Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1207261939540.16509@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Some commentary on Carrie Ahern's Borrowed Prey
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:41:33 -0400 (EDT)
Some commentary on Carrie Ahern's Borrowed Prey I sent out the link to Borrowed Prey a couple of days ago; I'm not sure if you've taken the time to see it. I held off sending the comments below, since I didn't want to bias anything of course. So here they are, and they might be of interest if you've seen the piece; if you haven't, they might encourage you to watch it. Thanks, Alan Carrie Ahern's Borrwed Prey at https://vimeo.com/42007072 and her website is http://www.carrieahern.com . Hi Carrie, watching this now, slowly, and wanted to say a few things, that you're incredibly brave with this piece, which I'm not saying lightly. And it's both brilliant and harrowing, and for me, traumatic; Azure and I are vegan / vegetarian at this point, and your piece resonates that way. I'm not sure you're aware of recent research that shows that herd cows have complex social relationships, and friendships; they know when their friends are taken away and it puts them under considerable stress. There's indications that they know they're going to die. I know from ornithology that birds also have this sort of awareness. As far as chickens or other confined farm animals go, their lives are so determined by farmyards or feedlots of one sort or another, that their behavior is conditioned that way - if you look at wild and domestic turkeys for example, the former have a great deal of intelligence which the confined animals don't (this study was also performed on kittens, in one of the meanest 'experiments' around) - for myself, as feel as much empathy with a bird as I do with a mammal (you talk about this). Knowing the conditions of farm animals - very different from the "Old McDonald had a farm" fairy-tales when I grew up, and the pain/suffering they go through, I can't justify to myself eating them. You mention the research of Temple Brandin - she talks herself about being autistic and non-empathetic, and her description of animals follows suit - not their Weltanschauung, but their sensory modalities and what calms them. But what goes on otherwise, psychologically and culturally, is of a different order, and subtle - the research on cattle friendships for example is only recent, and only recently as well has it been recognized that birds are cultural (Azure's been formally studying ornithology). I'm just trying to explain why your piece resonates with me, horrifies me, and draws me in; I think it's one of the best performances I've ever seen, because it's life-changing, and I just want to end by thanking you for it - - Alan Hi Carrie, I've finished, I found it harrowing. I'm from north-east Pennsylvania, where students got days off from school for the deer season. I've come across dead deer just left lying in the woods, all does, and I knew that the fawns would also be starving to death. There was also the pritual of first blood, but I never saw that personally. Killing was a real part of the culture. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't buy into the ideology that "hunters control deer" - when for millennia deer were controlled by the natural order of things. But the hunters got rid of the wolves and as you know there are even bear-hunting permits, even though the bears are almost extinct from the woods. All of this came to mind towards the end of the video. I think of hunting as slaughter, I can't help it. At one period it was necessary for survival, but it's not now, and calling it a sport to me is like hammering an infant - the man with the gun has the power and the deer has none. I can't even fish. Azure majored in environmental education and both she and I subscribe to and occasionally work with environmental groups - and all the news world-wide is bad as you know. It's reached the point where I forward Peta and other graphic things to her because I can't handle them. Some of what you did in the performance also related to what I was doing at Eyebeam - I don't think you saw any of that. It was based on how to deal with, how to present, pain, wounding, and death, in the virtual - both in the 'real virtual' world of social media, and virtual worlds like Second Life. I could only work with images, photographs, things I constructed; it was ultimately all screen based. But sometime you might be interested in seeing that work; it's been well-received. I think this is the best performance I've seen in a long long time (along with Foofwa's). It's uncanny, and creates silence in the face of flesh and death; thinking falters and becomes a different kind of thinking, or growing in the world. And I really, again, have to thank you for this. - - Alan