific ways in which the human species differs from other species can be very fruitful, but to lay claim to certain abilities at the exclusion of those abilties existing in other species seems to me to be outmoded, small-minded, and oversimplified. There are, of course, differences, and these differences are instructive. But probably not nearly as inststructive as people might infer based on a blanket statement like " humans are the only . . ." wahtever.