An Initiative for Art and Research

Institutes

Georgernes Verft 12
5011 Bergen

www.usf.no

The thick pamphlets of the ‘Knowledge Society’ had accustomed me to believe that animals were not capable of speech. Ever since I was a child folktales had assured me of the opposite. Naturally, I had agreed with the pamphlets, because I’d never seen any talking animals, not once. Not even parrots. I had known one parrot who could growl like a tiger, but he couldn’t talk like a human being. And now I had the pike, the cat Vasily and even a mirror. But then inanimate objects talked all the time. That was an idea that could never have occurred to my great-granddad, for instance. From his point of view, a talking cat would be nowhere near as fantastic as a shiny wooden box that wheezes, howls, plays music and speaks all kinds of languages.

 

RESEARCHERS AND WORKS IN THIS INSTITUTE

 

1 Bergen Assembly Reading Room

2 Jan Peter Hammer, Tilikum, 2013. HD video, color, sound, approx. 50 minutes. Commissioned by Bergen Assembly 2013.

 
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