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.