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Family is the first social group that a unit belongs to, and it is the primary source of support, care, and love. Kinship with specifically the parent-child relationship is important because it provides a sense of connection and belonging that is essential for both human beings and animals. This emotional bond is undebatable in the case of humans and any instances of forceful separation of children from their parents are heavily discussed and sensationalized in a public debate. Due to the prominent inequality and hypocrisy toward the validity of kinship in certain species, we decided to give our artificial creature this exact trait.
BACKGROUND
Throughout the 20th century the Australian federal and state government removed children of the indigenous population from their parents. These aboriginal children are not referred to as the "Stolen Generation."¹ Even more recently, the federal government of the United States started placing children of illegal immigrants in border camps where they stayed separated from their parents sometimes for months.² It is easy for the general public to be outraged at those cases because the emotional damage, enhanced by the interviews of tears and depression, is very relatable for another human being. But separation from your kin and the emotional despair that comes with it is not inherently human trait…
US VS THEM
Throughout history, people had a tendency to treat others as inferior or less deserving of respect and consideration. This idea is referred to as “othering” and is further defined by the reductive action of labeling a person as being a part of the socially subordinate category of “them” as opposed to “us”.³ Since the beginning of humanism in a philosophic thought this tendency of reducing different individuals or groups simple “others” stripped of the same set of rights and privileges has been on a decline. Postcolonial thought is advancing in modern society and the idea of equality beyond differences is more alive than ever. But is it really?
ANIMALS
Despite the progress of animal right's thought, ecological awareness and education about animal product consumption, the worldwide production of meat and dairy has been only steadily increasing over the course of the past decades.⁴ Even though drastic images from animal farms continue to come to the surface, humans remain indifferent to those atrocities. Every single day baby calves are removed from their mothers in the dairy industry. Cows and their calves naturally form strong emotional connections and have an intense desire to stay together.⁵ When a calf is taken away from its mother, both the mother and the calf experience significant emotional distress, which can cause them to exhibit behaviors such as crying out and searching for each other.⁶ Just like humans, kinship is crucial in certain animal species, yet we ignore it because they are the “Other.”
Calf being taken away from mother cow.mp4Source: Animal Rights
AC.mp4Artificial Creature demonstration
THE CREATURE
The artificial creatures we created represent a child and its parent, the user can see this by the difference in the sizes of the two boxes. We put out a sign with the instruction for the user to pick up the smaller box. If the participant does this, both the mother and child will start crying out for one another. They will only stop when they are reunited and placed next to each other again. Hopefully, this experience will spark empathy from the audience, with the eventual goal being that they think about these feelings. If you can even feel empathetic toward two grey boxes, why not toward living individuals from another species who actually go through this horrible pain of losing their child or parent?
The Stolen Generations
https://web.archive.org/web/20060820150941/http://www.daa.nsw.gov.au/publications/StolenGenerations.pdfFAMILY SEPARATION – A TIMELINE
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/03/23/family-separation-timelineThe Other, The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition, (1999) p. 620.
Meat and Dairy Production
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-productionThe cow-calf relationship: from maternal responsiveness to the maternal bond and the possibilities for fostering
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33213588/Effects of early separation on the dairy cow and calf. 1. Separation at 6 h, 1 day and 4 days after birth
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10906402/
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