May the horse live in me

Some time ago I encounter this work Que le cheval vive en moi (May the horse live in me) while looking at the Golden Nika awards from Ars Electronica.
After the doing the readings I found this work to be more interesting than when I saw it some time ago. Here a very short summary:

"The performance May the Horse Live in Me is an attempt at “bioart” and extreme body art in which the animal foreign body, here the horse, is hybridized with the human body by means of an injection of horse blood (plasma). But far from being a fatal intrusion, such as that of the mythological hero Midas, said to have committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood, the idea is to carry out genuine therapeutic research, with the horse blood being made compatible and having a protective effect. For this purpose, Marion Laval-Jeantet has tried out different horse tissue immunoglobulins. The horse immunoglobulins recognize the targeted tissues and induce a functional regulation of these tissues that is specific to them. This ceremony of blood-brotherhood raises a debate on barriers between species and the supposed priority of human over animal concerning the earth’s resources. Will the animal be the future of the human?" http://prix2011.aec.at/winner/3043/

Here some very interesting comments of the artist:

"Horse immunoglobulins by-passed the defensive mechanisms of her own human immune system, entered her blood stream to bond with the proteins of her own body and, as a result of this synthesis, have an effect on all major body functions, impacting even the nervous system, so that the artist, during and in the weeks after the performance, experienced not only alterations in her physiological rhythm but also of her consciousness. "I had the feeling of being extra-human," explained the artist. "I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse." http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2011/08/que-le-cheval-vive-en-moi-may.php

Sorry for the long quotes but they are key to getting the piece I think.
It is interesting to me that in this work there seems to be a special attention on how the horse is treated in fulfilling the artist desire of becoming animal. It appears that it was the artist the one "adapting" and not the other way around. With the risk of over simplifying it might be argue that the work is subverting that idea that in order to understand the horse it is necessary to kill it, dissect it, etc. If we acknowledge that is our desire, our need to be "extra human" as the artist says then it makes sense to take the risk of going into this procedure. Who didn't have in some point the fantasy of flying like a bird, swimming like fish, etc? This drive seems to me as old as mankind.
At the same time the work also shows how much artworks like this owes to performance and body art. And even more, it seems to engage with a very interesting problem of representation, specially when we read the artist words. Did she felt like a horse does? Is it anthropomorphisation? A guess on how a horse might feel from the artist perspective. And if she did felt something else, how can she communicate this? Can it be communicated? Endless questions... I'll leave it here for now.

On a side note, I watch this movie last weekend: http://www.earthlings.com/ .
If you choose to look at it, be aware that is really hard to watch, very hardcore stuff. Which brings the question on how this "conscious making" messages are constructed...