They will make us better (if we let them)...

Humans are relational creatures. We build and shift our reality and our identity around perceived contexts. We are different when we are alone to when we are with a group of strangers to when we are at a funeral to when we are a leader of a nation. What is our perceived context as a species and how might we evolve such a massive and under-considered thing?

My mission is to use the immediate, penetrative, emotional, consciousness-expanding properties of the arts to weave threads of awareness for all living things into the cloth of individual consciousnesses. As we (in the West) plunge deeper into a 'reality' framed by techno-economic civilization, my gut tells me that we'll need good reminders of the natural and instinctual forces we're working very hard to distance ourselves from.

I find animals to be our most enduring hope for maintaining soul in the face of soullessness. If we can allow ourselves to look at animals as mirrors (without discrediting their own lives), we will discover startling reflections in them: Our blind spots, our lost powers, and our self-intoxication on the one hand, and our grace our strength and our true creativity on the other.

It seems we've been killing god for a long time now. Showing him or her (even though he or she is dead right?) that this is our game now, that anything it can do we can do better.

Tell that to a tomato. Or a baby octopus. Or a mandrill with a toothache.

Eating crow...

I suspect, that at some level, we feel we've gone too far. We've strayed out of earshot from the natural source we have focused so hard on co-opting and reinventing for ourselves. Greedy godlets lose their way and forge ahead because progress is a slow moving massive wheel we've jumped upon, whose steady momentum carries us wherever it goes. It's a ride. Still I think there's a clear undercurrent of nostalgia, fear, and shame in all of this. I believe it account sfor much of the animal oriented art we're seeing these days. I'm interested in this emerging phenomena, a call to the wild in the digital void, and notice its manifestation all around me. All us beasts are modern animals now, standing around glancing furtively around the globe at each other, wondering who's running things now, who's confidence rings true, and secretly, if anyone remembers their way back to the garden.

("Carroña" by Javier Perez)