>log.

Out of an appreciation and respect for our non-human kin and a desire for more caring ways of being, I started to collect moments of interaction between us and those we share this earth with. In an extensive list, I gradually combine and track information I’ve stumbled upon, heard or known, sought out, researched, experienced, read, or felt. The gathered contents are rooted in journalism, science, literature, social media and art. Repetition, rhythm, and familiarity give shape to the hard facts and frame the personal story of a lost opportunity at a family farm. This paper functions as an anchor for my artistic project, acting as a counterweight that allows me to explore gentler connections. It understands itself as an exhausted sigh in the long-known, holding what’s uncomfortable to see. It repeats and ruminates as a sort of chant, holding grief to affirm reorientation.

It's 13:24. 121 million animals have been killed since midnight for human consumption.

In July 2017, an old camphor tree inside Arisugawa-no-Miya Park was moved by 10m to make room for road construction.

Every 1.2 seconds, one football pitch of forest is cut. For animal feed, biofuel, palm oil, soy, cocoa, and coffee. To mine for minerals, for wood and timber, infrastructure, and expansion

A group of students in Zurich take up anew the act of picking linden blossoms for tea. Through the previous abandonment of the act of picking, the trees have been rendered invisible.

A first version of the chainsaw was invented around 250 years ago as a medical instrument.

In 1996, it took a worker using traditional felling methods eighteen minutes to cut down a tree in the Brazilian Amazon.

Using “modern techniques of environmentally sound harvesting”, it took them twenty-two minutes.

Depending on the circumference of the stem, in 2010, a high-powered harvester needed one to two minutes to fell a tree.

A writer considers revisiting the tree whose root made her fall and break her wrist, to beg for a little solace.

In the crown of a 100-year-old redwood tree, a land defender sings a protest song.

The writer remembers his great-grand uncle telling him that a small piece of wood he was about to burn was, in fact, his ancestor, the founder of their village. According to him, the tree the wood came from was protecting the village.

In Bantu thought, all creatures preserve a bond with one another and are always found in relationship.

Factory farming and profit maximisation started to dominate around 200-300 years ago.

Death by bolt is considered the most humane way of killing an animal. Within two milliseconds, the bolt causes a severe concussion at impact, and massive over- and under-pressure in the brain when entering and exiting the head.

Due to strong rowing movements of their limbs, which endanger staff and make rapid, safe exsanguination harder, and the difficulty of tying them down tightly enough to guarantee precise positioning of the apparatus, bolt killing is mostly prohibited with pigs.

Two sisters paint a fresco in a temporarily empty stable in remembrance of the cows who spent their lives looking at the previously empty wall. Writing below quotes from Genesis 1:28.

In 2003, the principle that animals are not objects was established in Swiss law.

The fox explains that taming creates bonds that entail eternal responsibility and mutual dependence.

European settlers killed 40 million buffalo in Black Hills to eradicate the indigenous people by stripping them of their life supply.

According to the Lakhota origin story, Black Hills was the birthplace of the first buffalo and the first human.

A calf is named “thief” because he broke out of the stable to drink his mother’s milk.

Research done in the 80s showed that one in ten Israeli schoolchildren, when asked to draw Palestinians, portrayed them as animals. The same generation that now forms part of the army in Gaza.

In two weeks, Israeli settlers destroyed more than 900 olive trees and saplings across the West Bank.

During the Vietnam War, the US used herbicides to defoliate forests and mangroves, to destroy crops, induce starvation, and clear land to make concealment impossible.

In postwar Europe, dynamite fishing became popular due to food shortages and people’s access to explosives and grenades.

Whales can no longer communicate and orient themselves due to noise pollution from underwater explosions used for military testing and seabed mapping.

26 dead dolphins washed up on the shore, with stomachs and lungs full of mud. The pathologist compared the deaths to a mass suicide. A spokesman of the Ministry of Defence denies influence on the deaths because they take their “environmental responsibilities extremely seriously.” That day, sonar scans and firing exercises were carried out in the area.

Two potential candidates want to create a sanctuary for rescued and old animals, offer therapeutic climbing in the forest, and ethics classes for schoolchildren.

Without its dams, dunes, dykes, and barriers, the Netherlands would be underwater up to Utrecht.

Inhabitants of Pari, whose existence is at stake because of rising sea levels, are suing Holcim, one of the biggest cement producers in the world.

An aunt can’t comfortably BBQ a sausage in front of the house if there’s a vegan farm in the back.

The Journalist calls the Mediterranean and the Atlantic graveyards for exiles without burial rites or tombstones

It was 15:25 on the 12th of October last year. A fishing boat carrying refugees in the Mediterranean was under attack by the EU-backed, self-proclaimed Libyan coast guard. Their task is to stop refugee boats from setting off or shoot them in the open sea so that they never reach Europe.

Asylum seekers in Switzerland are protesting against being locked out of their rooms every day, in the snow and rain. This is done because emergency aid should not create any incentive for them to stay.

The shoulder height of a Dutch police horse must be at least 1.65m. Otherwise, it won't make a strong enough impression.

Bewildered officers are standing at Malieveld, where a group of deer have escaped the enclosure through a hole in the fence. They are grazing happily next to the moat.

The narrator writes a letter to the police to share her suspicions of the wild animals taking revenge by murdering their perpetrators, for the suffering they have endured.

They decline a second option of a sanctuary and choose two meat farmers instead.

There was an ad during the Super Bowl for mass surveillance, covered as a service for finding lost pets.

A person and a big dog are living under the viaduct in front of the ceramics studio’s shop window.

Loukanikos, a Greek riot dog, was nominated as “Person of the year” for Times Magazine after fighting alongside anti-austerity activists.

A lesbian couple published a book of poems, dedicated to their dead dog, under a male pseudonym.

The Baron lets a dog cemetery be set up in the rose garden. The three gravestones are for Leto, Donau, and Actæton.

The writer is imagining a graveyard at the border of the forest for the killed calves. There would be 162 tombstones after one year, standing next to the ones of the farmer’s cat, a loved dog, and a friend.

The narrator knows, “One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets themselves be tamed.”

The class reads a story about humans living in symbiosis with the native species on the planet they migrated to. Humans function as surrogates to host the alien children.

Montana state and federal agencies are culling Yellowstone's wild bison herds, the descendants of the few that survived the mass murders. The claimed reason is to limit their territorial range because of concerns over the transmission of bacteria from wild bison to domestic cattle. History shows the bison have never transmitted disease to cattle.

Tuberculosis is thought to have been acquired through the domestication of goats.

The animal industry excessively uses antibiotics to manage disease in overcrowded, overbred, sick livestock. The drugs remain in the meat and contribute to antibiotic resistance in consumers.

A guy in front of the bar pulls out of his backpack a 3kg ball of raw ground-up cow meat in plastic wrap. It will feed him for 3 days, he says, laughing.

The poet tells the reader not to cry at their grave but to look for them in the blowing winds and the diamond glints in the snow.

A line in a letter to the land that caused the fighting reads, “I’m sorry you aren’t being listened to.”

The cobalt in the laptops the graduates are writing on was mined by children in Congo and Rwanda.

Mineral fights leave twenty-one million people in DRC in urgent need of medical, food, and other aid.

Ninety invitations for people to write letters to other-than-human lives are printed and handed out.

In some Native languages, the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”

A poet writes that she prefers to be alone when she speaks to the catbirds or hugs the old black oak tree.

The person with the scared dog tells her that the guards saw the buzzard attack the bird.

After receiving an invite, he told the story of the bird he has breakfast with every morning at seven since January. He is inside, the bird outside on the windowsill with a little piece of bread.

A landlord in the library says he will go to hell for all the mice he has killed.

An artist is seeking to fall asleep in a sheep pen, adapting to their horizontal vision, attempting to synchronise with interspecies communication channels.

During the Wilde Jagd, ghosts and spirits roam the countryside. It was said that on these stormy winter nights, animals would talk to one another, and people were warned not to listen.

The Mayan origin story tells that, after a first failed attempt at creating a grateful, caring human, the gods give the animals and plants voices to express their grief and anger at the disrespect shown them by the humans of wood.

In the Christian origin story, god tells humans to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

While stroking the purring cat on her lap, she orders two dead ducks for the big dinner coming up.

Physical and psychological distance are among the strongest suppressors of empathy.

Cognitive dissonance describes the experienced discomfort that arises from the contradiction of the felt affection for animals while also consuming them. The brain uses ignorance, dissociation, and avoidance to prevent this discomfort.

The mother calls the daughter to tell her that the renovations of the stable are starting soon.

The planner is proposing to maximise the capacity of the stable so it can hold 44 cows instead of 15.

A paper on a cabin door instructs you on how to encounter a living being in nature. Among other steps, it tells you not to refer to the being as “it”.

In the Seterlekh ceremony, an individual animal is liberated from dying for meat. The herder speaks directly to the animal, making a verbal pact that the family will not kill her, and that she must aid as protector for them and the herd. It is assumed that the selected animal understands human language because she holds greater power than the rest of the herd.

On the last page of a cookbook, the author speculates that the lack of articulation of the animal might be caused by a state of deep meditation. Another theory is that they speak so slowly that by the time they have spoken one word, they have already died.

>log.

Bachelor thesis by Anna Silva Zeller

@ssilvvva

KABK Graphic Design

Thesis guidance by: Dirk Vis

Coding guidance by: Thomas Buxo & François Girard-Meunier