A Shift in Our Sensitivity to Nature

With the practical aspect of animals in the city, which enables self-sufficiency, I am also

interested in the emotional connection between people and animals, and the wider connection between people and nature. Though it may appear, and many people hold this opinion, that it was mainly in the previous century when important shifts were created in the relations between people and nature, English historian Keith Thomas has called attention to the important

development of the sensibility towards nature which developed in British society between 1500 and 1800. Perhaps we can see this development in a similar way in Europe as well. “But to understand these present-day sensibilities we must go back to the early modern period. For it was between 1500 and 1800 that there occurred a whole cluster of changes in the way in which men and women, at all social levels, perceived and classified the natural world around them. In the process some long established dogmas about man’s place in nature were discarded. New sensibilities arose toward animals, plants and the landscape. The relationship of man to other species for his own advantage was sharply challenged. It was these centuries which generated both intense interest in the natural world and those doubts and anxieties about

Polonca Lovšin,The Right Balance, 2013 10 Collages, 30 x 45cm

Collage No. 5

man’s relationship to it which we have inherited in magnified form.”¹⁷³ To that end, in the video animation The Right Balance I also introduced hens trying to lay grade A eggs, and who are trying to lay eggs constantly, because otherwise they will be replaced within a year. I also included information from Uradni list Republike Slovenije (the Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia), specifically the Guidelines for the Quality of Eggs¹⁷⁴ and the Guidelines for the Protection of Livestock.¹⁷⁵

This research speaks about the need for a changed view of the city and the countryside. One of the keys is that the production of food in the cities is urgently needed for the very future of cities.

It is necessary to encourage the processes which create a natural cycle within the city. With that it is also necessary to create a shift in the establishment of emotional connections between people and animals in the city, which currently consist mainly of pets, mostly dogs and cats.

Domestic animals were mainly taken advantage of by people in the past as a work force, and were just bred for food. Even those connections were emotional, but rarely sentimental. I can remember my grandmother well, who at an old age lived alone and had a small self-sufficient farm. All year she bred a pig in the barn, speaking to it and feeding it, and in the summer it was slaughtered. She would cry, but she slaughtered it nonetheless, as this was part of her household economics.

With the loss of contact between city residents and farming, and with the isolation of the city from farming, we have developed an increasingly emotional relationship to animals as pets and objects of contemplation. In parallel with these feelings, the breeding of animals and their slaughter is increasing day-by-day, which, because of the city’s distance to those activities, is something we do not see. In 2005 all of us present were shocked by the documentary film Our Daily Bread (Unser täglich Brot).¹⁷⁶ The film provides a realistic view on the internal workings of numerous factories which produce food in present day society. While people obsessively form ties with their pets and we have a strange relationship to other domestic animals. From my experience with the spatial intervention with a goat I confess that I was actually a little afraid of it. Many of the people who knew about this art action found this completely ordinary domestic animal to be something truly exotic.

The Anthropocene

As has been mentioned, the development of a sensitivity to nature can be seen mainly in the last one hundred years. Around ten years ago, scientists started to speculate on the

173Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World, Changing attitudes in England 1500-1800, Oxford University press, Oxford, 1984. pg. 15.

174 This regulation provides a means of labelling and minimum conditions which must be met in the production and trade of hen eggs intended for human consumption, and to ensure and maintain its quality.

175This regulation lays down minimum standards for the protection of livestock, sheds, and the registration procedure for rearing laying hens in accordance with Uradni list RS, št. 51/2010 from 28 June, 2010.

176Our Daily Bread / Unser täglich Brot is a 2005 documentary film directed, co-produced, and with cinematography by Aus-trian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The film depicts how modern food production companies employ technology to maximize efficiency, consumer safety, and profit.

idea of changing the name of the epoch we are now living in, and suggested calling it the

“Anthropocene”, a term which is widely accepted today. According to the Anthropocene theory humanity is the equivalent of a natural force which has now fundamentally influenced the Earth’s ecosystems. In the last two hundred years, humanity and the planet have simultaneously

entered into a period of radical and interdependent transformation, meaning that humanity urgently needs to change its perspective on nature. Instead of having a human-centric position towards nature, people are developing a new relationship with nature based on mutual respect and cooperation. The utopian idea that nature should be treated as a subject and not an object was realised in the new constitution of Ecuador in 2008, which grants nature inalienable rights – instead of our “rights to nature” it addresses the “rights of nature”.

The development of people’s sensibility to nature is something I also describe in my next artwork, Back to the City (Nazaj v mesto).¹⁷⁷

177 Polonca Lovšin, Back to the City, video animation, 2011, duration: 13min 35sec.

Polonca Lovšin, Back to the City, 2011 10 Collages, 30 x 45cm

Collage No. 1