From Cut-out Bambi

Caroline Harris

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Cut-out Bambi: Caroline Harris 2020

A6 landscape format bookwork, limited edition of up to 20 (made on demand)
Five folded leaves (20 uncut pages), printed with poem text and video stills with
deer excised; bound into silver mirror film-covered cartridge paper with inkjetprinted
deer silhouette; linen thread stab-binding; inside covers with black-and-white
close-up detail of deer hide.

Cut-out Bambi brings together two manifestations of cuteness: a “translation” of
scenes from the Disney film Bambi, constructed from notes I took while watching
the film for the first time, and screen shots from YouTube videos of deer and
fawns in urban or suburban locations. I am interested in exploring the collision
between “cute” images of deer in mass media and the erasure of deer by humans,
not only through hunting, but also planned, conservation-driven culling and
random “drive-by” killing by vehicles. It may sound strange, but when I was
cutting out the deer from the printed images with a scalpel, it did feel like an
act of violence. (Interestingly, readers have “awwwed” over the cut-out shapes as
they might over an actual deer image – in particular with the fawn in the bathtub.)
Cut-out Bambi also engages with ideas about anthropocentrism and Donna
Haraway’s concept of the “animal mirror”, and how it might be possible to
decentre, disrupt and destabilise the human gaze and its reflection. The Bambi:
Marginalised
poems are taken from the peripheral text of Cut-out Bambi.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology
Place of PublicationUK
PublisherCrested Tit Collective
Pages76-84
Number of pages9
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2020

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