I chose the video "Their World Is Not Our World" by Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris. They are two Americans born two years apart. The video is 23 minutes long, and is apparently a work in progress. In the video, the narrator who is male, goes on a trip to Oostvaardersplassen, where the woman he accompanies wants to take photos and explore the land. The general public are not allowed to enter the park, they're only allowed to look at it from the outside. The male narrator says that he only really goes on the trip to be with the woman photographer, and that he just wanted to spend time with her. However, based on his narration he learned a lot in the process. He speaks of the "re-creation" of extinct animals to be placed in the park, and the park's creation and the surrounding community as a sort of idealistic and utopian place. He speaks of the animals as if they have maintained their innocence in a world where humans have not. For example, when he explains the concept of the "nazi cow" he says what they're really called, and then their nickname, and then proceeds to comment on the nickname saying "as if it was their fault what happened". he explains how the nazis wanted to make a hunting grounds with only purebred indigenous animals that a certain man (i forgot his name) could kill off for sport. The juxtaposition of these innocent and unknowing animals next to the kind of person that wants to kill others both because they believe they don't belong on the earth, but also for fun. The quote "Their world is not our world" comes about when the narrator is expressing the obvious differences between animals and humans, if you can say that humans are not animals. I believe that quote to be true. We as humans can never truly know what goes on in those animals' heads because they don't speak our languages. In a way, the fact that we don't share the same "world" means that we have no right to destroy theirs. we live by the same means but have no mutual understanding of one another. The rule forbidding the public to enter the park is also artistic in a way he mentions that the photographer said, a "don't touch the art kind of thing" but I feel like there should be another reason. The land in and of itself is not untouched, because those animals were human made, and the community of houses on the water is man made as well, but preventing humans without permits to enter the park is kind of a tribute to the means of the park's creation. I watched the end and the beginning of the video, im not sure how much of it I missed during the video but there was one quote that struck me toward the middle or end which was "the other type of hunters that came were the news cameras". This makes me feel a type of way because it shows how humans not only ruin nature by tearing it up and poaching, but also with invasive methods involved in documentation. To me, one can never truly feel the atmosphere of a place through a video; this reminds me of the concept of images from Ways of Seeing, and how the images which are distributed into different homes change their meaning. Even as I am sitting and watching the video about Oostvaardersplassen, my perception of the place is changed by the point the video is making, the soundtrack, the voiceover, the images and the order in which they're presented to me, these things all affect my idea of what that park is and what it is there for. When the narrator mentions the news cameras, it is after a period of silence in which there are video clips of the specially bred horses galloping around, and people taking video or photo or just watching. He then proceeds to speak of the death that begins occurring, and it is almost hard to listen because of the graphic clips that accompany his speech. Animals in the process of dying, animals lying dead on the ground or in the water, animals rotting, and flies picking at their decaying flesh. It's almost disturbing-- but we know as humans that this sort of thing is happening because of our interference in the natural world, it just doesn't become as real to some people until they see it. This video makes me look at certain things in a different light now, especially about the world of animals and what they think about that's deeper than what they're going to eat or how they're going to reproduce. I hope that they do have that deeper thinking, but I suppose I'll never know.
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