Ok. I was down with the blood head, the pictures of dead people, and the actual dead people, but this “starving dog displayed as art” thing goes too far for me.
Guillermo ‘Habacuc’ Vargas purportedly captured a stray dog off the streets and used it in an art installation thusly:
Vargas tethered the animal without food and water under the words ‘Eres Lo Que Lees’ - ‘You Are What You Read’ - made out of dog biscuits while he played the Sandinista anthem backwards and set 175 pieces of crack cocaine alight in a massive incense burner. link
People were and are absolutely furious about this (I’m sure most of you have seen the facebook petition), but eventually all kinds of confusing information started coming out - the dog escaped, the gallery staff took very good care of it after closing, etc. I check Snopes, and they weren’t sure what the real story was, either, although wikipedia says that the Humane Society checked into the mess and found that the animal escaped. The facebook petition to stop Vargas from repeating the exhibition in Honduras quotes Vargas as saying:
I knew the dog died on the following day from lack of food. During the inauguration, I knew that the dog was persecuted in the evening between the houses of aluminum and cardboard in a district of Managua. 5 children who helped to capture the dog received 10 bonds of córdobas for their assistance. The name of the dog was Natividad, and I let him die of hunger in the sight of everyone, as if the death of a poor dog was a shameless media show in which nobody does anything but to applaud or to watch disturbed. In the place that the dog was exposed remain a metal cable and a cord. The dog was extremely ill and did not want to eat, so in natural surroundings it would have died anyway; thus they are all poor stray dogs: sooner or later they die or are killed.
And I have to admit that Vargas was making a decent point - a suffering animal in an artistic context shocks people, while they are happy to ignore the same situation on the street on a daily basis. Ok, fine. But still, jesus christ, you know? I have to say that there is a difference between ignoring a stray dog on the street and deliberately starving one. I also couldn’t help but think that a stray dog on the street does have a fighting chance for survival, while one chained in a gallery doesn’t. Also, this is a point that has been made over and over and over again, and there are ways to make this point without torturing a dog. Here’s an article about animal death in art from nonstarving artists that brings up an even more perplexing and totally unnecessary artistic effort - Nathalia Edenmont makes photoshop-y projects that involve heads or other pieces of animals pasted onto other things (collars, statues, etc). They’re not that interesting, frankly. Oh but wait - she KILLS the critters before photographing them. Ah! Now it’s interesting, right? NO, it’s not - it’s tacky and unnecessary.
I also really don’t like trying to “define art,” because I don’t think I’m qualified to do so and I can’t ever seem to find a definition that I can get behind one hundred percent. I CAN say, without any hesitation, that I do not think that killing something for purely aesthetic reasons is artistic - it’s sick, an unnecessary waste of life, and it’s irresponsible. These artists’ arguments remind me of the things that hunters who don’t eat their kill say - “it’s all about the thrill of the chase and experiencing nature,” blagh blagh blagh. Then leave the gun at home and buy a damned camera. Otherwise, you’re no better than that kid in my seventh grade class who liked to bury kittens up to their necks and run over them with a lawnmower. That’s killing for no real reason, and does it sound like art to you or like someone you don’t want to sit next to?
I meant to write about the girl from Yale who told everyone she artificially inseminated herself and induced abortion as many times as possible and then collected the blood for an installation piece and all the ambiguity about that, but I’m hungry (however, how in the world can you create an installation in which BLOOD FROM HUMAN FETUSES features prominently and then claim that you’re not trying to shock anyone? That’s just annoying).
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I also just found out about this, but I’ve also read that the dog was actually fed every day when no one was there, and released after the exhibit. The gallery owner says there is no way she would allow that to be done to an animal on her property. The artist in question also said the dog was released, and telling everyone the dog had died just further made his point. I’m inclined to believe that.
As for abortion-girl…I seriously doubt she really impregnated herself, and all I have to say about that girl is no matter what she really did or did not do pertaining to her thesis project, she needs some therapy.
that pingback is spam.
Yeah, I just figured that out myself. Damn, friend, you’re pretty quick on the draw there.
They don’t call me the spamvigilator for nothing.
Anyway, right on with the post. I, like you, thought the dog thing had to be a hoax as well and immediately went to snopes (anytime someone sends me an invitation to a facebook group about some petition or another, I immediately assume hoax). It looks like it pretty much was true, though the actual story of whatever happened to that dog is still unclear.
You have a good point about art (as in, what is considered art). I’m trying to think of another scenario where art creates suffering for others (human or animal). Art has created suffering for the artist many times in history, and often artists claim to suffer for their art. I could almost see a post-modernist sort of reflection on this by having art create suffering (ALMOST), but that wasn’t even the guy’s purpose with the piece (idiot). Then again if he were truly as “po-mo” as it appears he’s trying to be with this crap, he would’ve done something with simulacra– ie. the appearance of a dog suffering presented as real to see people’s reaction to it… WITHOUT REALLY SCREWING WITH A DOG.
Either way, the guy’s a tool. First for not even catching the better point to his piece and second for being cruel to an animal. (I like your point about the dog having a fighting chance outside on its own.)
As for the lady who kills animals so she can photoshop them… I think she’s just crazy.
Hey Alanna! Yeah, I keep getting invited to join that facebook petition, and I can’t bring myself to do it on the grounds that maybe the dog was ok.
Chris - hrm. Remember our serial killer phase? There’s a bit of art creating suffering there, I suppose. Bonus points awarded for use of the word “simulacra.”
And I can’t think of a single intelligent thing to say… which I blame entirely on what I’ve been grading all day. Nevertheless, thank YOU for being intelligent, at least.
I don’t think it’s the smartest or most interesting art project, but it’s her art project. As for art being annoying or based on shock value, there’s tons of that. She’s just getting lambasted for doing it on a (sadly still) taboo subject. I believe from the numerous reports I’ve read, all she really did was menstruate into a cup, and with how puritanical our Amer’can society has gotten, even for that I’m sure people think she needs therapy. She does not need therapy– at least not for her art. It’s *hers*.
Hrm. I didn’t think about it very much before posting, but let me explain my annoyance. The artist annoyed me by denying that she wasn’t trying to shock people, and I think that’s a ludicrous thing for her to say, when her entire purpose with the project was to SHOCK people into talking about abortion. If she was menstruating into a cup and telling everyone that she was inducing abortion as a performance piece exposing people’s unwillingness to confront the issue, that project absolutely RELIES on people being shocked in order for it to work. That’s ok - that’s a valid artistic purpose, and it worked (it is making people talk) - I just thought she made an ass out of herself by denying that that’s what she was doing. Does that make sense? You’re right - there’s a lot of shock-based stuff out there (like the mouse chopper), and I do take issue with a lot of it. The problem with this woman is that she’s using shock as a (relatively) legitimate medium (as compared to the mouse chopper) and seems to be unaware that that’s what she’s doing. The result is that it makes her effort look really insincere - it reminds me of the tampon in a teacup from Ghost World. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s very smart or very interesting either, and I’m not expressing myself very well at all, but something about the way she’s presenting herself and her work bugs me.
I think that merely applying the word “art” to something doesn’t really get you off the hook for something morally sketchy. Certainly it’s *her* body and thus she can reasonably do what she wants with it within bounds of the law, but no matter how pro-choice you are you should probably agree that purposefully inducing a pregnancy in order to have an abortion is fucked up. You can’t just say it’s “art” and its *hers* to justify this. If you could, you could justify anything as “art” and then it’s ok.
I’m tempted to compare it to saying that someone making snuff films is an “artist”, but that would imply that she is harming another person by this– which I cannot argue.
I will argue that it’s harming the _potential_ of another person that under normal circumstances, created by accident or misfortune, could be reasonably gotten rid of through abortion. However by PURPOSEFULLY impregnating yourself again and again, this line has been crossed. Perhaps not legally but ethically. Simply calling it “art” for whatever reason does not justify this behavior.
However, if it was really just menstrual blood, then you have to ask yourself what her agenda was– it seems pretty pro-life to me. Getting people to admit that SOME abortions are wrong seems like something from that agenda.
So either she’s a pro-lifer or she’s a fucking crazy asshole. Whether or not *she* thinks it’s “art” has nothing to do with it.
Just because post-modernism was a hit about a decade ago doesn’t mean that you get to call whatever you want “art”. Anyway, I’m going to go upstairs to my art and take a big giant art.
Ok, it was definitely not real according to the washington post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041702519.html. And her agenda: “The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body. ”
Well, alright. That’s a very fertile subject (rimshot [oh god I'm sorry, that's not really funny]). But isn’t there a clearer and more meaningful way to explore that territory? I do admit that she hit me in a sensitive place that I didn’t know was there - when I first heard about the project, I was absolutely horrified - and the phrase “right to life” usually makes me want to hit people. She definitely did expose an area of my personal morality that I’d never considered before.
But at the same time, I’m really iffy about treating abortion in such a cavalier way. I realize that that’s part of her point - it’s forcing a new and very uncomfortable perspective on a difficult subject - but at the same time, ouch. I don’t think that’s an easy thing to go through. I’m not saying that a woman should beat herself up over having an abortion (I wouldn’t), but at the same time it’s a painful procedure that carries significant social stigma in our “puritanical” society, and I sort of cringe at how insensitive it is for a college kid to flippantly pretend to go through what is a serious and sometimes socially and personally devastating ordeal for a thesis project. But then again, I don’t think that art should treat the world with kid gloves, and I do like the idea of incorporating public reaction into a piece. My friend Alison has done some incredible work along the same lines (for the love of god a. or alison tell me if I’m saying something stupid) in which she used the social relationships of her audience as a basis for an installation. And then there’s the improv everywhere guys who I love. So I’m not ready to dismiss that aspect of this project. But still, in spite of the fact that everything I say about it seems to wind up being hypocritical or unsound, it made me feel really gross. And somehow the idea that it was hoax managed to make it worse - her INSISTENCE that it was real in spite of the of her idiotic story about impregnating herself with a syringe and then flushing it out with herbal preparations was just dumb. A. - I agree that of course she had the right to collect her menstrual fluid and lie to everyone about it being blood from repeated miscarriages in order to force people into a debate (although I suspect she was pretty vague on exactly what she thought that debate was going to be about), but I also agree with Chris that it’s just not a very good project. But, Chris, I’ve got to disagree on one point- I kind of think you can refer to whatever you want as “art,” including giant arts in the toilet. The thing is, though, if you (general sense) get to call a piece of crap (literally and figurative senses) art, I’m under no obligation to respect you for it or agree with your message, and if you open yourself to the public, I definitely get to call you out on it if I think you’re being a moron.
I’m waffling all over the place on this (and blurting incoherent mutterings while sleep deprived - sorry if I’m not making any sense)… at least my friends are capable of having actual opinions. Sigh. I’d really like for other people to weigh in on this if you’ve got time and thoughts.
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