Carol is an author, artist, animal activist and scholar whose work focuses on the reality of animals’ lives as important contributors to the biodiversity of this planet. She is Professor Emerita of Design and Dynamic Media and Critical and Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr University of Design, Vancouver, BC. CANADA. Her most recent book is The Creative Lives of Animals.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

- Other sentientism guests: Marc Bekoff, Lori Marino (forthcoming!), Jessica Pearce

02:11 Carol's Intro

- Starting out as an actress but "I didn't like saying other people's words"

- Printmaking, art, animal rights activism, animation, writing "I felt like I had a lot to say"

- #TomRegan & Nancy & "The Dante Series"

- Criticising biotechnology & bioart (people using animals as objects in their art) "lots of friends in the arts who no longer are really my friends"

- Helping develop #Criticalanimalstudies 

- #ecoart 

- "It's very new for people to take animals seriously"

- Writing Creative Lives: "Animals are individual creative beings"

- Anthropocene & biodiversity

- "I was writing so much about animals as victims... [they] are much more than that"

10:30 What's Real?

- Italian Catholic upbringing in #pittsburgh 

- Rational father & "strongly emotional" women

- "Eating the body of Christ"

- "I'm not a practising Catholic"

- Informed by Buddhism "but not a practising Buddhist either"

- "The naturalistic way of looking at things - it's really important"

- "Creativity itself is an unknown quantity"

- "A universal, multi-species creativity?"

- Differing perspectives on the same reality

- #EdYong 's "An Immense World"

- Reading Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" after a bad car accident

- #Physics & "On creativity" by #DavidBohm & "spooky action at a distance." "We are all connected... in a way we're not aware of"

- "Once you start reading... you start to be critical of things... my parents... never loooked into what I was reading :)"

- Becoming sceptical of #catholicism quite early. 8th grade "I gotta get out of here"

- Dante's Inferno as a metaphor for animal experimentation

- Humility is critical

- #Wicca & #witchcraft & #spirituality 

- "Animals are struggling just like we are"

- The dangers of reifying animals or "nature"

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!