The first metaphor was “Animal”
by Azul De Monte
During my Field of Study residency at Mirror Institute, two domesticated horses trained for dressage competition lived among us. They were recovering from severe injuries, feeding on a piece of barren land that was healing in its own way. "The First Metaphor Was Animal" was the title of the workshop I led at the residency, its name was taken from John Berger's book "Why Look at Animals?" (1980). During the workshop we sought to unravel, among other things, the dynamics involved in the process of domestication; those that are at play when confronting a non-human entity with an alien language, with its order, its hierarchies and its contradictions and how these processes reflect many situations in which we engage with an "other". In the specific process of animal training, the language involved becomes more specific and triggers different confluences of control and play.
In this sound piece, I tried to represent those different layers where the presence of the trainer and the horse seemed to be on separate timelines and spaces, sometimes coinciding, sometimes far away from each other. For me, a lingering question remains about what happens to the new language the animal has acquired once it is alone, or when it is in pairs.
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