1 00:00:09,100 --> 00:00:11,200 [Former Los Angeles Zoo] 2 00:00:12,840 --> 00:00:15,840 I always thought this might have been where they kept the lions. 3 00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:22,420 In the '60s and '70s, my parents took us to zoos. 4 00:00:22,430 --> 00:00:24,870 But they always made me sad. 5 00:00:26,520 --> 00:00:29,140 You know, I had a friend who took his daughter to the zoo, 6 00:00:29,140 --> 00:00:31,550 and I said, "Why would you do such a thing," 7 00:00:31,550 --> 00:00:33,270 "and show someone--a child--" 8 00:00:33,270 --> 00:00:36,330 "That this is the way we behave toward nature." 9 00:00:36,330 --> 00:00:38,400 And he said, "Well, where else will she see a giraffe?" 10 00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:40,940 And I said, "Well, maybe she shouldn't see a giraffe!" 11 00:00:41,900 --> 00:00:43,800 Maybe the only place you should see a giraffe 12 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:45,100 is on National Geographic. 13 00:00:45,100 --> 00:00:48,320 And maybe that's why we have National Geographic, you know? 14 00:00:48,320 --> 00:00:50,440 Watch nature documentaries. 15 00:00:52,220 --> 00:00:57,059 Ric O'Barry always says that it makes them akin to psychotic 16 00:00:57,059 --> 00:00:59,279 when you put an animal in a space like this-- 17 00:01:00,920 --> 00:01:06,180 That has a little bit of that, sort of, Chernobyl-esque quality to it. 18 00:01:06,190 --> 00:01:07,670 But that's a… 19 00:01:08,180 --> 00:01:10,540 It’s a different kind of disaster. 20 00:01:10,550 --> 00:01:12,950 You know, this isn’t... This is ongoing. 21 00:01:16,130 --> 00:01:19,680 My life as an activist is one that is anti-captivity. 22 00:01:22,100 --> 00:01:24,240 ["Welcome to Taiji"] [Post-production and editing: Diana Thater] 23 00:01:24,240 --> 00:01:25,800 When I worked for the Dolphin Project-- Ric O’Barry-- 24 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:30,819 all of the work was to stop the capture and sale of cetaceans 25 00:01:30,819 --> 00:01:34,259 to marine parks and animal amusements. 26 00:01:35,660 --> 00:01:39,640 I haven't done any activist work since 2010. 27 00:01:40,360 --> 00:01:44,060 And I sort of feel a loss of that in my life. 28 00:01:50,580 --> 00:01:52,280 ["Delphine" (1999)] 29 00:01:52,280 --> 00:01:56,720 I don't put the politics of activism and the politics of my work together. 30 00:01:56,720 --> 00:01:58,360 I think it makes a muddle. 31 00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:01,540 My life as an artist is a different one. 32 00:02:01,540 --> 00:02:03,460 The politics are much more subtle. 33 00:02:06,660 --> 00:02:13,520 When you make films about the natural world that aren't narrative 34 00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:14,960 that's the problem-- 35 00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:16,900 [LAUGHS] there's no narrative. 36 00:02:16,900 --> 00:02:18,700 So what are you editing for? 37 00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:23,440 Can you just put one image of a dolphin after another image of a dolphin? 38 00:02:23,450 --> 00:02:24,720 They're all great. 39 00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:28,040 You film dolphins, every image you get is fantastic. 40 00:02:29,189 --> 00:02:32,450 You have to figure out ways to put images next to one another 41 00:02:32,450 --> 00:02:35,630 and that requires that you think about time. 42 00:02:36,260 --> 00:02:39,780 How do you keep throwing the viewer back at themselves 43 00:02:39,780 --> 00:02:42,000 so they don't get lost in something? 44 00:02:42,010 --> 00:02:44,830 I don't want people to lose themselves in a story. 45 00:02:48,109 --> 00:02:50,829 Let's say an installation like "Delphine," 46 00:02:50,829 --> 00:02:54,749 everything is trying to push or foreground-- 47 00:02:54,749 --> 00:02:56,890 or make possible-- 48 00:02:56,890 --> 00:03:02,079 wherein you can see a dolphin spinning underwater 49 00:03:02,079 --> 00:03:04,290 and you can almost feel it. 50 00:03:04,290 --> 00:03:08,750 And that's the kind of, sort of, sympathetic response I'm interested in. 51 00:03:14,740 --> 00:03:19,060 People do often talk about pleasure, 52 00:03:19,069 --> 00:03:22,139 about beauty in the work. 53 00:03:22,139 --> 00:03:24,800 Once you're in that, sort of, ecstatic place 54 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:26,620 or that place where you're contemplating beauty, 55 00:03:26,620 --> 00:03:29,200 I think you are fully within yourself. 56 00:03:29,209 --> 00:03:32,149 I want you to be conscious of your body. 57 00:03:34,440 --> 00:03:38,459 I would like for humans to recognize 58 00:03:38,459 --> 00:03:44,590 that they belong to a complicated and complex ecosystem 59 00:03:44,590 --> 00:03:47,910 that includes all kinds of other beings. 60 00:03:48,460 --> 00:03:50,879 Just because we can't communicate verbally 61 00:03:50,879 --> 00:03:54,770 doesn't mean we can't communicate in other ways. 62 00:03:54,770 --> 00:03:59,310 And so I want to form a possible model for communication 63 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:03,980 through this, kind of, sympathetic bodily adventure. 64 00:04:05,079 --> 00:04:08,439 It's really important to me to be able to do something 65 00:04:08,440 --> 00:04:10,800 to, sort of, better the conditions of animals, 66 00:04:10,810 --> 00:04:14,170 but also to better the conditions of humanity.