animal crossings

The first contributor to the blog (thank you:)) responds to "Murder" and "Parliament" with a sense of disquiet. Seeing these video works, he writes, "made me think of how the animal kingdom is described and measured in human terms. Already the term "kingdom", as if all the beast of heaven and earth were subject to a divine hierarchy. A herd of cows, a parliament of owls, a school of fish, a herd of cattle - the way we talk about animals often anthropomorphises them in mythical ways. Instead of simply observing them, we see ourselves reflected in them, measure their behaviour in human categories of ethics, politics, even gender. Terms and ideas that must seem completely alien to the animals themselves, at least in the way we humans talk about them."

A murder of crows, a parliament of owls. "But isn't the murderous crow highly intelligent and social? And doesn't the noble owl also swallow their prey in one grotesque gulp? Humans are animals, yes. But animals are not human, as much as we'd like them to be."