i was surfing myspace somewhere around 4am when i found this
http://elperritovive.blogspot.com/
apparently he starved a stray dog to death as part of an installation. i guess i just wanted to see if anyone had heard anything about it/what everyone thought.
also it kind of relates to the whole recurring stray dog thing in molloy and don quixote. maybe? i don't know.
peaacee.
5 comments:
I heard about it on Facebook. The artist himself made the argument that the dog would have died anyway, and that the reason he chose to single this dog out was to show the public the horrible lives stray dogs lead, and suggests that it's the public who should feel guilty, for wasting their time protesting against him when they could be helping stray animals. This honestly doesn't fly with me. Making the argument that the dog would die anyway, fine, it probably would, but you know what would be a better art exhibit? Showing your attempts to help the dog survive despite the odds.
But what really gets me is that it's not just dogs that might die on the streets. It's people too. Would he have tied up some homeless person for an art exhibit? I've never really felt like an animal rights activist until now.
That's the mose disgusting thing i've seen in a long time. how cruel!
i can't imagine going to see that show and not feeding the poor dog. i wonder if anyone attempted to do so? i wonder how many people came, ogled it, said, "how sad," and then didn't try to be proactive? i'll bet the number is astounding. it's an ultimate illustration of how far we've lost ourselves in image - suffering isn't real anymore (at least for that artist), it's just another image, another simulation. if it weren't just a simulation of a dog starving to death, would that artist have been able to do it? would those people have been able to sit there and watch? it's disgusting and angering, but more than that, it's worrying. how far has this culture fallen, and how much of this simulacra should be we be accepting, if it's coming to things like this?
i saw it before as well. funny thing is i looked at it immediately and then obviously regretted seeing the pictures etc. however i couldn't help to think...o no...Delial all the fuck over again.
i know it happens. and i know we can't save every puppy in the world like a lot of us would want to...but when you're realizing something is out in nature that you could help, if only a little, and turn it into art instead...i just start feeling prickly inside. (it's not a good prickly).
i guess it could be thought of as cliche but the argument of you wouldn't do that to a human being cause it's not moral and totally cruel so why are you doin it to another living thing? comes up.
and yes we all know animals die everyday and yes we all know people do too. and no one can help everyone, and there IS a huge social commentary about the process of death you can approach any day.
It's very easy to say this is not art...this is murder, though the argument is there that he is not killing anything, just letting it die. and so are the people who walk into the exhibit as well. they are assistances, and alibis, and asses,(opps, that just slipped in).
i guess there will always be this weird sketchy line for me when it comes to degrees of art. in one hand i hate censorship and love the right and respect to do whatever the hell anyone wants to do as art. however on the other hand i get mad at people with beliefs and no morals and such distances to human nature. maybe we're just all doing it wrong and it's the right thing to do, to make ourselves numb to everyone elses pain and suffering and focus on our own well being.
im sure thats the secret to stopping war...
(sigh)
i just came across this post a few days ago even though this whole thing happened last month. i'm not completely sure how accurate this is, but reports have said that it was a stunt.
...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 - "hyprocritical 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.
Juanita Bermúdez, director of the Codex Gallery, stated that he would not have allowed the dog to be mistreated, that it ate and drank regularly, and that it was allowed to escape back to the streets from where it was taken at the end of the exhibit. "It is conceptual art and a work that leaves a social message", he said.
i think the blog ends with an interesting question: whether or not you see this exhibit as art, can you admire the reaction it's gotten?
people saw it as this incredibly inhumane thing but that was exactly the point of vargas' piece-- to show the hypocrisy in people who would only look at and notice this dog because of the context it was in, and not because something like starvation happens every day in the world and should always be noticed.
people do this every day. say, oh poor this and poor that, feel sorry for you, it's a terrible state of affairs for you, and then they go back to their safe homes or their money or their comfortable happiness, go back to mass consumption of disposable products, and forget all about what they just saw on the television or read about in the paper because it's not immediate anymore.
with this exhibit, vargas put something in front of people that they know about and say is terrible but in all probability a lot of people probably don't do too much about on the street. people can say all they want how it's cruel to tie up the dog and let it starve. and while i would definitely agree with that if the message stopped there and it simply was just someone letting a dog starve to death with no purpose, part of me has to appreciate, at least on some philosophical level, what was trying to be said with that.
and really, how many of those people do you think left the museum that night and tried to feed some starving animals? no one even tried to feed the dog while they were still inside with it.
i hope all this doesn't come off as me being way overly cynical. i'm just trying to understand the point of the whole thing better, i guess.
nice goin' maggie (and the ferocious beast)
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