June 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Cinema can be furtive and intensely beautiful—and it can leave a viewer craving more. Cinemal is Tessa Laird’s passionate inquiry into the desire to write about animals and to write about art, juxtaposing the two and burrowing into the ways that films mimic the majesty, mystery, and movements of animals. Here, Laird is joined in conversation with Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard, editors of the Art after Nature series with University of Minnesota Press.
Tessa Laird is an artist, writer, and senior lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her books include a fictocritical exploration of color, A Rainbow Reader, and a cultural history of bats, Bat, in Reaktion Books’ celebrated Animal series.
Giovanni Aloi teaches art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is author or editor of many books on the nonhuman and art.
Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and founder of the Green Lantern Press.
EPISODE REFERENCES:
The Animal That Therefore I Am / Jacques Derrida
Donna Haraway
Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
Michael Taussig
Monocultures of the Mind / Vandana Shiva
What Animals Teach Us about Politics / Brian Massumi
Len Lye, New Zealand modernist artist
Sergei Eisenstein
Electric Animal / Akira Lippit
Baptiste Marizot
Undrowned / Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Sriwhana Spong
Praise for the book:
“Original, erudite, and playful all in one, Cinemal is not only a joy to read but estranges the very idea of cinema, and therefore of life, in ways wondrous and wise.”
—Michael Taussig, Columbia University
“A sparkling, engaging book, a virtuosic and thrilling interleaving of experimental cinema, philosophies of the more-than-human, and stories of animal encounters. Celebrating the variety and inventiveness of cinematic experimentation, Tessa Laird calls for us to remake our human senses in order to align better with the needs of the planet.”
—Laura U. Marks, author of The Fold: From Your Body to the Cosmos
Art after Nature is a series edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard that explores epistemological questions that emerge from the expanding, environmental consciousness of the humanities.
Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film by Tessa Laird is available from University of Minnesota Press.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Tessa Laird (00:04):
Engagement with artistic practice and engagement
with the natural world bothrequire your full attention.
Giovani Aloi (00:15):
This is Giovanni Aloi and this is a new podcast
for the Art After Nature bookseries. At a time of
unprecedented ecological crisisand cultural change, Art After
Nature explores theepistemological questions that
emerge from the expandingenvironmental consciousness of
the humanities. Authors featuredin this series engage with the
(00:36):
recent ontological turn,appending anthropocentrism, in
order to grapple with the darkecological fluidity of nature
cultures. The anthropogenic lensof inquiry emphasizes an ethical
focus for grounding the modernhuman politics of our era.
Within this framework, arttheory, practice and criticism
are reconfigured as intersectingplatforms upon which current
(01:01):
philosophical trajectories canbe mapped.
The series engages with thepolitics and contradictions of
the Anthropocene in order toproblematize recent and
influential disciplines such asanimal studies, posthumanism and
speculative realism through artwriting and art making. Our
books, published in the ArtAfter Nature series, fostered
(01:24):
through multidisciplinaryaccessibility and diversity, and
each volume aims to providereaders with the opportunity to
creatively engage with new andalternative discourses at the
intersection of art, science andphilosophy.
Caroline Picard (01:39):
This is Caroline Picard and today we are
here to discuss the latest bookin our series, The Becoming
Animal of Experimental Film byTessa Laird. A foray through the
wilds where experimental filmsand animals collide. Like the
flash of a tropical bird'siridescent wing, cinema can be
(02:01):
furtive and intensely beautifuland it can leave a viewer
craving more. Cinnamal is TessaLaird's passionate inquiry into
the ways that films mimic themajesty, mystery, and movements
of animals. Her field notes fromcountless hair raising
encounters with films in theirnatural habitat.
Tessa Laird (02:22):
Imagine this. You find a feline familiar under the
veined velvet of taro leaves.She unfurls slowly like a tiger
lily, her emblematic flower,orange and spotted as she is.
You begin to understand that afamiliar is your bridge to the
world of animal magic, animallogic, animal language. Your
(02:46):
familiar is all animals, notjust those of her own species.
In this feline, you catchglimpses not just of yourself as
you mirror each other, but of ahost of nonhuman animals,
including butterflies, majesticorange with black veins, the
monarch, which is the tigerlily, if not the miniature tiger
(03:08):
of the sky. Then again, when youapprehend her tiny bouquet of a
face, you find it's not a cat,but an owl who gazes back at you
with saucer shaped incredulouseyes, not to mention the mousy
breath of the huntress. The catI'm trying to conjure here was
(03:28):
known to me as Kira, twothousand and two to 02/2019, and
I share the images of her thatrun through the projector of my
mind because she was and remainsa lure for me toward animal
becomings and ecologicalthinking. Keira was a flesh and
fur feline, not a film, but Iconsider her a cinemal because
(03:52):
in the metacinema of my mind,she's all montage, perpetually
becoming other, leading metoward more capacious and
relational ecologies. Hernervous glancing, her vibratory
vigilance remind me of a meerkaton lookout duty.
Her tawny fur, sprightly gait,bushy red tail, and whiskery
(04:14):
pointed features belong to thefox. Curled up, she's a snail
with the speckled shell thatgives her and her almost always
female feline kin their name,tortoiseshell. What territory
does the mottled map of her furtrace? She could even be
reptilian with that partycolored coat that mimics the
(04:35):
scales of a diamondback in somelights, or a rattler who sleeps
coiled, but when irritated,vibrates the tip of her tail in
warning. When riled, she hisseslike a snake and bares her
fangs.
In the undergrowth of thegarden, she's a sleek, stippled
koi, a marriage of sunlight andshadow hiding under lotus
(04:57):
leaves. She's also the spirit ofthe spotted leopard, a tiny
tiger, or perhaps it's thetuftey faced cheetah she
resembles most.
Giovani Aloi (05:08):
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tessa, for starting
our podcast for the publicationof your book Cinema with such a
poetic passage. I couldn't helpbut think all the way through
that this gives me so much morethan Derrida ever gave me in The
Animal That Therefore I Am andthat fleeting appearance of a
(05:32):
cat that flickers onlymomentarily into the flesh and
fur that you mentioned to becomea literary animal, perhaps far
too quickly. I never have cometo terms with how Derrida's cat
became so emblematic and sopowerful in animal studies and
(05:53):
yet so void and so kind ofmissing the mark. So I don't
know if this was your intentionnecessarily, but it really feels
like you're making up for amassive animal studies
shortcoming.
Tell me how this came about andhow may it relate to Derrida, if
at all.
Tessa Laird (06:12):
That's so interesting, Giovanni. I never
actually thought about it thatway, but I have thought about
Derrida and his cat quite a lot.And I guess I was just being
lured by the animal, and that'swhat I'm trying to do in the
book. And I guess that's whatDonna Haraway talks about when
she sort of says Derrida missedhis opportunity, you know,
(06:33):
because he didn't actuallyconnect to the animal or make an
attempt to connect with theanimal. That's what I've been
trying to do both in life, butthen once, you know, especially
once the animal has gone from mylife to process, you know, what
was that?
What happened there? Who wasthat being? And what has she
(06:56):
taught me? I dedicate the bookboth to Keira and to Corinne
Cantrell, the Australianfilmmaker who actually just
passed away at the age of 96,and to Corinne's cat, Nim Nims,
who I never met. She was longgone before I met Corinne, but
she was also a tortoiseshellcat, and she was also still very
(07:18):
much on Corinne's mind and inthe films of the cantrells and
in the paintings of their son,Ivor Cantrell.
And so it sort of felt like Ifelt like there was this triad,
if you like, of influences, thecats, Corin, the filmmaker, and
I felt that I had to sort ofacknowledge them all three
(07:40):
together as this kind of nexusof forces, if you like, forces
of nature and forces ofcreativity.
Caroline Picard (07:49):
There's a part in your book where you talk
about Derrida's, I think theword is, philogocentrism. I
don't know if I'm pronouncing itproperly. And it's sort of like,
I think you describe how you'rebuilding on that cat essay, but
then also breaking from it. It'sinteresting to me that within
(08:09):
this triad also of your work,you're addressing the animal,
very attentive to language andwordplay, but then also
incorporating cinema and film. Iwould love to hear you also talk
more about how that stool, thatthree legged stool, emerged for
you or how you thought aboutbuilding it.
Tessa Laird (08:31):
Well, guess I really have to acknowledge
Derrida because he created thehybrid word animo. Although I've
also heard that Elaine Sisuactually the first person who
did that, but it's hybrid wordthat combines animal and mot, M
O T, word in French. And thishybrid being is kind of like the
(08:55):
animal in literature and theanimal in philosophy, and it
inhabits the texts. And it sortof is both trapped by those
texts and enlivens those texts.And so I was kind of really
intrigued by this figure thatDerrida had created.
But at the same time, I waswatching all these experimental
films at the Cantrell's placewhere because they refuse to
(09:18):
digitize their films, theyinsist that they be shown in
their original format. So I wasliterally sitting in their
basement watching these films onthe original celluloid and at
the same time reading animalstudies texts and sort of
thinking, how are these thingsrelated, if at all? And suddenly
it came to me that there wasthis also hybrid being that
(09:40):
inhabited the film, and that wasI decided to call it cinema,
which is, you know, sort ofcinema with the animal tail, if
you like, at the end. And assoon as I thought that, I sort
of thought, well, it's not thatI'm looking at animals on screen
and thinking about cinematicanimals, but I'm thinking about
(10:01):
the film itself as a livelyentity. Perhaps the film itself
is an animal or becomes animalat some point.
And if so, how does that happen?And what what are the
characteristics of the film thatprompt me to compare it to
animal characteristics? And Ikind of made a little checklist
(10:23):
in my mind, you know, when I seethese kind of flashes of color
that you might see, you know, ina bird, kind of performing some
sort of dance or the peacock,you know, shaking its eye spots.
It might be when there's anactual kind of rupture, like a
scratch, perhaps a literalscratch on the film. It might be
when there's kind of endlessrepetition and you think about,
(10:45):
say, a birdsong where the samephrase is repeated over and over
and over again, or it might bewhen there is a kind of, again,
a rupture to that kind ofrepetition when there's a heart
rending cry or something thatsort of takes you outside of
yourself.
So I had these thoughts whenwatching and experiencing film
(11:06):
that there was some kind ofbecoming animal of the film, but
then also, I supposesympathetically of the viewer
when experiencing that. And myhope in all of this is that by
experiencing these kinds ofartworks, we are brought back to
ourselves and reintroduced toour own animal natures, and we
(11:30):
kind of get away from thisnature culture divide or human
non human divide. And I thinkthat what's most valuable about
these kinds of films is thatthey bring us back to our own
true natures in some way.
Giovani Aloi (11:44):
Yes, absolutely. I think that's the part of the
project that when you pitched ita few years ago now to Carolyn
and I, really fascinated us. Itwas an interesting opportunity
for me as well to reconnect alittle with animal studies,
which is a field that I haven'treally felt very connected with
over the past ten years. And Iwas wondering, I have, I think
(12:05):
it's like two questions intoone, is like, I would like to
continue a trajectory that we'vealready taken related to
language and the poetic languagethat you deploy so beautifully
throughout the book. I thinkit's so great that not only you
can navigate your theoreticalframeworks and academic lenses
(12:28):
with integrity and rigor.
But you also have written abeautiful book that it's very
enriching as a read. And thereis something about the way you
deploy language throughout thatI think tries to accomplish
something more than the averageacademic book that theoretically
wants to pin down butterflies ona board tends to do. But there's
(12:49):
also a question, I think,broader question related to
animal studies. So I wanted toknow how you see the book
fitting into a broaderscholarship of animal studies in
terms of the trajectory that thefield has taken over the past
ten years and how this specificlinguistic turn that you have
decided to employ fits intothat? To me, it's a little bit
(13:10):
like a hopeful future model foranimal studies.
Tessa Laird (13:14):
Wow, that's high praise. I mean, for a start, I
come from an art background. Iwent to art school. I spent a
lot of time being an art critic.I'm always thinking about how I
can write about something thatis often nonverbal in a way
which doesn't pin down thebutterfly, as you just said, but
(13:37):
actually kind of releases itinto the world or even
multiplies the butterflies.
I'm really concerned for mylanguage to actually, maybe not
just so much emulate the worksthat I'm talking about, but to
be infused with some of theirenergy and beauty and power or
(13:57):
even surprise. And in terms ofwhat it can add to animal
studies or what it doesdifferently, I feel like there
has to be a kind of a marriageof the ethics and the
aesthetics. And, you know,that's what I'm sort of
interested in. Guatari calls it,you know, the ethico aesthetic
(14:17):
paradigm. And this idea that youcan't really have a successful
politics if you don't addressissues of the sensory engagement
with the world and some sort ofjoyous imperative.
Otherwise it's just gonna kindof fail. Nobody will want to
come to your party. So for meit's really important that the
(14:39):
writing enact the thing thatpractice what it preaches, if
you like. And there's a fewmodels there for me. One is
that, Michael Taussig used thephrase four legged writing,
which I love, and he uses it incontrast to what he calls
agribusiness writing, which iskind of like the writing of
(15:01):
academia, but it's also tiedinto this literal monoculture
that's blanketing the planet.
There's that phrase that VandanaShiva uses monocultures of the
mind and it's kind of what'shappening every time you're
expected to explain something inacademic jargon and completely
forgetting about what languageis and what language can do.
(15:24):
Another model is Brian Masumi,in his book about what animals
teach us about politics andelsewhere has talked about
languages being the thing thatthe human animal excels at or
expresses itself through, andthat paradoxically language is
where we can become animal. Youknow, we can find our animal
(15:45):
selves in this tool that wewield, which is language. And
it's a matter of doing that inan expressive way, which
actually enhances our engagementwith the world rather than
pinning it down.
Caroline Picard (15:57):
For some reason, it also makes me think a
lot about movements, like inyour opening passage about the
cat, like part of why your catbecomes such an individual
personality is because of theway you're using your writing.
And then also there isnevertheless a way where your
(16:17):
experience of the cat'sstrangeness, let's say, your
language allows us to see howthe cat slips into different
emanations of other animals. Youdescribe also how color is
associated with movement. And sothere is something very much
alive about this presence, Iguess, for lack of a better
(16:39):
word.
Tessa Laird (16:40):
Yeah, well, I guess movement and metamorphosis and
transformation, they're allthings I'm really interested in.
A few things there. One is thatNew Zealand Modernist Artist Lin
Lai is quite a force in thebook, even though I tried to
minimize it because I wanted itto be about contemporary
(17:01):
artists. And he was born in 1901and died in 1980. But he's still
very much a part of it because Igrew up in New Zealand.
I watched his films at artschool. He was kind of a pioneer
of scratch film and directpainted film directly on the
celluloid, and he also madekinetic sculptures. He kind of
(17:23):
said, you know, I want to makean art of movement, and I don't
want to represent movement. Iwant my art to move. And so this
is why he was really, attractedto kinetic and moving image as
his sort of media.
But in addition to lie andmovement, I'm sort of really
interested in this idea ofanimism and animation, maybe
(17:46):
literally in some cases.Eisenstein has lots of
interesting things to say aboutDisney and what animation
actually is, and, you know, hekind of surmises that it is the
sort of, the remainder of ofanimism in our contemporary
life. This is how it comes out.And I really wanted to not just
(18:10):
talk about animals, but aboutlively forces in across the
gamut of of of nature andcultures, and to think about the
liveliness of all things,including so called inanimate
things. And so there's also achapter about spirits, for want
of a better word, about thesixth sense and the unseen and
(18:32):
the ineffable and how they mightshow up on screen.
And I feel like that's, again,like on a continuum. It's not as
though there's a kind of acutoff point between the
spiritual and the materialworlds, and especially not when
you're looking at something likefilm. All of film is a kind of
specter. There is a lot ofscholarship about the animal
(18:56):
specter, you know, especially akira lipid. With that and with
the kind of specter of animaldeath, it makes sense to also
include the undead in thelively, if that makes sense.
So movement, transformation, andopenness to fluctuating states
(19:17):
was also something I was reallyinterested in.
Giovani Aloi (19:21):
And Tessa, I was thinking more broadly about
questions related torepresentation, abstraction,
realism, and how objectificationor freedom from objectification
might play in the context ofthose modalities. I was thinking
about very early conversationsabout objectification and
(19:42):
representation in the context ofanimal studies, like
specifically Steve Baker and hisconsideration of becoming animal
as an opportunity to free theanimal from the objectification
of classical representation andsymbolism. So I was wondering
how conceptions of cinema mightplay into that paradigm.
Tessa Laird (20:03):
One of the things I found myself bucking against a
little bit was the idea ofrealism, because personally I
feel that I'm more interested inthe kind of vocabulary of
surrealism, which is not to saythat I don't value documentary
approaches, but I don't see thatthere's a way to truly represent
the reality of the animalexperience from a human
(20:26):
perspective. And I think it'sprobably more valuable when we
try to bridge the gap, if youlike, between human and animal
experience with a more kind ofimaginative searching way of
entering another person's oranother being's sensorium, often
very different to our own. So Iguess what I appreciate is
(20:48):
perhaps those moments when I'mnot witnessing a representation
of an animal but I'm perhapswitnessing a representation of
reality as it might beexperienced by that animal.
Maybe I'll give an example. Avery short film by the Cantrells
called Articulated Image, whichis a very rapid frame rate cut
(21:12):
of movement over a pot plant ona stairwell and that's all it
is.
But when watching that film Ifelt that I was inhabiting the
body of a skink or a smalllizard and don't ask me why but
that's the kind of thing thatcame into my mind. It was the
time signature signature and theframe rate of that film. That's
(21:34):
what it did for me in a waywhich I don't think I would have
felt had I been watching a kindof realistic documentary film
about a lizard. And so I feellike there's something about
using our filmic language andmaybe our verbal language too,
to inhabit the interiority ofwhat it means to be animal
(21:56):
rather than representing themfrom the outside. And I think
that's one of the key takeawaysof Deleuze and Guattari's
concept of becoming animal.
It's very much againstrepresentation. And I feel that
realism is still sort of fallinginto that trap of being a
realism for humans. I would saya neurotypical humans at that.
(22:22):
So I'm really interested introubling, what do we get to
call realism in the first placeand who says so? That makes me
think too about how, where themetaphor is
Caroline Picard (22:36):
in a way. I don't know if you would agree
with this, but it's almost asthough by introducing cinema or
film as the animal And you talkabout the celluloid skin, for
instance, and there's all thesedifferent the performance of
color on screen and how it'ssort of transportive. But it's
interesting to imagine that ifwe are able to conceive of and
(23:01):
fully consider film itself as atype of animal, then that might
actually change the way we arecapable of engaging with the
otherness of animals morebroadly.
Tessa Laird (23:12):
Yes, absolutely. On metaphor, there's a wonderful
word that Akira Lipit came upwith, which is animetaphor. And
it's another hybrid word andit's a kind of animal metaphor,
but it's also anti metaphor.It's kind of like the embodying
and the actualization ofsomething rather than it's being
(23:33):
a metaphor, which is somethingI'm very interested in. But at
the same time, metaphors can bevery seductive and juicy and I'm
sure the book is absolutelyriddled with them.
And I think maybe that's part ofit too, which is the idea of
being playful and being able totake things when you need them
and want them and alsoproblematize them at the same
(23:55):
time. So I guess I've had my funwith metaphors at the same time
as trying to prod myself andothers to move beyond metaphor
as well.
Giovani Aloi (24:05):
What ethical dimensions do you think cinema
brings to the map of animalstudies for practitioners, for
theorists, of course, given yoursensitivity to language as well,
but also I'm thinkingrepresentationally approaches
that might be preferred incomparison to others based on
(24:27):
your mapping.
Tessa Laird (24:29):
The idea of attunement is quite important to
me and having a sort ofsympathetic resonance or
vibration with animal life,which can't be purely
theoretical and has to besomehow felt. So that the
ethics, as I said, has to have akind of aesthetic dimension and
(24:51):
that's the way in which itbecomes a lived reality rather
than a kind of theorem. Sothat's, I think what I'm
bringing to the table as a kindof reminder that engagement with
artistic practice and engagementwith the natural world both
require your full attention andyour full sensory engagement and
(25:13):
commitment. It makes me thinkalso about the various figures
and voices and philosophers thatyou draw in. You have this
wonderful, I want to
Caroline Picard (25:23):
say like pantheon of presence, whether
they are animals or films orphilosophers. And I guess I
wondered, because there is somuch movement through, how you
considered integrating everybodyand bringing everybody to the
table. And like, when did youknow when to introduce certain
(25:43):
figures? If that makes sense.Because they feel very handy.
They feel very, like, present toyou because I think they occur,
for lack of a better word, verynaturally in the flow or the
course of your writing. It seemsto me that it might be difficult
to choose from a writer'sperspective when to call on one
(26:04):
versus another.
Tessa Laird (26:06):
I would say it's completely intuitive. There's
absolutely no logic to it. Thewhole book has really grown out
of an intuitive inquiry and someof it is happenstance as well. I
mean, I didn't know anythingabout Baptiste Maurizot, but
somebody sent me his book abouttracking wolves and it became
very important to my thinking.And there's appearances by
(26:29):
people like Alexis Pauline Gumbsand her wonderful book,
Undrowned, about marine mammals.
And these seem to me ways inwhich people are addressing
animals directly. They clearlyalso come from very
philosophical or very politicalbackgrounds and the way that
they've managed to weave animalencounters through their texts
(26:51):
has been really inspiring andfoundational for me. But also I
talked to the artiststhemselves, the filmmakers
themselves, because they embodysuch a wealth of knowledge. For
example, the artist ShrewanaSpong, I read her PhD and it
really opened up for me not onlyhow her films operate but how
(27:12):
film in general operates. It wasa very inspiring text for me.
So I feel that I'm led by thefilms themselves, but the films
come with a whole raft of voicesthat they're drawing upon and
that I can draw upon too. And ofcourse, everything that I'm
reading at the time feeds intothat. Maybe it is kind of like
(27:33):
actually making a montagesequence. It's sort of operating
with all of these inputs, butfinding a way, you know, in
which you can make a rhythm or apattern. And pattern I think is
maybe one of the guidingprinciples of the whole book
that there are these littlerefrains and repetitions that
pop up here and there.
(27:53):
I see the whole thing as a kindof essay on dappled light. It's
all about light and shadow andthe recurrence of certain images
and tropes.
Giovani Aloi (28:03):
Since we're talking about the work as a
writer, thinker, I wasinterested in learning more
about your process and how thechallenges that you faced in
assembling all these voices andalso works of art. You know,
this type of book is complex toput together because of all
(28:25):
these partners, collaborators,like virtual collaborators that
come textually to keep youcompany and yet sometimes might
want to stay longer than youexpected. You have to negotiate
space. Somebody becomes tooprominent. There were also, I
remember, moments in which wewanted to negotiate certain
contemporary voices, perhapsmore than other classical animal
(28:49):
studies, voices during the roundof reviews.
So what were the challenges youfaced into putting this together
to make sure that it speaks toanimal studies of today and
beyond? I think it's a great thebook is a great contribution to
animal studies, because I see itas by far exceeding the field of
animal studies itself. I thinkit reaches well beyond.
Tessa Laird (29:10):
My biggest challenge is always how to stop
trying to put everything in andthat's kind of what I ended up
doing anyway. But I absolutelyhate getting rid of things. I
always feel like it's cuttingoff an arm. You know when you're
talking about relationality it'slike well where does one thought
end? It could go on and on andon.
(29:33):
So for me it's always about youknow when to stop and what to
get rid of and that's alwayshard And it's not for me
difficult at all to see allthese wonderful connections
between things. They just comenaturally. And so I feel
probably looking back at it,there's probably still too much
in the book. As you know, Icould have gone into more depth,
(29:55):
like I'm always telling mystudents, less breadth, more
depth, but I myself can'tpractise what I preach. And I do
so love the ways in which thingsconnect.
But I had some good feedbackalong the way and there were
many, many provocations. One ofthe earliest ones I remember, I
thought was really interesting,was a Romance language speaker
(30:16):
saying you can't call the bookcinema because that means, you
know, bad cinema and it has allthese negative connotations. And
I thought that's true but that'sexactly how the animal's been
portrayed for so long and that'show the animal often comes into
film as some sort of malevolententity. So I felt like I had to
(30:38):
kind of run with it and reclaimthat and say, well, there's a
maul at the tail of every animalquite literally and we can't be
running away from that, we haveto embrace it. And there's been
many, many moments where I'vehad to reconsider something and
think about what it means forthe book as a whole, but at the
same time my default is to keepthings and incorporate things
(31:01):
and argue for their necessityrather than to leave them out
altogether.
This makes me want
Caroline Picard (31:07):
to go back to this idea that Giovanni brought
up as a counterpoint of howoften scholarship and scientific
thought wants to like pin thebutterfly and how that is set in
contrast with the type ofmovement which is also as we've
discussed your writing sort ofexemplifies. So I guess I'm
interested in how you thinkabout or one thinks about the
(31:29):
ethics of movement and alivenessin writing? Or like if you allow
the aliveness of your subject,for lack of a better word, to
come through in the writing,does your sense of ethics or
scholarship also have to adapt?
Tessa Laird (31:45):
I feel like the ethics is in the approach and
they're indivisible. The methodis a way of enacting the ethics
and making it visible and live.I really don't believe you can
argue for a relational view ofthe world without practicing
that relationality in yourwriting because if you fall into
(32:05):
a kind of academic jargon whileyou're trying to talk your way
out of that worldview, it's notgoing to work. You have to walk
the talk, which actually maybethat's what four legged writing
is. It's the body coming intothe text.
And then I hope the readers willtake it to the next step, which
(32:25):
is continuing with the walkingmetaphor. I mean, I don't want
this to be an endpoint, youknow, what happens to the reader
after reading this text. Maybethey feel empowered or
emboldened in their own creativepractice or in their writing or
even just in their relationshipswith the natural world, with
animals, with how theyexperience light and shadow,
(32:49):
dappled light through theleaves. Is that a cinematic
experience? Maybe it is.
So I want there to be some kindof movement beyond the book as
well, movement into the world.One of the
Caroline Picard (33:03):
things you talk about in your book, Tessa, is
how film as a medium is alsokind of dying out. And you sort
of compare it with animals, youknow, during the sixth great
extinction. And I was thinkingabout the digitization of film,
but then also the pressure to AIoptimize our language. That
(33:24):
seems like another push towardsmonoculture, which is really
interesting to me.
Tessa Laird (33:29):
Absolutely. I guess I haven't mentioned anything
about AI in the book and I'vekind of resisted talking about
things like virtual reality. Andthese are probably precisely the
things, you know, that I shouldbe addressing because this is
what's happening right now. Butat the same time, I feel like as
(33:49):
we're charging into this newunknown with all these new
technologies, we're reallyturning our back on technologies
that we've had and they are likedying species. This was actually
something that Corinne andArthur Cantrell have talked
about is that they were sort ofthe last handful of people using
analog film at a time when videohad completely taken over and
(34:12):
they remained steadfast and trueto their medium, but they felt
like they were a dying species.
And now that Corinne has passedand there are some films and
canisters that have not beendigitized that may melt away
with time, it's kind of scary tothink about that, you know, at a
time when we're in the sixthgreat extinction event as well,
(34:33):
which is far more terrifying,the fact that we're losing
species at a massive rate. But Ifeel like these things are
somehow entwined. The fact thatI don't think we have enough
respect or care for truediversity and instead we seem
hell bent on creating modes ofturning knowledge and experience
(34:53):
into a kind of vast arena ofhomogeneity and sameness and the
reproduction of more and more ofthe same. And I'm really
interested in the preservationof pockets of a true sort of
singularity in resistance tothat, you know, resisting the
(35:13):
urge to pick things up justbecause they're new and because
you think that you need to belike everybody else by utilizing
these tools and insteadcelebrating what genuine
diversity remains both in thenatural world and in our
artistic and literaryproduction. Yeah, I think it's
very important to fiercely safesafeguard what remains.
Giovani Aloi (35:38):
I think this is a wonderful place to end our
conversation. Thank you so much,Tessa, for joining us today.
It's been a pleasure talking toyou and we look forward to
seeing cinema traveling acrossthe world.
Tessa Laird (35:51):
Thanks so much, Tessa. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you both.
Engagement with artistic practice and engagement
with the natural world bothrequire your full attention.
Giovani Aloi (00:15):
This is Giovanni Aloi and this is a new podcast
for the Art After Nature bookseries. At a time of
unprecedented ecological crisisand cultural change, Art After
Nature explores theepistemological questions that
emerge from the expandingenvironmental consciousness of
the humanities. Authors featuredin this series engage with the
(00:36):
recent ontological turn,appending anthropocentrism, in
order to grapple with the darkecological fluidity of nature
cultures. The anthropogenic lensof inquiry emphasizes an ethical
focus for grounding the modernhuman politics of our era.
Within this framework, arttheory, practice and criticism
are reconfigured as intersectingplatforms upon which current
(01:01):
philosophical trajectories canbe mapped.
The series engages with thepolitics and contradictions of
the Anthropocene in order toproblematize recent and
influential disciplines such asanimal studies, posthumanism and
speculative realism through artwriting and art making. Our
books, published in the ArtAfter Nature series, fostered
(01:24):
through multidisciplinaryaccessibility and diversity, and
each volume aims to providereaders with the opportunity to
creatively engage with new andalternative discourses at the
intersection of art, science andphilosophy.
Caroline Picard (01:39):
This is Caroline Picard and today we are
here to discuss the latest bookin our series, The Becoming
Animal of Experimental Film byTessa Laird. A foray through the
wilds where experimental filmsand animals collide. Like the
flash of a tropical bird'siridescent wing, cinema can be
(02:01):
furtive and intensely beautifuland it can leave a viewer
craving more. Cinnamal is TessaLaird's passionate inquiry into
the ways that films mimic themajesty, mystery, and movements
of animals. Her field notes fromcountless hair raising
encounters with films in theirnatural habitat.
Tessa Laird (02:22):
Imagine this. You find a feline familiar under the
veined velvet of taro leaves.She unfurls slowly like a tiger
lily, her emblematic flower,orange and spotted as she is.
You begin to understand that afamiliar is your bridge to the
world of animal magic, animallogic, animal language. Your
(02:46):
familiar is all animals, notjust those of her own species.
In this feline, you catchglimpses not just of yourself as
you mirror each other, but of ahost of nonhuman animals,
including butterflies, majesticorange with black veins, the
monarch, which is the tigerlily, if not the miniature tiger
(03:08):
of the sky. Then again, when youapprehend her tiny bouquet of a
face, you find it's not a cat,but an owl who gazes back at you
with saucer shaped incredulouseyes, not to mention the mousy
breath of the huntress. The catI'm trying to conjure here was
(03:28):
known to me as Kira, twothousand and two to 02/2019, and
I share the images of her thatrun through the projector of my
mind because she was and remainsa lure for me toward animal
becomings and ecologicalthinking. Keira was a flesh and
fur feline, not a film, but Iconsider her a cinemal because
(03:52):
in the metacinema of my mind,she's all montage, perpetually
becoming other, leading metoward more capacious and
relational ecologies. Hernervous glancing, her vibratory
vigilance remind me of a meerkaton lookout duty.
Her tawny fur, sprightly gait,bushy red tail, and whiskery
(04:14):
pointed features belong to thefox. Curled up, she's a snail
with the speckled shell thatgives her and her almost always
female feline kin their name,tortoiseshell. What territory
does the mottled map of her furtrace? She could even be
reptilian with that partycolored coat that mimics the
(04:35):
scales of a diamondback in somelights, or a rattler who sleeps
coiled, but when irritated,vibrates the tip of her tail in
warning. When riled, she hisseslike a snake and bares her
fangs.
In the undergrowth of thegarden, she's a sleek, stippled
koi, a marriage of sunlight andshadow hiding under lotus
(04:57):
leaves. She's also the spirit ofthe spotted leopard, a tiny
tiger, or perhaps it's thetuftey faced cheetah she
resembles most.
Giovani Aloi (05:08):
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tessa, for starting
our podcast for the publicationof your book Cinema with such a
poetic passage. I couldn't helpbut think all the way through
that this gives me so much morethan Derrida ever gave me in The
Animal That Therefore I Am andthat fleeting appearance of a
(05:32):
cat that flickers onlymomentarily into the flesh and
fur that you mentioned to becomea literary animal, perhaps far
too quickly. I never have cometo terms with how Derrida's cat
became so emblematic and sopowerful in animal studies and
(05:53):
yet so void and so kind ofmissing the mark. So I don't
know if this was your intentionnecessarily, but it really feels
like you're making up for amassive animal studies
shortcoming.
Tell me how this came about andhow may it relate to Derrida, if
at all.
Tessa Laird (06:12):
That's so interesting, Giovanni. I never
actually thought about it thatway, but I have thought about
Derrida and his cat quite a lot.And I guess I was just being
lured by the animal, and that'swhat I'm trying to do in the
book. And I guess that's whatDonna Haraway talks about when
she sort of says Derrida missedhis opportunity, you know,
(06:33):
because he didn't actuallyconnect to the animal or make an
attempt to connect with theanimal. That's what I've been
trying to do both in life, butthen once, you know, especially
once the animal has gone from mylife to process, you know, what
was that?
What happened there? Who wasthat being? And what has she
(06:56):
taught me? I dedicate the bookboth to Keira and to Corinne
Cantrell, the Australianfilmmaker who actually just
passed away at the age of 96,and to Corinne's cat, Nim Nims,
who I never met. She was longgone before I met Corinne, but
she was also a tortoiseshellcat, and she was also still very
(07:18):
much on Corinne's mind and inthe films of the cantrells and
in the paintings of their son,Ivor Cantrell.
And so it sort of felt like Ifelt like there was this triad,
if you like, of influences, thecats, Corin, the filmmaker, and
I felt that I had to sort ofacknowledge them all three
(07:40):
together as this kind of nexusof forces, if you like, forces
of nature and forces ofcreativity.
Caroline Picard (07:49):
There's a part in your book where you talk
about Derrida's, I think theword is, philogocentrism. I
don't know if I'm pronouncing itproperly. And it's sort of like,
I think you describe how you'rebuilding on that cat essay, but
then also breaking from it. It'sinteresting to me that within
(08:09):
this triad also of your work,you're addressing the animal,
very attentive to language andwordplay, but then also
incorporating cinema and film. Iwould love to hear you also talk
more about how that stool, thatthree legged stool, emerged for
you or how you thought aboutbuilding it.
Tessa Laird (08:31):
Well, guess I really have to acknowledge
Derrida because he created thehybrid word animo. Although I've
also heard that Elaine Sisuactually the first person who
did that, but it's hybrid wordthat combines animal and mot, M
O T, word in French. And thishybrid being is kind of like the
(08:55):
animal in literature and theanimal in philosophy, and it
inhabits the texts. And it sortof is both trapped by those
texts and enlivens those texts.And so I was kind of really
intrigued by this figure thatDerrida had created.
But at the same time, I waswatching all these experimental
films at the Cantrell's placewhere because they refuse to
(09:18):
digitize their films, theyinsist that they be shown in
their original format. So I wasliterally sitting in their
basement watching these films onthe original celluloid and at
the same time reading animalstudies texts and sort of
thinking, how are these thingsrelated, if at all? And suddenly
it came to me that there wasthis also hybrid being that
(09:40):
inhabited the film, and that wasI decided to call it cinema,
which is, you know, sort ofcinema with the animal tail, if
you like, at the end. And assoon as I thought that, I sort
of thought, well, it's not thatI'm looking at animals on screen
and thinking about cinematicanimals, but I'm thinking about
(10:01):
the film itself as a livelyentity. Perhaps the film itself
is an animal or becomes animalat some point.
And if so, how does that happen?And what what are the
characteristics of the film thatprompt me to compare it to
animal characteristics? And Ikind of made a little checklist
(10:23):
in my mind, you know, when I seethese kind of flashes of color
that you might see, you know, ina bird, kind of performing some
sort of dance or the peacock,you know, shaking its eye spots.
It might be when there's anactual kind of rupture, like a
scratch, perhaps a literalscratch on the film. It might be
when there's kind of endlessrepetition and you think about,
(10:45):
say, a birdsong where the samephrase is repeated over and over
and over again, or it might bewhen there is a kind of, again,
a rupture to that kind ofrepetition when there's a heart
rending cry or something thatsort of takes you outside of
yourself.
So I had these thoughts whenwatching and experiencing film
(11:06):
that there was some kind ofbecoming animal of the film, but
then also, I supposesympathetically of the viewer
when experiencing that. And myhope in all of this is that by
experiencing these kinds ofartworks, we are brought back to
ourselves and reintroduced toour own animal natures, and we
(11:30):
kind of get away from thisnature culture divide or human
non human divide. And I thinkthat what's most valuable about
these kinds of films is thatthey bring us back to our own
true natures in some way.
Giovani Aloi (11:44):
Yes, absolutely. I think that's the part of the
project that when you pitched ita few years ago now to Carolyn
and I, really fascinated us. Itwas an interesting opportunity
for me as well to reconnect alittle with animal studies,
which is a field that I haven'treally felt very connected with
over the past ten years. And Iwas wondering, I have, I think
(12:05):
it's like two questions intoone, is like, I would like to
continue a trajectory that we'vealready taken related to
language and the poetic languagethat you deploy so beautifully
throughout the book. I thinkit's so great that not only you
can navigate your theoreticalframeworks and academic lenses
(12:28):
with integrity and rigor.
But you also have written abeautiful book that it's very
enriching as a read. And thereis something about the way you
deploy language throughout thatI think tries to accomplish
something more than the averageacademic book that theoretically
wants to pin down butterflies ona board tends to do. But there's
(12:49):
also a question, I think,broader question related to
animal studies. So I wanted toknow how you see the book
fitting into a broaderscholarship of animal studies in
terms of the trajectory that thefield has taken over the past
ten years and how this specificlinguistic turn that you have
decided to employ fits intothat? To me, it's a little bit
(13:10):
like a hopeful future model foranimal studies.
Tessa Laird (13:14):
Wow, that's high praise. I mean, for a start, I
come from an art background. Iwent to art school. I spent a
lot of time being an art critic.I'm always thinking about how I
can write about something thatis often nonverbal in a way
which doesn't pin down thebutterfly, as you just said, but
(13:37):
actually kind of releases itinto the world or even
multiplies the butterflies.
I'm really concerned for mylanguage to actually, maybe not
just so much emulate the worksthat I'm talking about, but to
be infused with some of theirenergy and beauty and power or
(13:57):
even surprise. And in terms ofwhat it can add to animal
studies or what it doesdifferently, I feel like there
has to be a kind of a marriageof the ethics and the
aesthetics. And, you know,that's what I'm sort of
interested in. Guatari calls it,you know, the ethico aesthetic
(14:17):
paradigm. And this idea that youcan't really have a successful
politics if you don't addressissues of the sensory engagement
with the world and some sort ofjoyous imperative.
Otherwise it's just gonna kindof fail. Nobody will want to
come to your party. So for meit's really important that the
(14:39):
writing enact the thing thatpractice what it preaches, if
you like. And there's a fewmodels there for me. One is
that, Michael Taussig used thephrase four legged writing,
which I love, and he uses it incontrast to what he calls
agribusiness writing, which iskind of like the writing of
(15:01):
academia, but it's also tiedinto this literal monoculture
that's blanketing the planet.
There's that phrase that VandanaShiva uses monocultures of the
mind and it's kind of what'shappening every time you're
expected to explain something inacademic jargon and completely
forgetting about what languageis and what language can do.
(15:24):
Another model is Brian Masumi,in his book about what animals
teach us about politics andelsewhere has talked about
languages being the thing thatthe human animal excels at or
expresses itself through, andthat paradoxically language is
where we can become animal. Youknow, we can find our animal
(15:45):
selves in this tool that wewield, which is language. And
it's a matter of doing that inan expressive way, which
actually enhances our engagementwith the world rather than
pinning it down.
Caroline Picard (15:57):
For some reason, it also makes me think a
lot about movements, like inyour opening passage about the
cat, like part of why your catbecomes such an individual
personality is because of theway you're using your writing.
And then also there isnevertheless a way where your
(16:17):
experience of the cat'sstrangeness, let's say, your
language allows us to see howthe cat slips into different
emanations of other animals. Youdescribe also how color is
associated with movement. And sothere is something very much
alive about this presence, Iguess, for lack of a better
(16:39):
word.
Tessa Laird (16:40):
Yeah, well, I guess movement and metamorphosis and
transformation, they're allthings I'm really interested in.
A few things there. One is thatNew Zealand Modernist Artist Lin
Lai is quite a force in thebook, even though I tried to
minimize it because I wanted itto be about contemporary
(17:01):
artists. And he was born in 1901and died in 1980. But he's still
very much a part of it because Igrew up in New Zealand.
I watched his films at artschool. He was kind of a pioneer
of scratch film and directpainted film directly on the
celluloid, and he also madekinetic sculptures. He kind of
(17:23):
said, you know, I want to makean art of movement, and I don't
want to represent movement. Iwant my art to move. And so this
is why he was really, attractedto kinetic and moving image as
his sort of media.
But in addition to lie andmovement, I'm sort of really
interested in this idea ofanimism and animation, maybe
(17:46):
literally in some cases.Eisenstein has lots of
interesting things to say aboutDisney and what animation
actually is, and, you know, hekind of surmises that it is the
sort of, the remainder of ofanimism in our contemporary
life. This is how it comes out.And I really wanted to not just
(18:10):
talk about animals, but aboutlively forces in across the
gamut of of of nature andcultures, and to think about the
liveliness of all things,including so called inanimate
things. And so there's also achapter about spirits, for want
of a better word, about thesixth sense and the unseen and
(18:32):
the ineffable and how they mightshow up on screen.
And I feel like that's, again,like on a continuum. It's not as
though there's a kind of acutoff point between the
spiritual and the materialworlds, and especially not when
you're looking at something likefilm. All of film is a kind of
specter. There is a lot ofscholarship about the animal
(18:56):
specter, you know, especially akira lipid. With that and with
the kind of specter of animaldeath, it makes sense to also
include the undead in thelively, if that makes sense.
So movement, transformation, andopenness to fluctuating states
(19:17):
was also something I was reallyinterested in.
Giovani Aloi (19:21):
And Tessa, I was thinking more broadly about
questions related torepresentation, abstraction,
realism, and how objectificationor freedom from objectification
might play in the context ofthose modalities. I was thinking
about very early conversationsabout objectification and
(19:42):
representation in the context ofanimal studies, like
specifically Steve Baker and hisconsideration of becoming animal
as an opportunity to free theanimal from the objectification
of classical representation andsymbolism. So I was wondering
how conceptions of cinema mightplay into that paradigm.
Tessa Laird (20:03):
One of the things I found myself bucking against a
little bit was the idea ofrealism, because personally I
feel that I'm more interested inthe kind of vocabulary of
surrealism, which is not to saythat I don't value documentary
approaches, but I don't see thatthere's a way to truly represent
the reality of the animalexperience from a human
(20:26):
perspective. And I think it'sprobably more valuable when we
try to bridge the gap, if youlike, between human and animal
experience with a more kind ofimaginative searching way of
entering another person's oranother being's sensorium, often
very different to our own. So Iguess what I appreciate is
(20:48):
perhaps those moments when I'mnot witnessing a representation
of an animal but I'm perhapswitnessing a representation of
reality as it might beexperienced by that animal.
Maybe I'll give an example. Avery short film by the Cantrells
called Articulated Image, whichis a very rapid frame rate cut
(21:12):
of movement over a pot plant ona stairwell and that's all it
is.
But when watching that film Ifelt that I was inhabiting the
body of a skink or a smalllizard and don't ask me why but
that's the kind of thing thatcame into my mind. It was the
time signature signature and theframe rate of that film. That's
(21:34):
what it did for me in a waywhich I don't think I would have
felt had I been watching a kindof realistic documentary film
about a lizard. And so I feellike there's something about
using our filmic language andmaybe our verbal language too,
to inhabit the interiority ofwhat it means to be animal
(21:56):
rather than representing themfrom the outside. And I think
that's one of the key takeawaysof Deleuze and Guattari's
concept of becoming animal.
It's very much againstrepresentation. And I feel that
realism is still sort of fallinginto that trap of being a
realism for humans. I would saya neurotypical humans at that.
(22:22):
So I'm really interested introubling, what do we get to
call realism in the first placeand who says so? That makes me
think too about how, where themetaphor is
Caroline Picard (22:36):
in a way. I don't know if you would agree
with this, but it's almost asthough by introducing cinema or
film as the animal And you talkabout the celluloid skin, for
instance, and there's all thesedifferent the performance of
color on screen and how it'ssort of transportive. But it's
interesting to imagine that ifwe are able to conceive of and
(23:01):
fully consider film itself as atype of animal, then that might
actually change the way we arecapable of engaging with the
otherness of animals morebroadly.
Tessa Laird (23:12):
Yes, absolutely. On metaphor, there's a wonderful
word that Akira Lipit came upwith, which is animetaphor. And
it's another hybrid word andit's a kind of animal metaphor,
but it's also anti metaphor.It's kind of like the embodying
and the actualization ofsomething rather than it's being
(23:33):
a metaphor, which is somethingI'm very interested in. But at
the same time, metaphors can bevery seductive and juicy and I'm
sure the book is absolutelyriddled with them.
And I think maybe that's part ofit too, which is the idea of
being playful and being able totake things when you need them
and want them and alsoproblematize them at the same
(23:55):
time. So I guess I've had my funwith metaphors at the same time
as trying to prod myself andothers to move beyond metaphor
as well.
Giovani Aloi (24:05):
What ethical dimensions do you think cinema
brings to the map of animalstudies for practitioners, for
theorists, of course, given yoursensitivity to language as well,
but also I'm thinkingrepresentationally approaches
that might be preferred incomparison to others based on
(24:27):
your mapping.
Tessa Laird (24:29):
The idea of attunement is quite important to
me and having a sort ofsympathetic resonance or
vibration with animal life,which can't be purely
theoretical and has to besomehow felt. So that the
ethics, as I said, has to have akind of aesthetic dimension and
(24:51):
that's the way in which itbecomes a lived reality rather
than a kind of theorem. Sothat's, I think what I'm
bringing to the table as a kindof reminder that engagement with
artistic practice and engagementwith the natural world both
require your full attention andyour full sensory engagement and
(25:13):
commitment. It makes me thinkalso about the various figures
and voices and philosophers thatyou draw in. You have this
wonderful, I want to
Caroline Picard (25:23):
say like pantheon of presence, whether
they are animals or films orphilosophers. And I guess I
wondered, because there is somuch movement through, how you
considered integrating everybodyand bringing everybody to the
table. And like, when did youknow when to introduce certain
(25:43):
figures? If that makes sense.Because they feel very handy.
They feel very, like, present toyou because I think they occur,
for lack of a better word, verynaturally in the flow or the
course of your writing. It seemsto me that it might be difficult
to choose from a writer'sperspective when to call on one
(26:04):
versus another.
Tessa Laird (26:06):
I would say it's completely intuitive. There's
absolutely no logic to it. Thewhole book has really grown out
of an intuitive inquiry and someof it is happenstance as well. I
mean, I didn't know anythingabout Baptiste Maurizot, but
somebody sent me his book abouttracking wolves and it became
very important to my thinking.And there's appearances by
(26:29):
people like Alexis Pauline Gumbsand her wonderful book,
Undrowned, about marine mammals.
And these seem to me ways inwhich people are addressing
animals directly. They clearlyalso come from very
philosophical or very politicalbackgrounds and the way that
they've managed to weave animalencounters through their texts
(26:51):
has been really inspiring andfoundational for me. But also I
talked to the artiststhemselves, the filmmakers
themselves, because they embodysuch a wealth of knowledge. For
example, the artist ShrewanaSpong, I read her PhD and it
really opened up for me not onlyhow her films operate but how
(27:12):
film in general operates. It wasa very inspiring text for me.
So I feel that I'm led by thefilms themselves, but the films
come with a whole raft of voicesthat they're drawing upon and
that I can draw upon too. And ofcourse, everything that I'm
reading at the time feeds intothat. Maybe it is kind of like
(27:33):
actually making a montagesequence. It's sort of operating
with all of these inputs, butfinding a way, you know, in
which you can make a rhythm or apattern. And pattern I think is
maybe one of the guidingprinciples of the whole book
that there are these littlerefrains and repetitions that
pop up here and there.
(27:53):
I see the whole thing as a kindof essay on dappled light. It's
all about light and shadow andthe recurrence of certain images
and tropes.
Giovani Aloi (28:03):
Since we're talking about the work as a
writer, thinker, I wasinterested in learning more
about your process and how thechallenges that you faced in
assembling all these voices andalso works of art. You know,
this type of book is complex toput together because of all
(28:25):
these partners, collaborators,like virtual collaborators that
come textually to keep youcompany and yet sometimes might
want to stay longer than youexpected. You have to negotiate
space. Somebody becomes tooprominent. There were also, I
remember, moments in which wewanted to negotiate certain
contemporary voices, perhapsmore than other classical animal
(28:49):
studies, voices during the roundof reviews.
So what were the challenges youfaced into putting this together
to make sure that it speaks toanimal studies of today and
beyond? I think it's a great thebook is a great contribution to
animal studies, because I see itas by far exceeding the field of
animal studies itself. I thinkit reaches well beyond.
Tessa Laird (29:10):
My biggest challenge is always how to stop
trying to put everything in andthat's kind of what I ended up
doing anyway. But I absolutelyhate getting rid of things. I
always feel like it's cuttingoff an arm. You know when you're
talking about relationality it'slike well where does one thought
end? It could go on and on andon.
(29:33):
So for me it's always about youknow when to stop and what to
get rid of and that's alwayshard And it's not for me
difficult at all to see allthese wonderful connections
between things. They just comenaturally. And so I feel
probably looking back at it,there's probably still too much
in the book. As you know, Icould have gone into more depth,
(29:55):
like I'm always telling mystudents, less breadth, more
depth, but I myself can'tpractise what I preach. And I do
so love the ways in which thingsconnect.
But I had some good feedbackalong the way and there were
many, many provocations. One ofthe earliest ones I remember, I
thought was really interesting,was a Romance language speaker
(30:16):
saying you can't call the bookcinema because that means, you
know, bad cinema and it has allthese negative connotations. And
I thought that's true but that'sexactly how the animal's been
portrayed for so long and that'show the animal often comes into
film as some sort of malevolententity. So I felt like I had to
(30:38):
kind of run with it and reclaimthat and say, well, there's a
maul at the tail of every animalquite literally and we can't be
running away from that, we haveto embrace it. And there's been
many, many moments where I'vehad to reconsider something and
think about what it means forthe book as a whole, but at the
same time my default is to keepthings and incorporate things
(31:01):
and argue for their necessityrather than to leave them out
altogether.
This makes me want
Caroline Picard (31:07):
to go back to this idea that Giovanni brought
up as a counterpoint of howoften scholarship and scientific
thought wants to like pin thebutterfly and how that is set in
contrast with the type ofmovement which is also as we've
discussed your writing sort ofexemplifies. So I guess I'm
interested in how you thinkabout or one thinks about the
(31:29):
ethics of movement and alivenessin writing? Or like if you allow
the aliveness of your subject,for lack of a better word, to
come through in the writing,does your sense of ethics or
scholarship also have to adapt?
Tessa Laird (31:45):
I feel like the ethics is in the approach and
they're indivisible. The methodis a way of enacting the ethics
and making it visible and live.I really don't believe you can
argue for a relational view ofthe world without practicing
that relationality in yourwriting because if you fall into
(32:05):
a kind of academic jargon whileyou're trying to talk your way
out of that worldview, it's notgoing to work. You have to walk
the talk, which actually maybethat's what four legged writing
is. It's the body coming intothe text.
And then I hope the readers willtake it to the next step, which
(32:25):
is continuing with the walkingmetaphor. I mean, I don't want
this to be an endpoint, youknow, what happens to the reader
after reading this text. Maybethey feel empowered or
emboldened in their own creativepractice or in their writing or
even just in their relationshipswith the natural world, with
animals, with how theyexperience light and shadow,
(32:49):
dappled light through theleaves. Is that a cinematic
experience? Maybe it is.
So I want there to be some kindof movement beyond the book as
well, movement into the world.One of the
Caroline Picard (33:03):
things you talk about in your book, Tessa, is
how film as a medium is alsokind of dying out. And you sort
of compare it with animals, youknow, during the sixth great
extinction. And I was thinkingabout the digitization of film,
but then also the pressure to AIoptimize our language. That
(33:24):
seems like another push towardsmonoculture, which is really
interesting to me.
Tessa Laird (33:29):
Absolutely. I guess I haven't mentioned anything
about AI in the book and I'vekind of resisted talking about
things like virtual reality. Andthese are probably precisely the
things, you know, that I shouldbe addressing because this is
what's happening right now. Butat the same time, I feel like as
(33:49):
we're charging into this newunknown with all these new
technologies, we're reallyturning our back on technologies
that we've had and they are likedying species. This was actually
something that Corinne andArthur Cantrell have talked
about is that they were sort ofthe last handful of people using
analog film at a time when videohad completely taken over and
(34:12):
they remained steadfast and trueto their medium, but they felt
like they were a dying species.
And now that Corinne has passedand there are some films and
canisters that have not beendigitized that may melt away
with time, it's kind of scary tothink about that, you know, at a
time when we're in the sixthgreat extinction event as well,
(34:33):
which is far more terrifying,the fact that we're losing
species at a massive rate. But Ifeel like these things are
somehow entwined. The fact thatI don't think we have enough
respect or care for truediversity and instead we seem
hell bent on creating modes ofturning knowledge and experience
(34:53):
into a kind of vast arena ofhomogeneity and sameness and the
reproduction of more and more ofthe same. And I'm really
interested in the preservationof pockets of a true sort of
singularity in resistance tothat, you know, resisting the
(35:13):
urge to pick things up justbecause they're new and because
you think that you need to belike everybody else by utilizing
these tools and insteadcelebrating what genuine
diversity remains both in thenatural world and in our
artistic and literaryproduction. Yeah, I think it's
very important to fiercely safesafeguard what remains.
Giovani Aloi (35:38):
I think this is a wonderful place to end our
conversation. Thank you so much,Tessa, for joining us today.
It's been a pleasure talking toyou and we look forward to
seeing cinema traveling acrossthe world.
Tessa Laird (35:51):
Thanks so much, Tessa. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you both.
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