Aloi, Art & Animals, Chapter 4 (68-89)
Sue Coe, “Auschwitz Begins,” (2001)
Turn in first paper
Koen Vanmechelen, The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project
France Cadet, Dog[LAB]01
Patricia Piccinini (artist’s website), Hybrids
Aloi, Art & Animals, Chapter 4 (68-89)
Sue Coe, “Auschwitz Begins,” (2001)
Turn in first paper
Koen Vanmechelen, The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project
France Cadet, Dog[LAB]01
Patricia Piccinini (artist’s website), Hybrids
A quote I read in a recent book review: “Sexuality is thought to be where we are most animal, but it is actually where we are last so. Spiders do not go in for foot fetishism, and stoats would not engage in cross-dressing even if they wore clothes.”
The quote you posted made my mind start to churn. I think I agree with the first sentence, and the second… well, I’m not sure I can make a judgment, there.
We seem to want to remove certain animal traces when it comes to rituals surrounding the sexual act. The first example that comes to my mind is our tendency to remove body hair in order to make our genital areas more safe or tame, and less “scary”. At the same time, there may be an attraction/repulsion dynamic at play. Once people get past the careful choreography that precedes the act, they tend to embrace the animalism of it (biting, doggy-style); I’m sure we can think of a multitude of behaviors that resemble animals’. Hm. After all, it is not as simple as I thought at first glance.
I don’t agree with Marta De Menezes work. I think there is a fine ethical line between her piece with the butterflies and taxidermy. In both cases, animals are killed and showcased in some sort of viewing venue. Taxidermy can be forgiven because it belongs to another time, and its current practice is mostly regulated to experimentation on road kill or animals not directly hunted and killed for the purpose of display. The media in Menezes’s work is a live organism that suffers as a result of her manipulating its body, treating it like a material. If the goal of the work is to illuminate our disconnectedness with nature, then is that illustrated in the butterflie, or in Menezes using a living animal as a material?
I agree with NP’s apprehension about Marta De Menezes’ work. She certainly crossed the “ethical line” by modifying a living organism – in this case butterflies – while claiming to have cause no pain/harm by doing so, which later proves to be untrue. The author of the book suggests, which I hold to be true, that artistic interventions can bring attention to the human detachment from animals (and ultimately nature). Yet, at the same, it is unnerving to have come to a realization that it takes a malpractice of an artist to appreciate the true, untouched, form of animals (and nature).
This dialogue also generates a question of ethical use of biotechnology. Some artist collective, according to the book, generated disembodied meat to be consumed in a gallery by growing frog skeletal muscle over biopolymer. If this practice gets adopted on a massive scale, cases of animal cruelty could get drastically reduced since slaughter houses and animal farms would go out of business. People everywhere pride themselves on the idea of consuming “fresh meat.” The concept of freshness will be eliminated where disembodied meats are concerned. The bigger question is whether we are ready for such products?
I, certainly, will not consume this product – even if it translates into giving up eating meat altogether.