maribastashevski at gmail.com
Clever Monkey -- Stubborn Donkey
Culture, Art, Technology 1 (CAT 1) MFA
KIT; NTNU - 2020 Fall
Today the absence of animals in our lives is inverse to the multitude of cyber-replicates that look back at us from the scrolling canvases. Following the monkey & the donkey as our guides this course examines how certain prior historical tropes and relationships between artists and animals may become reinforced cliches or raw potential for art, with and for animals.
Week 1- Introduction
Required:
Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman - Thinking With Animals (Introduction)
Carol Gigliotti - Leonardo's Choice (Introduction)
Steve Baker - Artist Animal (Introduction)
Suggested:
Jorge Louis Borges - The Book of Imaginary Beings
John Berger - Why Look at Animals?
Donna Haraway - When Animals Look Back
Beryl Rowland - Animals with Human Faces (Ape & Ass)
(in particular: “monkey of the ink pot”)
Week 2 - Water in Water - Beasts & Savage Intimacy
Required:
Cary Wolfe - Apes like us
Tom Tyler - Surrounded by Informants and Assassins
George Bataille - The Pineal Eye
Oxana Timofeeva - The History of Animals in Philosophy - The Insane
Suggested:
George Bataille - The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture
Octavio Paz - The Monkey Grammarian
Devdutt Pattanaik - Hanuman, an introduction
Artworks:
Francisco Goya - Los Caprichos
Thomas Bewick - The Dog-Faced Baboon (verso)
Thomas Bewick - The Pig-Tailed Baboon (recto)
Donkey in the Early Chinese Landscape painting
Week 3 - Metamorphosis I
Required:
Giorgio Agamben - The Open - Man and Animal
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - Becoming Intense Becoming Animal
Felice Cimatti - Unbecoming Human
Deke Weaver - Monkey
Suggested:
Ovid - The Metamorphoses
Michael Taussig - The Cry of the Donkey
Zairong Xiang - Queer Divine Waters
Week 4 - Metamorphosis II
Required:
Patricia Piccinini - Works
Pierre Huyghe - Untitled (Human Mask)
David Rych - Reminisces from the Zulu Zone
Nicolas Primat - Works
Suggested:
Apuleius - The Golden Ass
Peter Weibel - Valie Export Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit
Rachel Mayeri - Primate Cinema
Ruben Östlund - The Square
Week 5 - Uplift
From Soldier Apes to Virtual Menagerie
Required:
Franz Kafka - A Report to an Academy
Kadji Amin - Trans* Plasticity and the Ontology of Race and Species
Patricia McCormack - The Animal Catalyst Towards Ahuman Theory - Compassion
New Scientist - The Soviet Man Ape Scandal
Ted Chiang - The Life Cycle of Software Objects
Alexandru Solomon - Tarzan’s Testicles
Suggested:
Tom Tyler - The Thumb is a Little Hand - Assistant to The Greater
Jill Bought - The Donkey and Mr. Simpson: remember the donkey in the Anzac legend
Matthew Chrulew - The Beast - Machine Fableaux
See also: Project Kollie
Media:
2001: A Space Odyssey (opening scene)
Dmitri Shostakovich - Orango
Artworks:
Coco Fusco - Observations of Predation in Humans: A Lecture by Dr. Zira, Animal Psychologist
Week 6 - The Machines of Loving Grace
(with a guest lecture by Dominic Pettman)
Required:
Dominic Pettman - Sonic Intimacy -Voice Species, Technics
Ursula K. Le Guin - The White Donkey
Karin Bolender - The Unnaming of Aliass
Hélène Cixous - Writing Blind Conversation with a Donkey
Robert Bresson - Au Hasard Balthazar
Suggested:
William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Andy Merrifield - The Wisdom of Donkeys
Virginia Richer - Ape Meets Primatologist
George Archainbaud - Her Jungle Love
Marco Ferreri - Bye Bye Monkey (trigger warning)
Nagisa Ōshima - Max, Mon Amour
Artworks:
Frida Kahlo, monkeys apes and xeno-transplantation in art
Week 7 - The Labor of Progress - Animal Technologies:
Food, War, Entertainment
Required:
Wislawa Szymborska - Two Monkeys by Brueghel
Gustafsson & Haapoja - History According to Cattle
Ben Goldfarb - A Space Elk Named Monique
Jonathan Burt - Animals in Film - Film and the History of Visual Animal (Chapter I)
Jody Berland - Virtual Menageries
Suggested:
Robin Thompson - The Zebra Donkey Gazing The Photographic
Carol Gigliotti - Leonardo's Choice; Genetic Science, Animal Exploitation, and Challenge
Examine the role test monkeys played in the development of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Artworks/Media:
Frederick Wiseman - Primate
Sean Landers: Singerie: Le Peintre
Pierre Brassau - The Monkey Painter (see also: monkey waiter - Fuku chan)
Maximilian Haas - Donkey on Stage
Required:
Tim Ingold - The Affordances of the Animate Environment: social science from the ecological point of view
Louise Westling - Language is Everywhere
Ted Chiang - The Great Silence
Laurent Dubreuil & Sue Savage Rumbaugh - Dialogues on the Human Ape - (Chapter - On language and apes)
Suggested:
Susan Savage - Bonobo Communication
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla - The Great Silence
Arthur Lubin - Francis the talking Mule
David Lynch - What did Jack Do (netflix)
Select Class References
(reference ≠ endorsement)
Scenes from the Private and Public Life of Animals - Grandville's animals
I Want to Believe - A.M. Gittlitz
Manette Salomon - Edmond and Jules de Goncourt (pet-monkey Vermilion, victorian pets)
Chimpanzee culture wars - Nicolas Langlitz*
Progress vs Sunsets -Re-formulating the Nature Documentary - Melanie Bonajo
The Naked Ape - Desmond Morris
Primate Visions - Donna Haraway
The Donkey Rider as Icon: Li Cheng and early Chinese Landscape Painting - Peter C. Sturman
Animal Liberation - Peter Singer
The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man - Eleanor Burke Leacock
The Ethics of Animal Labor - Jocelyne Porcher
Use of Qualitative Behaviour Assessment as an Indicator of Welfare in Donkeys - Francoise Wemelsfelder
How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species - Dorothy L. Cheney Robert M. Seyfarth
The Alienation of Humans and Animals in Uplift Fiction - Ina Roy-Federman
The Animal-Machine - Bruce Mazlish
The Behaviour of Organisms - BF Skinner
Challenging Skinner - Alfred North Whitehead
The Territorial Imperative - Robert Ardrey
The First Step - Leo Tolstoy
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Wisdom of Donkeys: Finding Tranquility in a Chaotic World - Andy Merrifield
The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Edgar Allen Poe
Wolf At the School - Sarah Kay
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
The Complete Writings - Zhuangzi (The story of the Monkey Keeper)
Ship of fools - Sebastian Brant
The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer, 1950
The miller, his son and the donkey - Folktales
Art and Media in Conversation:
Human Nature - Michel Gondry
Untitled (Monkey) - John Isaacs
Self-restricting/self-surveilling monkey
Monkey uses robotic arm to feed itself
Primate - Frederick Wiseman
The Disenchanted Forest - Sarita Siegel
The Girl and the Gorilla - Djuna Barnes
Donkey Skin - Jaques Demy
Phenomena - Dario Argento
The Untamed - Netflix
Agraharathil Kazhutai (Donkey in the Brahmin ghetto)
The Hairy Ape - Eugene O'Neill
Holy Motors (the ending) - Leos Carax
Works with donkeys - Maurizio Catalan
Ararat Express -Benni Efrat, 2034
Medieval Bestiary - Water Mill
A Virgin with the Monkey - Albrecht Durer
Two Chained Monkeys - Pieter Bruegel
The Paston Treasure - Unknown artist
The Sleeping Pedlar Robbed by Monkeys - Pieter van der Heyden
Titania Adoring the Ass-Headed Bottom - Henry Fuseli
Fair at Ennis - William Turner
Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream - Edwin Landseer
The Vegetable Garden with Donkey - Joan Miro
Donkeys Bridge - Niko Pirosmani
Esel or Figurer - Johan Gorbitz
They Don’t Fall Off Their Donkey - Leonardo Alenza y Nieto
A Human Compared to a Donkey - J.C. Lavater
Two Monkey Jockeys are Riding a Terrified Donkey - Etching by T. Landseer
To Aper I røde drakter - Erik Werenskiold
Study for Chimpanzee - Francis Bacon
Monkey In the Mirror - Eugène Leroux
aсЁл напракАт - Donkey for Hire - Ilia Zdanevich
Self- Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird - Frida Kahlo
Baboon and Young - Pablo Picasso
The Third Donkey - Walton Ford
Plague in Form of a Donkey - Patrick Munck
A Blue Donkey and Donkey at the Museum - Mai-Thu Perret
The Weakened Eye of Day - Isabel Nolan
Untitled (Monkey) - John Isaacs
Wounded Animals And Icon-Making - John Isaacs
Taxidermy Donkeys - Maurizio Catalan
Imitation of Life - Matthias Poledna
Gorilla gorilla gorilla - Diana Thater
Ape Culture - HKW exhibition
Mousse 55
Theater, Garden, Bestiary - Filipa Ramos, Vincent Normand, and Tristan Garcia In Conversation
I hired a chimpanzee to portray me on video - Sean Sanders
Monkey viewing a painting - Gabriel Cornelius von Max
Monkeys as Judges of Art
Ikea Monkey - Lydia Blakeley
Monkey Train (Dots) - Jeff Koons
Snow Monkeys in Jigokudani Monkey Park - Jon Rafman
Apes Movement Demonstration - Terry Notari