You kill things to look at them

[imomus]

Continuing yesterday's theme of art and animals -- and, in a sense, the tree-stabbing of the day before -- I want to look at a different Baker; not Baker the black rabbit who destroys art magazines, but a Baker who studies how art kills animals. Steve Baker is a founding member of the Animal Studies Group and Reader in Contemporary Visual Culture at the University of Central Lancashire. Did it all begin for him with Damien Hirst's iconic formaldehyde sharks and sheep, or Hermann Nitsch's gruesome cow-killing performances, or Wim Delvoye's tatooed pigs, or David Shrigley's absurdist "Kill Your Pets" motto...? Once you start looking, there's no end of artists unleashing symbolic or real violence against animals in their work.

So Baker's books, The Postmodern Animal (2000) and Picturing the Beast (2001), look at "animal death in contemporary art". The book he's writing just now, Art Before Ethics: Creativity and Animal Life, "proposes a distinctive link between creativity and ethical responsibility in the manner in which contemporary artists engage with questions of animal life". Baker's work has a central role in the backlash against Damien Hirst's hard-nosed and sharky relationship with animals, an attitude that allowed the YBA generation of the 90s to get just a little bit too cosy with sharky entrepreneurs and collectors like Saatchi and Jopling, people who seemed to be hunters at heart.

This backlash -- and it's, paradoxically, an aggressively gentle, even twee one -- seemed to be everywhere last time I was in London; Fischli and Weiss were dressed up as friendly hiking rats and pandas at the Tate, while Edwina Ashton was showing her cute videos of people dressed as animals acting as people up at the Camden Arts Centre. Rather than capitalist conquest and social Darwinism, this new mood stresses sentimental attachment to, and identification with, animals. There's a parallel plant movement going on -- think of Sergio Vega's work, or the big Tropico-Vegetal show at the Palais de Tokyo this summer. It's as if, aware that we're endangering so much wildlife, we need to make symbolic reparation for our eco-sins in the cultural world.



Steve Baker actually collaborated with Edwina Ashton last year. He's also interviewed and written about artist team Olly and Suzi. Olly and Suzi, influenced by Josef Beuys and early David Hockney, take big safari-type trips out to wilderness areas and sketch and paint the wildlife they find there, on the same canvas, at the same time. Almost as a pointed rebuke to Hirst, they've made studies of sharks in Guadalupe, for instance. Sometimes you get the feeling that meeting them at a party would be like an eco-tourism version of No Bra's "Munchausen" -- the anecdotal fabulousness could well prove fatal. How on earth to top their tales of dangerous yet thrilling holidays in exotic places, sketching the disappearing wolves? How to find loud enough applause for their action-packed videos of caged encounters with sharks? ("Loved your Olly and Suzi hats!") And how to avoid taking into account that Suzi is Suzi Winstanley, Damon Albarn's girlfriend?

Such adventures certainly play well with the press in the UK. But an article about the pair's trip to Antarctica last year to sketch the Leopard Seal (darling, simply everyone's going there now!) pinpoints another problem: Unspoiled Beach Syndrome. In an article entitled Artistic duo answer the call of the wild, but please don’t follow in their steps, Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote:

"The world is already too harshly stamped with the imprint of human exploitation. Antarctica’s greatest value lies not in mineral riches, fishery resources or tourist revenue, but in that it remains a wilderness in which the imagination can roam. I hope that Olly and Suzi’s work will deter even as it attracts. I hope it will foster a fearful respect."

Listening to accounts of other people's dreams or holidays can be annoying enough as it is, but to listen only to be told that you mustn't, under any circumstances, attempt the same holidays, even if you could somehow one day afford them... well, it's enough to make you want to slip on your "Kill Your Pets" t-shirt. No harm intended, Baker.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I watched my grandfather pull the head off a chicken once. I defleccted my eyes. Can't even watch robot chicken that show is grossly violent

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

The world is already too harshly stamped with the imprint of human exploitation. (http://cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com/7428.html)

[bricology.livejournal.com]

I wish that more artists (and gallerists, critics, et al) were willing to take an ethical stance against artists exploiting or killing animals for their "work". Certainly Hirst is the best-known of those, but there are worse ones.

There's an implicit position in the contemporary art world that, to criticize killing animals in the name of art is somehow beyond the pale, as if such criticism is tantamount to censorship and thus is anti-art. No. It's far more similar to criticizing art that demeans women, ethnicities or other vulnerable groups, all of whom are already considered worthy of protection from exploitation or harm.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

Damnit, what a time to find out what I should have done my MA on.

By the way, I suppose the backlash is also a result of the rise of furries.

[mini-snape.livejournal.com]

I know, I've always resented the use of sentient beings who aren't given a choice in art. It doesn't seem like it belongs in art at all, more in science (vivisection). I can't even think of those tattoed pigs without feeling sick with horror.

[bopscotch.livejournal.com]

I can't honestly imagine anyone wanting to go to Antartica, even if they could afford it. It's literally a desert (it's one of the dryest places on Earth), and there's nothing but bleak ice and compacted snow for miles. Chances are you'll just get lost and die of exhaustion or fall into a crack in the ice before you'll have any fun.

Slightly off

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

I find something in the art of Olly and Suzy quite apalling. The genre could be called "Extreme No-Contact Naturism" or something lightly more well worded. Maybe Huntless Hunting or Cruelty-Free Safari? Perhaps a deeply rooted subconcious disrespect towards living creatures is involved?

[jodibaybee.livejournal.com]

In 2001, two Ontario College of Art students were arrested and charged with animal cruelty for producing a video in which they flayed a live cat. The following spring they were both handed jail terms, but one walked due to time already served, the other served his time on weekends only.

[geekrocklove.livejournal.com]

I was just given a "Kill Your Pets" t-shirt by some friends at Tomlab. It would all be a lot more appealing if there were corresponding "Kill Your Owners" apparel; seems it would be nice for people to pick sides.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

arable land: 0%
permanent crops: 0%
other: 100% (ice 98%, barren rock 2%)

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

People say, "they shouldn't be cruel to animals in their art" but I want to say "they shouldn't have even thought of it." I've never though, "oh, I'll abuse my cat in the name of art." I love my cat! Art is on this high pedestal that can never be questioned, and it's ridiculous.

[(Anonymous)]

Animals and art.. There's an opposite to this destrutive side.
Kois for example or many dog races are created as art or decorative objects.

That's not less disturbing though, being complete Objectification of animal life.

Robert

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Nevermind the harm that comes to animals through the production of traditional art materials.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

You're looking on the wrong side of the ice. Some of the most incredible animals on Earth live beneath the ice. Norbert Wu (http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/gallery/index.html) has documented new species on his Antarctic dive expeditions. When we worked on the Amer. Mus. of Nat. History's Hall of Ocean Life, we used his photographs (and that of ALVIN's) for reference.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I use animal remains in my assemblages, but they're used only after the animal in question is done using them (bone, seashells, plant clippings, kelp pressings, insect husks, etc). Often they're simply "edited" and placed into a bell jar as readymades, since I find them impossible to improve upon. After all, one man's lifetime is no match for whatever beauty can be wrought by the passing of four billion years. They are simultaneously specimens, totems and aesthetic objects.

Re: Slightly off

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

It's complicated. (http://community.livejournal.com/plankton_art_co/7363.html#cutid1) I have gone on African safaris, dived with great white sharks, visited Aborigine holy sites and Mayan ruins, etc--but I also patrol very sensitive local areas that are home to very rare amphibians and orchids in the hopes of repelling poachers, and keep certain locations a secret. Hypocritical? Certainly--but these species would not benefit from more human interactions, whereas ecotourism can actually give economic alternatives to native peoples who would otherwise be compelled to destroy protected habiats in order to survive.. That said, there are places in the world that I would love to see with my own eyes, but I tefuse to ever visit them, because I don't wish to add my footprint--it's enough for me to know those places still exist.

Although it certainly isn't the rule, some of the biggest proponents of environmental responsibility I know are hunters--and many urbanites who might sneer at hunters in general are often repelled by living things, which I find simultaneously baffling and abhorrent.

People's relationship with the natural world is conflicted and problematic, and likely always will be. It's in our nature to simultaneously nurture and destroy, exalt and profane; it's striking the balance that is the trick.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I hope Olly and Suzi keep their hands off the musk shrew:

[(Anonymous)]

I hope Adam Fuss is mentioned somewhere in there... but I've always thought of his work as quite tender.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I've never liked Damien Hirst. Even when his shark first came out, I sensed that it was nothing more than a nasty exercise in cynicism, a kind of intellectual pornography. Actually, while I quite like Nietzsche simply as a writer, I also agree with some of the stuff in that passage from Houellebecq I posted a while back. Hirst would be an example of the kind of "Nietzschean scum" he was talking about.

SMILE

[jesusjeleton.livejournal.com]

Hello there
We like that work by Shimabuku:

"Make some art works for animals.

And make them smile."

Artwork published in:

"Do It"
edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist,
published jointly with Revolver, Frankfurt/Main.

368 pages, hard plastic cover, ISBN 3-86588-001-0
Design: Christoph Steinegger/Interkool

Best regards,

Jeleton.

Re: Slightly off

[(Anonymous)]

It is complicated, I agree. I think what I find disturbing is the intoductio of the plastic arts in the process, not the touring itself. It is the point where the cheetah is invited to bite off the edge of the painting that I find not so nice. I in no way mean to discourage travel.

Re: SMILE

[(Anonymous)]

Wow am so n lone q this blog it makes me drool and shiver

[(Anonymous)]

Hi momus.its zz ahsain. Am ratingh out of Poopps oppos plastic bag again . Wd likr to eat better but not quiite sure how