I recently attended a talk given by artist Micheal Pestel. Pestel’s work is based largely on appreciating the birds in our lives that we often take for granted. His work also carries messages about the problems of bird extinction and how humans have a diminished relationship with nature. In his talk, Pestel discussed how birds helped him combine his love of music and art. He said that “to you they are birds, but to me they are voices in the forest.” By stating this, he was trying to show that he had a strong relationship with birds. By referring to them as voices, they were no longer considered animals and thus no longer considered second-class citizens of the Earth. He then emulated their voices by using several different flutes to make bird sounds.

Pestel’s views often align with Berger’s. For example, Pestel mentioned in his talk that three things killed the passenger pigeon: the locomotive, the telegraph, and the gun. He stated that these man-made inventions will now forever carry the shadow of causing a mass extinction. Berger showed a similar disdain for the Industrial Revolution and its consequences in his novel About Looking when he wrote that “the 19th century, in western Europe and North America, saw the beginning of a process, today being completed by 20th century corporate capitalism, by which every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature was broken” (3). Pestel mentioned that we stopped treating the world as our tribal ancestors did and believes that we have lost our relationship with nature because of the printed word. He thinks that we can regain the lost voices of animals by transforming our own language and own experience. He calls this “listening in with our mouths.” Although Pestel did not mention any specific ways that we can transform our language to help us understand animals more, one way that I think we can do so is by eliminating the human/animal binary from our language. We can do this by not lumping all non-human animals into the one category “animal” because this categorization promotes a view of self vs. other in which one must be inherently superior as opposed to viewing other creatures as equals living together harmoniously on Earth.

References:

Berger, John. About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Print.

Pestel, Michael. “Brown Bag Artist’s talk: Michael Pestel: Requiem, Ectopistes, Migratorius.” Lafayette College. Williams Center of the Arts, Easton, PA. 17 Sept. 2014. Guest Lecture.