“If they could speak” video installation, Ostrale 12, Dresden, 2012.
Animals are always been ones observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance. But they have a gaze which is not insignificant when it looks at human. But is that gaze absent in the human? Maybe animals are not just content to be observed, they have a gaze as well, which is not insignificant when it looks at the human.
Animal domestication process by which and how it all happened has remained impenetrable. A growing evidence shows that historically, domesticated animals likely played a large part in their own taming, habituating themselves to humans before we took an active role in the process.
No animal completely lacks humanity, yet no person is ever completely human. Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man.