WEBVTT

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[Former Los Angeles Zoo]

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I always thought this might have been
where they kept the lions.

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In the '60s and '70s, my parents took us to zoos.

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But they always made me sad.

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You know, I had a friend who took his daughter
to the zoo,

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and I said,
"Why would you do such a thing,"

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"and show someone--a child--"

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"That this is the way we behave toward nature."

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And he said,
"Well, where else will she see a giraffe?"

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And I said,
"Well, maybe she shouldn't see a giraffe!"

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Maybe the only place you should see a giraffe

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is on National Geographic.

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And maybe that's why we have National Geographic,
you know?

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Watch nature documentaries.

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Ric O'Barry always says that it makes them
akin to psychotic

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when you put an animal in a space like this--

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That has a little bit of that, sort of,
Chernobyl-esque quality to it.

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But that's a…

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It’s a different kind of disaster.

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You know, this isn’t...
This is ongoing.

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My life as an activist is one that is anti-captivity.

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["Welcome to Taiji"]
[Post-production and editing: Diana Thater]

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When I worked for the Dolphin Project--
Ric O’Barry--

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all of the work was to stop the capture and
sale of cetaceans

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to marine parks and animal amusements.

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I haven't done any activist work since 2010.

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And I sort of feel a loss of that in my life.

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["Delphine" (1999)]

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I don't put the politics of activism and the
politics of my work together.

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I think it makes a muddle.

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My life as an artist is a different one.

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The politics are much more subtle.

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When you make films about the natural world
that aren't narrative

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that's the problem--

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[LAUGHS] there's no narrative.

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So what are you editing for?

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Can you just put one image of a dolphin
after another image of a dolphin?

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They're all great.

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You film dolphins,
every image you get is fantastic.

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You have to figure out ways to put images
next to one another

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and that requires that you think about time.

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How do you keep throwing the viewer
back at themselves

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so they don't get lost in something?

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I don't want people to lose themselves
in a story.

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Let's say an installation like "Delphine,"

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everything is trying to push or foreground--

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or make possible--

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wherein you can see a dolphin spinning underwater

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and you can almost feel it.

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And that's the kind of, sort of, sympathetic
response I'm interested in.

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People do often talk about pleasure,

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about beauty in the work.

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Once you're in that, sort of, ecstatic place

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or that place where you're contemplating beauty,

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I think you are fully within yourself.

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I want you to be conscious of your body.

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I would like for humans to recognize

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that they belong to a complicated
and complex ecosystem

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that includes all kinds of other beings.

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Just because we can't communicate verbally

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doesn't mean we can't
communicate in other ways.

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And so I want to form a possible model
for communication

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through this, kind of,
sympathetic bodily adventure.

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It's really important to me to be able to
do something

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to, sort of, better the conditions of animals,

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but also to better the conditions of humanity.