Dead Mice Get Second "Life"
Oct. 23, 2014 - Some dead mice get a second "life," and amateur taxidermists make it happen. At Brooklyn's Morbid Anatomy Museum, students in a taxidermy class learn how to make dead mice anthropomorphic.
Transcript
Divya Anantharaman
00:00:11.70
It is incredibly emotional. I don't
think I'll ever be numbed to death. If anything, it just becomes more and more
this real feeling of life just stops. It stops. It just stops. I'm on the other
side of the scalpel, for now.
Divya Anantharaman
00:00:28.57
Taxidermy, it is, taking a skin of an
animal and preserving it and putting it onto a form. I specialize in doing sort
of fantasy or anthropomorthic taxidermy.
Joanna Ebenstein
00:00:44.81
Part of is about challenging yourself
to cut into that corpse, this taboo, dead think, in front of you that you want
to cut into and you want to see what's in there. And whether you have the guts
to do it.
Joanna Ebenstein
00:00:58.61
Traditionally, women have been the
memorializers and the cleaners of the corpses. Maybe there's some desire to
memorialize the dead, to things eternal life, to mark their passing with care
and love.
Divya Anantharaman
00:01:15.51
When I'm teaching the classes, I
always think back to my first piece and I'm just like, I just wish I had
someone telling me it'll be okay. Telling me, Divya, you ripped a foot off.
That's fine. You can just sew it back on. Little things that are just slightly
encouraging and even just the animal warmth of having another human there,
telling you, things are going to be okay.
Divya Anantharaman
00:01:36.27
The animals I get for class are
discards from feeder companies. They raise them to be sold as frozen food for
snakes. They're just not seen as suitable for sale anymore. So I get the stuff
that is literally about to go in the garbage.
Divya Anantharaman
00:01:57.68
Taking something that is unwanted,
something seen as useless and repurposing that, I love that challenge and I
like being able to do that and explore my ideas about life and death and
mortality and taking this thing that is seen as garbage otherwise.
Divya Anantharaman
00:02:16.25
Another feeling I get too is, oh,
man, I really want to make sure that you are well taken care of and I'm going
to pay some tribute to you and celebrate you and whatever you represent.
Joanna Ebenstein
00:02:30.05
There's a strange paradox to
taxidermy. When I started buying taxidermy for my space and installing it, I
remember thinking to myself, it really adds life for a room. There's this
illusion of life that you get from good or bad in just the right way, taxidermy
that defies explanation, I think.
Divya Anantharaman
00:02:49.73
One of my favorites from today was
the wedding cake topper. He's using death to really celebrate life. How
wonderful is this? Anything is a better fate than ending up in the garbage.
You're being appreciated by all these people.
Divya Anantharaman
00:03:07.05
Death is all around us. It happens
everyday. It's a big part of life and there's a way to stay reminded of that,
without seeing it as this other gross, nasty thing, to embrace it and make your
life better.