Living with animals: Maxi Obexer is a formality

2024-09-02 11:38:55

Animals should make our home, their intelligence is millions of years old, says South Tyrolean writer Maxi Oexer. A discussion about the special relationship between humans and animals and how to tame each other.

Margareth “Maxi” Oexer (54) lives as an artist and writer in Berlin and South Tyrol, currently The Novel “Among the Animals” published by Weissbooks (240 pages, 24 euros). The Oexer office on Berlin’s Köpenikerstrasse is hard to find. A back row follows the next. But then you can hear the barking of a dog, a border collie mixed with a schnauzer and terrier, a “wild cream”, is a dog named Joyce. The writer and his animal habit share a croissant in a cafe. Here at the office, Joyce has almost eaten every croissant. And he was right: he happily crawled under the table and listened to our voices.

WORLD: I have read a lot about how people treat animals, but rarely anything as intimate as yours. The appearance of a wise seed, its soft body that provides comfort, the sweet smell of horses, its movement around, the sweet smell, the smell of milk from the puppy’s mouth. That almost sounds crazy!

Maxi Oexer: We just have strong physical and emotional connections to other living beings. This has been opposed over the millennia, even by the church.

WORLD: But there is also the appearance of a child who speaks from his novel. Children understand animals better than their peers.

Supervisor: The first encounters that left their mark on the sun. The evil spirit of the puppy is unforgettable in this fragile creature. The nature of animals has really entered the world of this girl. The older perspective once again understood the importance of the physical integration of living beings.

WORLD: The girl has a spiritual connection with the animals because she grew up on a small South Tyrolean farm, she brought the calves to the mountain pastures and spent the summer with them, knowing their physical characteristics and who loves the morning dance of chickens. That sounds like the perfect world, almost like kitsch.

Supervisor: I searched for a language for this novel for a long time. On the one hand, the importance of the physical connection between us and animals and animals and us is important to me. And then I want to show the social skills of pets, which are often taught. This is the gap that confuses me a lot. And there is also a third level, not that I will announce a new philosophy: What is happening in our eyes, with readers, like the dance of chickens, takes place in our world. Chickens have a social connection to us. All the language pets have developed while living with us means they also have their own world. And they are the animals that they are. And at the same time, let’s think of dogs, they have developed a deep language with us over thousands of years. This mysterious space between us is often overlooked.

WORLD: But violence is always there. In doing so, he also advocates traditional agriculture, because the farmers in his novel are philanthropists. They use a lot of violence. Senseless violence, people think of how the cows are tortured when they drive the cows, how they beat them, hitting their nostrils and touching them. he

Supervisor: I don’t want to write about the violence in the slaughterhouses. I want to tackle the history of farmers or mountain people. There is no idyll in the archaic. Agriculture is also political. Because he is a gentleman. Just as they oppress women and children, so do we oppress animals. In the case of women and children, this taming is now sanctioned as wrong. But not with animals. It still seems “natural” to treat them roughly and judge them.

WORLD: Philosophy that hardly cares about animals, one thinks of Kant, who speaks of the tamed domestic animals become “cattle”, which, through the loss of its lifeliness and wildness, ie with domestication, loses all autonomy ends in the body soak; cause. We do not take animals seriously.

Supervisor: That is still the case today. It took a long time until it became clear that animals have consciousness and that they are beings capable of suffering. We share more with them than we do. The care of animals, the comfort they provide, their entertainment, everything an animal can do: this is not overlooked today, although it is happening before our very eyes. Also what they can teach us thanks to their knowledge. When I think about trust they don’t stop us. They will not stop, even though we are stronger than them.

WORLD: Talking about animals, he said, is a pure display of power, intended to organize the difference from them and is against them. And how should it be different? Want to wake up, animal-friendly language?

Supervisor: Our language is full of words that insult animals. It explains how we keep animals away from us, push them away and see this as freedom progress. We should not talk “about” animals. When you are “inside” them, watching them and watching them notice, it brings a lot.

WORLD: Can humans even communicate with animals properly or are we just fooling ourselves into being anthropomorphic?

Supervisor: Naturally. A chicken clucked and we got its voice. Please think about Chekhov and the woman who sounds like a chicken. Or when we draw animals, we also talk to horses.

WORLD: How do you look at animals, like cow, dog, cat, plant? Can you look animals in the eye like you do humans?

Supervisor: Like other living creatures. As long as the pig looks me in the eye, I can do the same for him. We’ll see you together then.

WORLD: The silence of animals is different from the silence of humans, he said. To what extent?

Supervisor: We are used to talking. Sometimes it’s a blessing, sometimes it’s not. In our village there is an order of silence, which has something oppressive about it. There is a beautiful silence with the animals; He enjoyed it. You can touch each other, for example when you walk with the dog, you walk together, even if everyone is alone. The dog brings us into the world. This is very important and we get it for free.

WORLD: Do dogs know people best? And what does that mean for the dog?

Supervisor: I am always amazed at the patience of dogs. Human beings are difficult to train a dog. It takes so long for us to understand something!

WORLD: Every acquaintance with an animal is the beginning of a personal story. As with Saint-Exupery in “The Little Prince”: People take care of each other, “it means becoming familiar.”

Supervisor: Beneath the violence, something is happening that is hardly noticed, but every farmer knows that a hen that is chased or treated badly will first lay few eggs. There is no point in always accusing ourselves of being bad. We have to look at animals that never stop giving us trust and friendship, yes friendship. A day, I’m even talking about love. Dogs and cats love us.

WORLD: People love their pets and yet ignore farm animals. Which brings us to the inexplicable industrial agriculture. Is there a way out?

Supervisor: There is a middle way. I am not even criticizing the fact that people kill, but rather that we build a relationship with the animal. Is murder always a violent act? If we know a relationship with an animal, then we will have to look the seed in the eye when we kill it. Hunting consists of shooting an animal that already has a life. Things worse than death, namely when life is not yet given. Anything else is terrible and insulting.

WORLD: Why did domestic animals endure terror for thousands of years? This constant tribute? Uprisings and rebellions only occur in literature. They coined the phrase: Animals still bring us on. Does that mean they want to make us better people?

Supervisor: This would be utopia. The people of the city who fled from the violence into the city and left the animals behind, must return there and take the violence from the farmers. And the company too.

WORLD: He talks about a “love relationship”. Do the moderns understand that?

Supervisor: This is often dismissed as cheesy. Or someone asks if we should all become sodomites? Love means love and passion. And hands. Don’t talk about “slutty” or “dogish”, a derogatory language.

WORLD: Is it representative of metamodernity, the cross-sectional aspects of the new age that behavioral psychologist Martin Wikelski is presenting with “The Internet of Animals”looking to explore? Wikelski argued that animals we domestic because they became our teachers. Because their knowledge, this swarm knowledge, is millions of years old. According to him, animals have a better understanding of their own change than any human.

Supervisor: Every dog ​​senses danger better than the best alarm system. It takes us forever to walk and talk. Knowledge of animals is important. Newborns’ immediate engagement with the world is amazing. A gift for us.

Maxi Obeser: Among the animals. Weissbooks, 240 pages, 24 euros.