Downcast Eyes: Reality and Suffering in Miniature in the Locust Films of Chen Sheinberg

This essay makes use of the radical ethical terminology of the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil in order to analyze several films by the artist Chen Sheinberg, at the heart of which lies the entomological and ontological uniqueness of the locust, with all the religious and cultural meanings associated with it – from the Hebrew Bible to the disaster films of our times. Pick shows how, by focusing on a single individual, isolated and vulnerable, rather than on the threatening and destructive swarm, Sheinberg removes the utilitarian and violent perspective through which we have become used to seeing nonhuman animals, and in practice responds to Weil’s call to pay attention by means of a “vegan gaze”, aimed at the animalistic other and recognizing its suffering without making use of it, without seeing it as a means for attaining goals or as an exploitable resource, and without exposing it to the invasiveness and pretentiousness of the classic empathic gaze.