The first question of the essay, “WHY look at animals?” is a
key concept to my project, and a question I am continually being asked.
Berger’s theory of “humans are interested in animals because they are like us,
but not like us” is a perfect explanation! Animals have always fascinated me,
and many people I know. Everyone has a favourite animal, but have you ever
thought WHY it’s your favourite, or how that came to be? I believe in spirit
animals, which is what my project is about, and that’s how I think we are drawn
to these specific animals, and why everyone’s different. He says, “when we look
at animals, we are actually looking at ourselves.” I think that’s very true and
almost sums up my project. I wanted people to see my project as natural as if
technology never came to us and we still walked the earth, as if humans and
animals lived as one. That’s how I believe our spirit animals live with us, and
alongside us, walking through life with us, celebrating the good times and
helping us through the bad times. I guess I see our spirit animals as a
non-religious version of a guardian angel. Volker Seding’s work in zoos is
almost the exact opposite of my project, but portrays the same ideas and goals
of my project – to comment on the way we treat animals today, and that it is
unnatural and they are unhappy, especially in zoos where we lock them up just
so we can go look at them. Zoos keep animals in a “jail like setting,” or they
do their best to fake the natural habitat by painting murals and pools and
placing fake rocks among the animals, and as a result he mentions how humans
are disappointed when they leave the zoo. We go to see “wildness, but we see
constrained, human-made environments.” My project took a different approach, as
I am not interested in the zoo aspect, but rather that craving we have to go
see animals and wildness. I believe that stems from a natural connection we
have with them, and we pine to spend time with them and touch them and we never
seem to achieve this goal our whole lives, other than domesticated pets. My
project was imagining humans breaking down these barriers, and humans and
animals living in peace together, a kind of fantasy I think everyone has
thought about at some point. I was interested in that gravitation and why each
of us is drawn to certain animals more than others.
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