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LP: The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto feels expansive in how it addresses the fact that a lot of social injustices are interrelated. How long had you been working on The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto, where did the idea originate, and how did it develop?
SC: The idea originated with a group of students at Notre Dame University. I was in Joe Segura’s printmaking shop doing lithos. Students would come by to chat and watch me draw. We discussed going vegan, and I would share all the information about the meat industry, explaining how they can step away from this violence and help the planet. The students told me they would make every effort to go vegan except for one student. I asked him how I had failed to persuade him and if he wouldn’t mind to tell me how to improve, so he could be convinced. He thought for a while and came back with his answer. He said I did not show him what a vegan world would look like. That was the genesis of the book: how animals created a vegan world. It was Orwell’s Animal Farm, except this time, the animals succeed in overthrowing their oppressors with the help of humans. No animal is “more equal” than any other animal. The book took 18 months. The hardest part was coming up with the “manifesto,” the only words in the book. I tried to adapt the Communist Manifesto and failed. I tried to adapt the American Constitution and failed. I had dreams of manifestos—all preposterous. In the end, the animals spoke through the trees who were cut down for a fracking pipeline
LP: It feels pertinent that the book is small and something you can easily carry around with you, like the chosen format compels the reader to carry the message of the manifesto with them. As the producer of many books, what is your relationship to their format?
SC: I wanted to do a “pocket book.” When I held the book for the first time, it became a delightful little creature that I loved. It was strange; usually I get the book that I have labored over forever, sniff its new book smell, look at it for a few hours then put it away as done and finished. But not this book. I accidentally made a book that could be sellable, that people actually like. Everyone who owns the book has their favorite images.
LP: It seems at the same time that the individual images are very cinematic and that the animals are treated as individual sentient beings (as they should be). Do you assign a f character to some of the animals in your work that then carries a grander narrative Or does the work focus more on a location you recently visited and expand from there?
SC: Both. The donkey in the book is a friend called Francis. There is a donkey in Orwell’s book, the character that knows what will happen to the farmed animals. Because donkeys live so long, he had seen generations of animals slaughtered. I don’t have the patience to keep the animal characters consistent as personalities through the 120 or so images. It’s a manifesto of class struggle with farmed animals as a class of oppressed beings,representing the trillions of animals that are slaughtered for food”. Some images are not easy to read …. how to show a gas chamber for hogs for example. This book is not an illustration, it’s an expose of animal exploitation in the first half, and then the second half is about freedom.
LP: I was listening to another interview during which you mention how the term “factory farming” should be done away with because it generates the sense that there is farming that is not “factory farming.”I run into a similar issue in my own work—considering the term “disposable.” Do you feel that the language we use can change broader perceptions?
SC: I am doing work on this issue now. Denial or Indifference? Indifference to Trump’s racism and misogyny would be immoral. As you understand, fascism should never be normalized. Denial is a luxury, if one is not (yet) the target of Trump. As a slight aside, the real crime is economics; the personas of the individual robber barons—Clinton or Trump or Sessions or Bannon—are irrelevant. It’s the policies not the puppets. Global monopoly capitalism in its final stage is becoming increasingly dangerous to all life.
You bring up use of language. An example would be the two words “climate change”. Two words that sound benign, distant, vague, or that have nothing to do with us. These words should be changed to “Murder of The Planet.”
We can only bridge gaps when people are willing to walk halfway over a bridge. If we are concerned about social justice, then we should try to pull the curtain aside like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. It’s not our job to resolve contradictions but expose them. We have freedom of speech now, but that may not last. So many cultural workers are addressing this loathsome turn towards fascism and they are clever! I have seen some amazing political artwork recently. As Woody Guthrie said: This guitar is a weapon that kills fascists.” The power of the culture of resistance is about to be unleashed.
LP: You are so prolific, which I find incredibly admirable. Can I ask what you are working on now?
SC: A book on zoos. Since the election I feel responsible to address The Trump Regime in my work. I would prefer to stay within my mission of animal rights work. Animals are trivialized, so non-human-centric art about animals is also trivialized. It’s a challenge—I like a challenge. The prolific part comes from having contracts and deadlines. It’s not self-discipline!
“The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto” is on view in conjunction with the Southern Graphic Conference, Atlanta: Terminus at the Ernest G. Welch Gallery at Georgia State University through March 17.
Lauren Peterson‘s exhibition “Blue Plastic Goat,” also part of the 2017 SGCI Conference, is on view through April 28 at GSU Perimeter, Department of Fine Arts Studio Gallery, in Clarkston, GA. She will be giving a talk at the reception on Thursday, March 16, 6-8pm. Peterson received her MFA from Georgia State University in 2016.
