Is it a sublime experience or an allergic reaction?
Posted by Laura Paolini on October 27th, 2008
Dead or alive, animals have had a presence in art forever. The animal has become a repetitive surrogate, a literal guinea pig, in the discussion of aesthetics, in the philosophical sense. This ranges from discussions of the uncanny, the allegorical, and down to things that are just plain cute. This discussion debates, is a knee-jerk reaction to an animal an extension of biology or just plain old “taste?” To reduce our familiarity with aesthetics to strictly biological means reduces why such a reaction is provoked to the unnatural. What biology does help do is streamline these ideas of beauty, cute, and the sublime, as potentially a similar chemical reaction. They are still however, part of some sort of negotiating process. Ultimately, I think some people just don’t like animals. You can’t please everyone. And not everyone is interested in such antiquated discussions. But they do creep up once fluffy enters the picture.
Banksy, made infamous for his critical graffiti and secret yet deconstructive museum interventions, has picked up a new hobby it would seem. This work in New York City has been attributed to him. The Village PetStore and Charcoal Grill starts tamely enough with some animals taking on human personaes yet it begins to get more and more uncanny as the fur coat breathes and wags its tail, and a hot dog with mustard calmly sips from its water bowl. Some would ultimately read this as a humourous portrayal of the food chain, yet it perhaps also raises more compelling ontological questions about purpose and being in general. If we could raise salami in cages, avoiding the long and messy process of getting it from a real animal, then what would the purpose of the pig (and the other corresponding, uhh, “ingredients”) be thereafter? If my fingers were lost and I couldn’t type or make my own little animatronic works, would I only be fit for the slaughter?
http://www.vimeo.com/2000382
The installation is coming down shortly it would seem. I personally think he should be offered an IA membership on the condition he registers in person.
In an equally funny (but less disturbing) vein, some artists in San Francisco have answered the question yesh you can has artz as a charity benefit for an adult literacy program. The twelve artists have worked in their various mediums (not strictly digital) to manifest their favorite captions and to auction off Thursday the 30th. I don’t the fuzzy creatures will really take over the art world, but it’s nice to lighten up for a good cause.
When an animal enters an artwork, whether metaphorically or literally, a very binary discussion of ethics usually dominates the discourse surrounding the art thereafter. Some who perhaps know less about art might argue that Joseph Beuys never asked the Dead Hare if it wanted the pictures explained, and many further argue that Jesse Power’s thesis project gone awry had no merit at all. It does become a slippery discussion, but to continue this discussion productively one has to look at the role of the viewer as well.
In the past year, a project surfaced about a Costa Rican artist (apparently) named Guillermo Vargas, alias Habacuc. At the , the artist tied the dog precariously just too far away from his food bowl, and let him starve to death. Uproar started when he apparently scheduled exhibit at the Central American Biennial Honduras 2008. A facebook group was started in protest; it was named something like “Starving animals is not art!”
I noticed something interesting about this Facebook group when it entered my newsfeed. The majority of my friends that joined happened to be vegetarian. Interesting. Secondly, I couldn’t find any other documentation of this project; no journals, papers, art magazines, etc. This left me to wonder, if this project was so outrageous, as someone who follows the arts as religiously as possible, why am I hearing about this for the first time on Facebook?
And ultimately, the project proved to be a hoax. It definitely ruffled the feathers of PETA and the WWF, and PETA’s website would later admit, “Artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas intended the work to be a stunt to show how a starving dog suddenly becomes the centre of attention when it is in a gallery, but not when it is on the street. The work was intended to expose people for what they really are – ‘hypocritical sheep’. He said that in order for the work to be valid, he and the gallery had to give the impression that the dog was genuinely starving to death and that it died.” I actually think PETA might have it further wrong still, as I don’t even know if this artist actually exists. The internet’s a funny place like that; the artist has a wikipedia page but no other track record? (If you do an image search with that name Stelarc comes up, I mean c’mon…) Everyone’s skeptical (some probably a little sheepish, no pun intended, with egg on their face) and while I’m a wee bit tempted to say “I told ya so” the project does come off just a bit heavy handed with the “why is awareness generated when it’s in a gallery?” shtick.
Putting that in the past, I’m looking forward to an upcoming exhibit that puts an awareness of animals and art into the context of how they find placement or sometimes ultimately replacement. According to the curator, “Just as a wallet may be misplaced, animals are also easily lost. Whether through environmental factors such as habitat destruction, or domestic issues such as runaways, animals go missing every day…[the] works exploring the ways in which animals, both companion pets and wildlife critters, are lost, and where (if at all) they find new places to exist.” I won’t commit more than that description, because, um, I’m in the show. I’m biased. Can’t say anything else. I’m hoping to make something new, though, similar to Crocodile Tears that follows a similar trajectory. If I’m lucky it will look something like this.
Tags: animals