Zoo : part 1
Man is a skilled stage hand. The modern zoo is a theatre, where he puts on display bewildering sets. Serving to a more nostalgic public, the exhibits have become more intricate, self-aware and aesthetically coherent. A gentle mist from an automatic sprinkler mixes with the rays of sunlight filtering through slits in the ceiling of a simulated tropical habitat; lush vegetation keeps service doors out of view and offers the residents occasional privacy.
But discontinuity ultimately breaks the illusion. Space comes to an end abruptly, the necessary mechanism of confinement that betrays the whimsical beauty of natural ecosystems whenever it is placed into our hands: stripped walls of concrete come into view beyond the living forest; the glass ceiling of the aviary becomes the glass floor of the real world and its birds, who from above splatter their mark upon its outer surface. A delicate irony at the interface of truth and artifice, a bird sticker spreads its wings against a mesh screen that would invariably keep it bound if it were real.
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Zoo : part 2
An orangutan peers out through its small forest of hanging rope in which he is held by the reflections of bamboo bars from a nearby fence. The animals stand still, many of them forced to stand out in the open where they resort to folding in on themselves to deflect seemingly unwanted attention. Relentlessly straight lines surround and intersect them, reflecting the way in which they are physically and mentally squared away.
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Zoo : part 3
Space is limited. I squeeze through, twist my neck and narrow my gaze through the chicken wire. The giraffe’s knee is up to my head. Its tongue reaches far up into its nose, uncaringly, as it towers over the crowd.
One can argue that the animals in the zoo, captured or born of captured lineage, have all been played a nasty trick. Removed from any meaningful and demanding environmental stimulus, they have no choice but to be indifferent, or make fools of themselves in trying.
The zoo is the playground for a self-declared game of hide and seek, the faint one-sided remnant of an old exercise in survival before the middle man. If instead of noble creatures all we find are funny-looking animals in cages, we may uphold their reputation, recounting the exploits of the muscular coils of the anaconda, or simply accept that even such a renowned member of the animal kingdom can be disrobed when subjected to the living conditions of an urban dweller. We do to ourselves, in the end, the meanest of tricks, when we rely too heavily on the zoo experience to formulate our judgment of the rest of the world.
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