Animals in the City – Page 4

22/08/2016

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“Today’s theory demands transformation” (or something like that) cries Groys in “In the Flow”. Last week featured many transformative experiences as we hosted the “Horse and Performance” course for students of the Theater Academy Helsinki together with Pietari. The week long contemporary-horse-culture course ended in a full day of horse-animal-human-exercises, which the eight participants had planned and conducted for our group. The day was long and I lost my bearing on which inputs and ideas were provided by the horses and which were of human origin. During one set of exercises I lost track of who was an animal. Reports and photos of the course are being processed and will be publicised on the Trans-Horse blog during the following weeks. The “Theatre and Dance” magazine will also publish a small text about the course.

Paula published the “The Bat Simulator” video last week (I’m the bat). The video got me dreaming of a new leather jacket. The one on the video was found on the street and has since been broken. Timo has published “Last Worker Standing” which casts an eerie look at the concept of “New Work”. He call it an “Dyst-ironical speculative fiction machinima”. I’m inspired to make a song to accompany the video (A Deep Time Marxistic Étude). Timo’s work would go together with Paula’s recent “Harmaja +10 länsiluode 35m/s” piece presented at Hippolyte gallery.

12/08/2016

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Playing around with “Deep time Marxism”. I explained the concept to Paula, as being 40% chitchat with Pietari and 60% of the “Dust and Exhaustion” article by Jussi Parikka, with some references to the concept of “Anthrobscene”. I made two educational videos about it. One for grooves and smoothes and the other for seduction and the weeps.

We are preparing the “Horse and Performance” course for the Theater Academy Helsinki with Pietari. This time the course will be conducted inside a week which will push as to work even harder than last time (Here are the un-proofread notes of the course).

27/07/2016

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It’s impossible to justify zoo’s as a sites of animal conservation when the animals “natural” habitats are being destroyed. “In situ” conservation is the only option. Also, the zoo clings on to a claim that contemporary people have broken their relation with nature and that zoo’s are needed to build environmental awareness and empathy towards nature. This is a noble idea but based on cliches and it does even justify the captivity of exotic animals.

Zoo animals should be curated using regionally specific animals. The Helsinki Zoo should only keep horses! This would make for a world class attraction and benefit human-animal interactions.

06/07/2016

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Editing the Grey Cube Gallery documentations. The zoo’s director Sanna Hellströms talks very convincingly about her work. The way she defines the institutions function and value is very similar to what I hear art museum staff talk about their organizations. Zoos build environmental awareness, art museums build cultural awareness. Both are talked of using obscure yet convincing terms. During her talk the institutions vague role and relation to other public institutions appears like a majestic lighthouses that offer citizens the opportunity to navigate their relation to nature. I should get Maija Tanninen-Mattila (Director of the Helsinki Art Museum) and Hellströms into a panel and have them talk about their institutions for so long that the audiences perception on which is which gets mixed. Institutions are forged with obscurities.

Made a song about how institutions fold upon themselves.

Was invited by Pilvi Porkola to feature in her upcoming New Performance Turku party-performance.

01/07/201618/09/2018

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What if we have learned to perceive animals as “individuals” only through zoos? All other relations with animals are collaborations, where we have personalised knowledge about a particular animals history and see it as a member of its group or resource oriented relations, where we approach animals as tools or food. The primary motive of the zoo is to present animals as individuals, lonely and out of context creatures (as we are). The isolation of animals is a performance we come to witness at the zoos. Through their loneliness and isolation we can find ease in our struggles.

The zoo is a vitally important public institution for building human-animal relations… Particularly for people who moved into cities in the beginning of the 20th century. When we were living in the forest, every animal we didn’t see posed a threat. The woods we filled with traces and smells of invisible enemies. The zoo presents the most threatening animals we can imagine in a human controlled habitat. The zoo makes animals visible. Only after we see the wolf in a controlled environment, we can begin to see it as something else then a hostile adversary fighting for the same resources we are. The individuals that suffer in the zoos protect their species.

Zoos provide us an opportunity to approach animals rationally. They are remnants of the enlightenment era, public sites which offer access to animal-relation-contemplation for all citizens. The zoo is not showing animals, this would be impossible because animals become something else when they are moved out of their habitat (context). The zoo is a non-site, which refers to actual habitats and portrays individual animals as representatives of their species. The zoo produces non-animals and it presents a collections of possible human-animal relations (This idea was addressed by Katrin Caspar during our Grey Cube Gallery interviews)! The generations of animals which have been born to the zoos consider it to be their natural habitat. They are more accustomed to representations of “habitats associated to their species” than wild nature.