Shan Crosbie

(Un)Other Animal is an immersive installation involving a 10 meter long corridor constructed with 2 meter high hoarding panels. The entrance to the corridor begins at a comfortable size and then gradually tapers to the width of the average person’s shoulder span. The audience is invited to enter the space, and as they move through, the volume of an audio recording of inside a slaughterhouse increases. Once they reach the end of the corridor, they encounter a small screen playing video footage of a distressed steer attempting to turn back around inside a narrow corridor as he waits to be slaughtered.

I chose to show a non-graphic excerpt from the activist and film producer Philippe Radault’s documentary, À l’abattoir. With Radault’s consent, I selected this excerpt because the absence of slaughter allows the audience to focus on the psychological state of the animal through its body language and facial expressions. When presented with graphic footage in traditional activism, audiences are often unable to engage with the animal on any meaningful level. This project’s design directly references Bruce Nauman’s performative corridors, using the familiar minimalist form as an activist tool. I chose to construct the corridor out of hoarding panels to reference a contemporary architectural system of controlling and constricting human bodies. Combined with slaughterhouse design principles, I wanted to build a structure that used a familiar parallel to architecture used to disempower farmed animal bodies.

My aim is not to create a mimetic experience of the slaughterhouse in this project, but rather to create an unexpected and empathetic encounter with the farmed animal. Through the hybrid architecture of hoarding panels and slaughterhouse design, I wanted to construct a simulation of control and powerlessness that allows the participant to experience bodily, or somatic, empathy for the steer in the video footage. I hope that when the participant turns to leave the installation, that there is an understanding of the contrast between their agency in the situation and the powerlessness of the farmed animal.