9/23/10 Thursday Post Pt. 2

Animals Die, People Ponder

Stories of people who handle dead animals. Don't worry — it's not as gross as it sounds. In fact, not disgusting at all. A story by George Saunders about an animal control man who falls in unrequited love. A woman who studies illuminated manuscripts, whose pages look like paper but are in fact animals. And other stories.

Death

"In my job, you can't just throw animals around. People will complain. You have to respect people's feelings about animals. Be more funeral director than garbage man."
Hicks, Clarence. Animals Die, People Ponder. Act 3 Dead Animal Man. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/51/animals-die-people-ponder

"She was appealing to live."
Brillo, Leo. Animals Die, People Ponder. Act 4. January 24, 1997. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/51/animals-die-people-ponder

"It's sort of amazing how the guy sees his job -- as just that, a job. Most of us see dead animals on the shoulder, and we ignore it or we play roadkill bingo. I think maybe most of us don't know what to make of this fact that to have the infrastructure we do in this country, all these animals are run over. It's just the way it is, the way it's been, so it's accepted as a necessary evil. I like that the veteran points out the idea that maybe the Earth isn't just for humans. I also enjoyed how the guy working goes from Grim Reaper to Angel, and then back to just a person doing a job, an undertaker. That's what he is for these animals, but maybe he does feel like he's returning some sense of dignity to them."
Vincent, Matthew. Review of Dead Animal Man (Clarence Hicks) April 22, 2007. http://www.prx.org/pieces/60-dead-animal-man

Dead Animal Pick Up
The Bureau of Sanitation collects dead animals free of charge, except for horses and cows. (For horses and cows, please check your local yellow pages for a rendering service.)

Could make for a potentially interesting photograph to follow a sanitation worker on house calls to collect dead pets from their owners. Would seem to make an emotionally charged image.

Poem by John Updike "Dog's Death"

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog!
Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

Updike, John. Collected Poems: 1953-1993. Knopf Publishing. 1995.

9/23/10 Thursday

Paul McCartney and his English Sheepdog Martha

"Martha My Dear"

Martha my dear though I spend my days in conversation
Please remember me Martha my love
Don't forget me Martha my dear

Hold your head up you silly girl look what you've done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
Silly Girl.

Take a good look around you
Take a good look you're bound to see
That you and me were meant to be for each other
Silly girl.

Hold your hand out you silly girl see what you've done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
Silly girl.

Martha my dear you have always been my inspiration
Please be good to me Martha my love
Don't forget me Martha my dear.

Wafaa Bilal Visit Summary

I really enjoyed Wafaa Bilal's visit. I found him to be incredibly generous, intelligent and down to earth. I presented him with my ongoing project about people and their pets, Rudiments of Thought and Joy Untroubled. He expressed interest in the subject matter and asked me a lot of questions regarding my personal connection to the work and questions that challenged the nature and meaning of the work.

Some of the questions he raised were Is this work about the human-animal relationship? Is it really just about the pet owner? Is it about the animal at all? Is this work a self portrait? Do pet owners mimic their pets and not the other way around?

Some issues we discussed included vulnerability, comfort, companionship, domestication, class level, personal issues, pets and owners mirroring one another, etc. He challenged me to really figure out what this work is about. Is it really about the relationship/companionship between a pet and an owner? Is it about the pet owner solely? Is it about the pet? Could this be a project of self portraiture?

Bilal made a suggestion to examine the breech of contract when animals/pets are abandoned by humans (on an individual level as well as a community) who are responsible for domesticating and therefore caring for them. While I was not really into that idea because I don't want to make a political statement or critique on society, (not to mention it would broaden this work to such a degree when I really want to focus in on very specific avenues of the pet culture), I could see myself exploring that issue in a separate project in the future. Bilal mentioned, as he also did in his talk, Adorno. He reminded me that everything is political. Even in trying to make something unpolitical, you are creating politics. While, at this point, I'm not ready to take the project to a darker side, Bilal did give me some great things to think about and ponder. I thoroughly appreciated his visit, criticisms, and his speech.

I shared with Bilal the next big image that I want to conquer which he seemed into. There are about 10 universities in the US that have pet friendly dorms. College students can actually bring their pets to live on campus, in a dorm, with them. This new trend is fascinating as it raises all kinds of issues revolving around pet restrictions, safety, fear, comfort zone, strict guidelines and rules, liability and responsibility. I would like to explore this new phenomena and hopefully gain access to photograph one of these dorms and their residents.

9/20/10 Monday

Keith Carter

These images were selected from his book, Heaven of Animals. I think these images present the human/animal relationship very well. It displays emotion and attachment and intimacy.

BIO:

Keith Carter is an internationally recognized photographer and educator. Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1948,he holds the endowed Walles Chair of Art at Lamar University Beaumont, Texas. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Regional Survey Grants and the Lange-Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In 1997 Keith Carter was the subject of an arts profile on the national network television show, CBS Sunday Morning. In 1998, he received Lamar University's highest teaching honor, the University Professor Award, and he was named the Lamar University Distinguished Lecturer.

Eight monographs of his black and white photographs have been published: From Uncertain To Blue, 1988; The Blue Man, 1990; Mojo, 1992; Heaven of Animals, 1995; and Bones, 1996. A mid-career survey, Keith Carter Photographs - Twenty Five Years was published in 1997; Holding Venus and his eighth book, Ezekiel's Horse, were published in 2000.

"Called "a poet of the ordinary" by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter's haunting, enigmatic photographs have been widely exhibited in Europe, The U.S., and Latin America. They are included in numerous permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the George Eastman House; the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston; and the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at Southwest Texas State University." QUOTES: "Keith was trying to express ineffable things now, things like his love of music and myth and mystery, things like the internal lives of animals, things like those fragments of universality that can sometimes be gleaned from between the lines of great poetry. The resulting photographs were not so much asking you to observe, as before – now they were inviting you to participate, to open the door and come on in. Look at “Garlic” or “Giant” or “Alice;” look at “Cosmos” or “Luna” or “Horse and Wolf” or “Holding Venus” or “Sky and Water”…It’s not that these pictures are telling you things you didn’t already know, but rather that – like “Fireflies” – they’re reminding you of things you’ve deep down always known but somehow forgotten, because life has a nasty habit of simply becoming too daily, too dependent on thought at the expense of feel. These photographs fill you up and become a part of your inner life, depending on the depth of your own capacities. The proof is that the first response to the best of Keith’s images – and to all great art – is almost always an instant YES, and instant recognition of that which was already there inside you on some profound connecting thread that runs through the very core of all of us as fellow travelers on this spinning globe. That’s how great art in any medium slips past all boundaries of time and space and cultural differences to deliver the goods." (Courtesy of Bill Wittliff, Austin,Texas) Wittliff, Bill. Keith Carter Photographs. http://www.keithcarterphotographs.com/biography.html "So, in addition to his pictures of people, when Carter photographs a dog (he's done many), a horse (ditto), or even some flowers in a vase or a dress hanging on a wall, he does it in a way that sweetly connects the viewer to the subject and warmly holds you close to it." Brickman, David. Get Visual. http://dbgetvisual.blogspot.com/2010/01/keith-carter-at-esther-massry-gallery.html

http://www.keithcarterphotographs.com/dvd.html


Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th St. Suite 1406
New York, New York 10022

9/15/10 Thursday

Jon and I briefly mentioned this in class on Tuesday. Very interesting...

During the annual Blessing of the Animals at St. John the Divine Cathedral, the congregation might include any animal from Noah's ark. Why do these pet owners bring their furry, feathery and scaly companions to church? (Oh yeah, and view our slideshow of our day at the Cathedral).

Next. A whale rescue. A motley crew of divers and fishermen set out to free a whale, and are convinced they encountered a definitive moment of cross-species communication. Dr Clive Wynne isn't so sure. To make his point, Dr. Wynne tells us about a study by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, who talks to producer Soren Wheeler about the science behind dog guilt.

"Over the last two decades increasing evidence for an acute sensitivity to human gestures and attentional states in domestic dogs has led to a burgeoning of research into the social cognition of this highly familiar yet previously under-studied animal. Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) have been shown to be more successful than their closest relative (and wild progenitor) the wolf, and than man's closest relative, the chimpanzee, on tests of sensitivity to human social cues, such as following points to a container holding hidden food. The “Domestication Hypothesis” asserts that during domestication dogs evolved an inherent sensitivity to human gestures that their non-domesticated counterparts do not share. According to this view, sensitivity to human cues is present in dogs at an early age and shows little evidence of acquisition during ontogeny. A closer look at the findings of research on canine domestication, socialization, and conditioning, brings the assumptions of this hypothesis into question. We propose the Two Stage Hypothesis, according to which the sensitivity of an individual animal to human actions depends on acceptance of humans as social companions, and conditioning to follow human limbs. This offers a more parsimonious explanation for the domestic dog's sensitivity to human gestures, without requiring the use of additional mechanisms. We outline how tests of this new hypothesis open directions for future study that offer promise of a deeper understanding of mankind's oldest companion. "

Udell, M. A. R., Dorey, N. R., & Wynne, C. D. L. (2010). What did domestication do to dogs? Biological Reviews. 85, 327-345.

UF researcher gets inside the mind of man's best friend

above article from St. Petersburg Times

TED lecture: Paul MacCready on nature vs. humans

Paul MacCready on nature vs. humans | Video on TED.com

Paul MacCready looks at a planet on which humans have utterly dominated nature, and talks about what we can do to preserve nature's balance.

"Now human related to animals: look at what I call the human portion -- humans and their livestock and pets -- versus the natural portion -- all the other wild animals-- these are vertebrates and all the birds, etc. in the land and air, not in the water. How does it balance? Well, certainly 10,000 years ago, the civilization's beginning, the human portion was less than one tenth of one percent. Let's look at it now. Humans, livestock and pets are now 97 percent of that integrated total mass on earth and all wild nature is three percent. We have won. The next generation doesn't even have to worry about this game -- it is over. And the biggest problem came the last 25 years: it went from 25 percent up to that 97 percent. And this really is a sobering picture in realizing we, humans, are in charge of life on earth, we're like the capricious Gods of old Greek myths, kind of playing with life, and not a great deal of wisdom injected into it. "

I thought it interesting how much domestication the human has actually performed. Its staggering when you see the growth charts. We, humans, are responsible for this huge shift. And we are responsible for the well being of the animals we've domesticated as well as being stewards of the natural world that we've capitalized on.

TED lecture: Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do | Video on TED.com

(maybe a cheesy, petty choice but thought it worked on some level)

Tony Robbins discusses the "invisible forces" that motivate everyone's actions. The 2 invisible forces at play are: 1) our state (physical and emotional) and 2) our model of the world/world view: the shaper of meaning, emotion and action. What is our motive for action? What is it that shapes us? Tony believes it is emotion that is the force of life. And the invisible force of internal drive, activated, is the most important thing in the world. Tony concludes that there are 6 human needs (not goals or desires) that are universal: 1) certainty, 2) uncertainty, 3) significance, 4) connection and love, 5) growth and 6) contribute beyond ourselves. We all have the same needs but are all driven by different ones. Robbins encourages the audience to explore their own web- the needs, the beliefs, the emotions that are controlling them. And also to understand and appreciate what drives other people.

I think that the universal human needs that Robbins lists can be used to explain why we seek out our relationships, be it friendship, romance, etc. I also think it helps to explain why people become pet keepers... why they seek out a relationship with an animal(s). The human-animal bond can offer certainty (pets can offer certainty that people can avoid pain and at least be comfortable with the pet), we need uncertainty (pets offer variety, surprise and spontaneity), significance (our pets can make us feel important, special and unique), connection and love (we want it. We can get it through intimacy, friendship, prayer, walking through nature, or even a pet), growth (we bond and grow with our pets over time. If we aren't growing or a relationship isn't growing, we feel like hell. We grow in order to give something of value) and finally, contributing beyond ourselves (its not about me, its about we. Contributing to our pets and the relationship we have with animals. i.e. walking your dog, brushing your cat, training your dog to be a therapy animal to others, volunteering at your local animal shelter, etc.)

How would you define the 2 invisible forces at play (1. physical/emotional state & 2. world view) in pet keepers?

What is it that drives people to be pet keepers?