viz. - horses

Becoming Animal: Feeling Horsey

Steven J LeMieux — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

While in Star Wars, Lonesome Dove and True Grit we saw particular examples of the relationships humans have with horses —relationships that always seem to oscillate between recognizing horses as companions and treating them as bare property. And while with Jasha Lottin (NSFW) we saw in her slaughter and photo shoot the extent to which these animals are splayed out as props for both viewers and those actually interacting with actual horses. With a piece titled Que le cheval vive en moi, May the Horse Live in me in English, and created and performed by Marion Laval-Jeantet and Benoit Mangin (together they compose Art Orienté Objet) we can begin to see the emergence of a differently possible relationship between humans and horses.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via plastik

What is especially interesting about Laval-Jeantet’s transformation is that it is largely hidden from view. As spectators we can see her prosthetic hooves and her interactions with the horse. We can partially see the process she has undergone; she presents that process as a documented and material aspect of the performance, but if we consider the actual performance the intimate relationship she is building with this animal, then we must admit that not only is her transformation private but that the core of her art is too. May the Horse Live in me, then, is ultimately an unseen piece of performance art that can only be gestured toward. The action of it, her feelings, her blood, the relationship (material and immaterial both) formed between her and the horse can only be speculated at. Unlike every other piece that I’ve considered over the past several blog posts looked at where and how the horse is deliberately captured as a spectacle upon which humans act. Laval-Jeantet does not seem to capture or use the horse; instead, she only hints at her relationship with it.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

About the performance they note that “As a radical experiment whose long-term effects cannot be calculated, Que le cheval vive en moi questions the anthropocentric attitude inherent to our technological understanding. Instead of trying to attain ‘homeostasis,’ a state of physiological balance, with this performance, the artists sought to initiate a process of ‘synthetic transi-stasis,’ in which the only constant is continual transformation and adaptation. The performance represents a continuation of the centaur myth, that human-horse hybrid which, as ‘animal in human,’ symbolizes the antithesis of the rider, who as human dominates the animal.”( Art Orienté Objet via BuzzFeed)

By slowly taking a horse’s plasma into her body Laval-Jeantet began to engage a very particular sort of becoming. Toward forming this new sort of relationship with a horse she had to acculturate her body to the particulars of the horse’s. And even while something like 95% of the cells (by count, not weight) in a human body are nonhuman and while our DNA can hardly be called our own—so much of it matches other organisms’, and it is streaked through with the remains of viruses—the process of welcoming more cohesive aspects of another’s body—the plasma and immunoglobins in this case--is still a violent act. It’s tricky enough just transferring blood from human to human, but interspecies transfers add another layer of difficulty.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via we make money not art

So that when Laval-Jeantet began welcoming in the horse’s plasma and immunoglobins she performed a peculiar kind of autoimmunity. Looking toward autoimmunity broadly we can see an event where a body turns on its own protection and ultimately allows others entry. This occurs in cultures and institutions and bodies of all sorts. And in this case, where Laval-Jeantet underwent a months long process of slowly introducing horse immuniglobulins to her own bloodstream, rather than deliberately destroying her immune system she pulled the wool over its eyes—or, more generously, convinced it to play (nice) with the horse.

Image Credit: Miha Fras via plastik

About the entire process she notes. "I had the feeling of being extra-human… I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.' (we make money not art via Centre Presse)

While Laval-Jeantet worked at an intertwined horsey becoming HumanimalAlex, a youtube user and member of the ongoing art group HumanimaL, performs a different kind of transformation. If Laval-Jeantet’s relationship with the horse seems bound in blood Alex’s is skin deep. Through a blend of exquisite full body makeup, a mask and tail, and deliberate movements Alex, rather than appearing horselike, appears to appear horselike. So that even with the tail and hooves and mask his humanness shines through (with the explicit dominance of the human being, I’m sure, purposeful). Rather than moving toward a relationship with the horse this sort of transformation invokes the horse as an inspiration for particularly human behaviors. It’s noted on HumanimaL’s website that these performances are for hire and that “this undeniably unique act is guaranteed to turn heads, no matter what the occasion so use your Humanimal to show the wild side of your event, conference, opening or launch.” Here the specter of the animal is mobilized for the distinctly human designs. Like in Lottin’s photos the horse, here blended into human forms, is reproduced as a prop. Unlike Marion Laval-Jeantet’s private relationship with the horse Alex’s is formed entirely in the public eye. And while his work turns heads Laval-Jeantet’s gives us the opportunity to imagine what a differently organized relationship might look like.

Horsing Around: Inside and Out

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:49:48 +0000

Image credit Unknown via f*** yeah, wild horses

Last week I wrote about the curious dual-natured relationship we seem to have with horses. In books and film and popular media horses are situated as both friend, companion, partner and as disposable beast, object, mere chattel. Last week, too, I teased the case of Jasha Lottin and the relationship she had with a horse. Her story is surprisingly simple at first blush. Lottin and her friend bought a 32-year-old, near-dead horse already scheduled to be euthanized. They shot it in the head with a high powered rifle—apparently killing it instantly and painlessly. Then Lottin, a nudist and Star Wars fan, staged a photo shoot featuring her and the now-dead horse. Throughout the following post I’ll be discussing her pictures with the horse. They are excessively gory; there is some nudity. Discretion advised. Not safe for work content after the break.

Image credit Jasha Lottin via Seattle Weekly

Here Lottin is tucked into the now emptied out horse—Skywalker style. Its organs and blood are splayed out on the ground; she has replaced them. Her smiling face pokes out near its back legs. There’s no certainty of the horse’s sex, but in either case she takes the place of its genitals. These photos, especially those with Lottin tucked inside, trend towards neither horse nor human but instead a combination of the two. They’re, together, an inverted centaur composed upon and within the body of a horse. The combination is, as we must be sure to remember, not equal. Even though she has positioned herself within the horse, in its belly, its Lottin that consumed the horse both figuratively and literally.

Image credit Jasha Lottin via Seattle Weekly

There is something strange about these images of her eating some bit of the horse. Last week I wrote about Daenerys’ ritualistic consumption of the horse heart. She was glistening and bloody, and while she and the heart were prominent there was no horse to be seen. Lottin’s consumption, though, doesn’t have nearly the same pop, the same flare. Her bloody hands look like they were dipped in red corn syrup; the piece of horse she tugs on seems small and insignificant. The banality of her representation forces the viewer to actively recall the embodied reality of her act. These photos point toward an actual woman and an actual horse and actual death.

Image credit Jasha Lottin via Seattle Weekly

Throughout almost all of the photos Lottin wears a broad grin. Here Lottin and her unnamed friend are posing with the horse’s heart. Both grinning, they hold the heart up in what must be a pretty common hunter’s-fresh-kill-trophy pose (I’ve taken any number of such pictures while fishing). Her constant grin is one of the most intriguing aspects of these pictures. There’s no sense of gravity, no notion of sadness or remorse or really any hint that this entire event is anything but lark. It should be noted that after posting these photos Lottin was reported to the authorities; after investigating they found that she broke no laws. What I think people found so shocking, though, was her smile. Because of that smile—a fixed photo smile, unconscious, reflexive, ubiquitous—there isn’t any real room for anything but the snap acknowledgement of these photos as simple snap shots of (what many saw to be) grotesque activity.

Image credit Jasha Lottin via Seattle Weekly

Here Lottin stands naked and covered in blood, perhaps having just emerged from inside the dead horse. This photo, though, subverts any sense of hybridization or actual relationship between Lottin and the horse. She has killed the animal and eaten it and played within it, but still there’s nothing but a facile connection. The blood remains on the surface as she looks down at the dead horse as nothing more than a hollowed out prop. What is there here to separate her from the spectacle of the films written about last week? Her horse, though specifically killed in order to make the photos, is little more than a prop.

Image credit Ars Electronica 2011 via New Scientist

Next week I’ll be looking at a different kind of horsey performance. In 2011 Marion Laval-Jeantet undertook a piece of performance art that explored the possibilities of a more substantial, embodied, relationship with a horse.

Horsey Beginnings: Setting the Stage

Steven J LeMieux — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:34:28 +0000

Image Credit the Bureau of Land Management

In George Lucas's Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo rides a tauntaun out into the frozen wastes of Hoth; he needs to find his friend, Luke Skywalker. In George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, Deanerys Targaryen, a princess in exile, takes center stage in a ceremony for the sake of her child-to-be. She has to eat a raw, fresh horse heart. In Washington County, a Portland woman and her friend buy a near dead horse, shoot it in the head, cut it open, and take pictures, lots of bloody pictures. The following post does not contain these images (a future post will, though).

Image Credit Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Han Solo has to find his friend. He saddles his tauntaun and rides out into the rapidly freezing night. He's told that he won't get far. His tauntaun will freeze before he reaches the first marker. Han doesn't care. Han doesn't care about his tauntaun, and there's no real distinction made, on his part, between this living transportation and his normal mechanical means of getting around. The tauntuans are pretty strange; they look like a kangaroo-dinosaur blend. What almost instantly endears them to the audience, though, is that he saddles the animal; it has reins. Han's a real space cowboy now. He, for a moment, has a real live horse. These tauntauns, too, have perhaps the most pathos filled utterance of any creature in Star Wars. They are filled with emotion. Well, that's the case until Han cuts his now dead tauntaun open and we see that it's filled with guts. Han, as he stuffs Luke into the tauntaun, notes its stink. The tauntuan--dead, sliced open, and stuffed with Luke, is left without a shred of dignity.

Image Credit Game of Thrones via Nerdy Gamer Girl

[A slight note to the reader. While I didn't feel terrible about spoiling a thirty year old movie Game of Thrones (show and book both) are slightly more recent. So, (slight) spoiler warning.]

Deanerys, still pretty much a child, is married off to an older man, the leader of a people dependent on horses. He frightens her, but she learns to love him, and she learns to love the horses. When she discovers that she is pregnant she is taken to some elders and told to eat a horse heart to prove that she's woman enough bear her husband's child. In the book, Martin doesn't spend terribly much time describing the horse eating, but in the show they give us a lavish scene. We don't see the heart cut from any horse, and in some ways it's presented as its own object, free of any horsey connections, much as you might buy from a store. Well, not quite store like. The heart is still, seemingly, full of blood, and as Deanerys works her way through the several pounds of flesh she gets covered. The scene is hard to watch; she, covered in blood, shiny and slimy, nauseous. She chokes down every bite.

Image Credit The Searchers via Gone Movie

We don't, as a general rule, eat horses in the United States. Wikipedia has a nice run down of various historical reasons horsemeat is taboo in different cultures, but one of the most convincing reasons that I have heard for the American distaste of horse meat is that horses are looked at less as beasts and more as companion animals. People talk about cowboys and their relationship with horses as fundamentally ingrained in an American imaginary. And while I don't know if there is any particular research to back up these claims, having grown up watching westerns as a little boy they strike a chord with me. But the horse, the cowboy's companion, is always still an animal. It can be killed, but its killing, while not a damning act is at least worrisome. Horses occupy the curious double space of both means of transportation and friend.

Image Credit Lonesome Dove via American Bedu

[My post is full of spoilers today. Both Lonesome Dove and True Grit are pretty old, but with the new True Grit getting released recently I thought that I'd give a heads up for anyone that is about to watch it.]

They have personality when the story demands and none when it doesn't, and these switches seldom need justification. In Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove there are named horses and unnamed Gus cuts his unnamed horse down and uses it to hide from gunshot--neither McMurtry nor the reader skip a beat in killing the animal. A good portion of the first chapter, and throughout the rest of the long novel, Captain Call interacts with a horse; he has a relationship with the Hell Bitch. She's as tough, tougher maybe than he is.

Image Credit True Grit via The Diplomacy of Kasey Driscoll

Han's search for Luke and tauntaun sacrifice mirrors Rooster's race to save Mattie's life in True Grit. Throughout the story (equally held up in both films, and I assume the novel) horses are front and center. They're haggled over, argued about, praised. And though different characters approach them with different intensities, Mattie’s care and affection for the horses isn't played off as a little girl's whims. Her strength, throughout the story is apparent, and her relationship with her horse Little Blackie is presented as genuine and admirable. But Rooster sacrifices Little Blackie--sacrifice cleans things up too much. He brutally rides him to death. In the more recent film this point is amplified. Rooster rides Little Blackie as far and fast as he'll go, then stabs him to push him further. Once Little Blackie falls Rooster shoots him. But Mattie is saved. The climax of the film revolves around this horse. The characters are forgotten and we feel for the horse; Rooster disgusts us. Minutes after the horse is dead he is forgotten, though. The film ends firmly focused on Mattie and Rooster, neither are disgusting.

That horses are disposable and relatable for many people raised on westerns and American horse culture is why the story of Jasha Lottin is so strange. In next week's post I'll be focused on her actions and pictures.