Hawk, a limited edition screen print I made for my friend Nelly.
It is an exploration of the post-industrial human experience of the animal, and this particular animal's post-industrial existence.
For many humans in 'Western' culture, animals appear only in highly mediated forms: as storybook characters, in human-built structures like zoos and nature centers, or the photographic medium of nature documentary.
The animals that are experienced in 'unmediated' ways are mostly the species which have evolved to exist and thrive alongside humans, and therefore are absorbed into our cultural landscape rather than representing the 'out there' of nature. For example, when hiking, a person might hear a rustle in the woods and look to see what it is, but the eyes flicker past almost without pause - "It's just a squirrel".
When we see an animal that we associate with 'out there' - the 'wilderness' - in the confines of a man-made structure, it appears barely lucid, lazy, boring, kind of sad. It lacks that wild spark of our expectations bolstered by Animal Planet. The wild animal's life is, in fact, a continuum of stasis punctuated by dramatic life-or-death situations when a predator must eat, or territories are invaded.
When these situations are removed, what is left? A lifestyle a little too familiar to us humans. A day-in-day-out languid existance, mediated by walls, schedules, explanations by experts. It is disappointing because these particular 'others' are too much like 'us'. The 'freedom' that wild animals represent to humans could also be described as the experience of the near-death, or actual-death.
I volunteer at a Nature Center that provides permanent care for injured birds of prey such as hawks, owls, vultures, even a bald eagle. When I look at these birds, historically described as magnificent, intrepid creatures, perfectly design with the weapons they need to attack and kill prey, what I (and the visitors to the center) see are disabled versions, dependent on much-less-intrepid humans for their sustenance - which mainly consists of barely thawed lab rats - and confined to stark rectangular boxes devoid of sunlight. (They are let out for a few hours every day). As a human, I can't help but relate to them from an anthropocentric perspective, albeit via empathy. I can't help but compare their existence to what I know (also as an outsider) of prisons.
So what is the point of keeping these birds alive in these conditions? Why not 'let nature take its course' (a phrase I would like to dissect in another piece)? For educational purposes? It would be like taking an alien to an inpatient ward of a hospital and saying "Look! Here are humans! This is what we are like!"
The reasonable approach to avoiding this paradox might be the same approach we have to dealing with our own mediated lives: make unbearably exciting, dramatic, easily digestable versions in the form of movies and television shows. We have decided this is the most idealized way to relate to our own lives, so it must be fore animals. If you find the zoo disappointing, watch more Animal Planet.
What is the "true", unmediated experience between human and nonhuman animals? If Nature no longer exists, due to human's global imperialism, how can this experience occur? It is tempting to think the only way to experience the wild animal is by NOT experiencing it - by letting it live free of intervention. But like early anthropologists, who studied tribal cultures with furvor knowing they would soon be gobbled up by industrialization, we are in a race to experience wild life before it is gone forever. The globe is being rapidly transformed by human actions, to not intervene is to doom.
Maybe the truest experience most of us can hope for is the most familiar one - the bond between humans and their pets.
Reading Material: "Why Look at Animals" by John Berger, and "Encounters with Nature: Essays" by Paul Shepard.
