Originally published in Tate Magazine, September 2001.
Haunted by the Animal
STEVE
BAKER
ÔArt is
continually haunted by the animalÕ, wrote Deleuze and Guattari in their final
book, What is Philosophy? The animalÕs mystifying ubiquity was given a more specifically
topical spin in June 2000 when the New York Times ran a two-page feature with
the headline ÔAnimals have taken over art, and art wonders whyÕ. Despite such
familiar precursors as KounellisÕs horses and BeuysÕs coyote, the sheer amount
of recent art to feature living animals certainly did seem to be a new
phenomenon. But by no means all of this work was driven by a desire to say
anything in particular about the animals on display. The two Lost Love pieces
in Damien HirstÕs huge show in New YorkÕs Gagosian Gallery in the closing
months of 2000, for example, featured aquatic tanks in each of which live
freshwater fish swam around furniture from a gynaecologistÕs office. One of
HirstÕs less provocative comments on them was to admit: ÔI donÕt quite know
what theyÕre aboutÕ.
As the
animal in the gallery space is seldom (if ever) there of its own choosing, it
is hardly surprising that the ethical issues raised by its treatment by the
artist have now come to the fore. When those issues have been addressed by
artists, they have emanated from two broadly related positions: the first
concerned with the animalÕs place in debates around environmentalism, and the
second more specifically addressing animal rights.
Representative of the first was Mark DionÕs ÔSome notes
towards a manifesto for artists working with or about the living worldÕ, in the
catalogue of the Serpentine GalleryÕs Greenhouse Effect exhibition in 2000. It
is an earnest set of handwritten notes that eschews the irony found in much of
his work, and includes this uncompromising declaration: ÔArtists working with
living organisms must know what they are doing. They must take responsibility
for the plantsÕ or animalsÕ welfare. If an organism dies during an exhibition,
the viewer should assume the death to be the intention of the artistÕ.
The
statement could certainly be applied to a work exhibited in the Trapholt Art
Museum in Denmark early that year. Marco EvaristtiÕs installation displayed ten
ordinary kitchen blenders, in each of which a single goldfish was swimming.
Visitors to the exhibition were free to switch on any blender, Ôtransforming
the content to fish soupÕ as one report flippantly put it. When the exhibition
was reported in the American media (the work having already been removed by the
Danish police), the CNN website polled its readers on their reactions.
Seventy-two percent were of the view that the exhibit was Ôdefinitely notÕ art.
The
removal of EvaristtiÕs work followed complaints from an animal rights group,
but the animal rights perspective on the use of living animals in art is better
represented by the group of Minnesota-based artists who formed the Justice for
Animals Arts Guild (JAAG) in the autumn of 2000. They were convinced that Ômuch
could be accomplished by sensitizing the arts communityÕ to the fact that
animals were Ôsentient beings, not ideas or inanimate materials with which to
create a performance or an exhibitÕ. Their immediate goal was to negotiate with
state arts organizations and funding agencies for the institution of policies
that would prevent the Ôcruel or degradingÕ use of living animals by
contemporary artists. Unlike the readers of the CNN website who took the easy
view that something shocking or cruel is not art, here were artists themselves
taking the more measured response that an artistÕs intentions should not
automatically overrule the interests of animals which find themselves caught up
in that artistÕs work.
The JAAG
is still in the process of formulating its precise guidelines and goals, and it
may therefore be unfair to put too much weight on the outcomes of its
preliminary discussions. But along with DionÕs Ônotes towards a manifestoÕ,
they suggest that it may be timely to review the difficulties besetting any
such attempt to address the contemporary artistÕs responsibilities. What
follows, therefore, is an exploration – almost as an anti-manifesto
– of things that hinder any easy resolution of these issues.
The
question of materials is a useful starting point. The JAAGÕs objection to
living animals being used as an artistÕs Ôinanimate materialsÕ seems entirely
reasonable, but masks the diversity and complexity of contemporary practice.
The objection may fit HirstÕs comment on the living flies he used in A Thousand
Years (Ôformally, I wanted an empty space with moving points within itÕ), but
it is less clear that it would apply to his more recent Lost Love
installations, where Hirst had to work with the Ôfish consultantÕ Matt Evans
simply to get the pieces to work successfully. The fish may figure as no more
than moving shapes, moving materals, but the formal success of the works
depends on their continued well-being.
Mark
DionÕs occasional work with living animals (including a recent installation
featuring live piranhas) complicates things further. The animals in his works
do indeed serve as his materials, but usually as part of an impassioned or
ironic commentary on cultural or environmental issues in which – outside
the privileged space of the gallery – those animals are already caught
up. It certainly does not lead him to overlook their status as sentient beings.
Of the eighteen birds flying around DionÕs complex and subtle 1993
installation, Library for the Birds of Antwerp, the artist has recently
remarked that ÔnothingÕ in the piece Ôis as impressive as any one of these
African finchesÕ. In terms that recall the JAAGÕs ambition Ôto sensitize the
arts communityÕ, Dion has also spoken of trying, through his work, Ôto
sensitize people ... towards the ornithologicalÕ.
Even
Marco EvaristtiÕs goldfish installation, which may seem to exemplify artÕs
cynical manipulation of animals, has been the subject of other more generous
readings. The animal rights philosopher Peter Singer noted the cruelty of
keeping the fish in such small sterile containers and of allowing
exhibition-goers to Ôgrind them upÕ on a whim, but also acknowledged that Ôwhen
you give people the option of turning the blender on, you raise the question of
the power we do have over animalsÕ.
This
brings the discussion back to the JAAGÕs objection to art that is Ôcruel and
degradingÕ to animals. Only the treatment of living animals can really be
called ÔcruelÕ, but certain artistsÕ uses of dead animals might also be
regarded as degrading. The altogether more surprising fact is that the
distinction between the living and dead animal counts for little in terms of
the meanings generated in much contemporary art.
Regardless of ethical stances, it is still materials that
count here, creating knowledge and encouraging open and imaginative thought. It
is through their dealings with the animal as material that artists have managed
to render animals abrasively visible, and utterly distinct from the fantasy
creatures of 102 Dalmatians and suchlike, which are effectively erased by the
weight of anthropomorphic sentiment surrounding them. Popular culture sees only
itself in the eyes of its animal. Art, no matter how apparently cruelly, does
not shrink from the sight of the animal. In doing so it is one of the few
contemporary forms that can claim properly and respectfully to attend to the
otherness of the animal.
Here are
some examples. In 1976, Carolee Schneemann staged a revised version of her
performance Up to and Including Her Limits at The Kitchen in New York. At one
end of the space the artist swung from a harness creating drawings on the
paper-covered floor and walls around her, while a live video relay at the
opposite end of the room left viewers to shift at will between the performance
and its representation. Projected on another wall was a loop of her film
KitchÕs Last Meal. But her cat Kitch had died the day before this particular
performance, and the dead body was carefully laid out a short distance from the
artist.
One of
the extraordinary strengths of a previously unpublished photograph of this
performance is the counterpoint it establishes between artist and animal,
turning the performance into an improvised memorial, the acting-out of the
artistÕs mourning for the cat who had featured in some of her film-making and
of whom she would later movingly write that Ôher steady focus enabled me to
consider her regard as an aperture in motionÕ. Here the artist renders acutely
visible the cat who had, in turn, taught her a particular way of seeing the
world. The point may be an obvious one, but KitchÕs presence here is in no way
diminished by her lack of life.
Questions
of animal reality and presence were also evident in Edwina AshtonÕs recent
Artlab exhibition at Imperial College, called We Speak Your Language. A cluster
of television screens showed three of her untitled videos. On the left, short
episodes of zoo footage showed marmoset, bear, beaver, seal, penguin, polar
bear, their voices providing the only soundtrack to this peculiar triptych. The
right-hand screen showed two or three Barbary sheep standing so still in the
surrounding rocks that they were easily mistaken for a scene from a diorama,
making the single instant when a human head passes in front of the camera all
the more alarming. On the middle screen, in a dark and claustrophobic space, is
Ashton dressed in a homemade squirrel costume, hesitantly holding up one by one
her odd hoard of possessions for the cameraÕs inspection, and eventually
displaying this deeply disturbing animalÕs skills not at writing – as
viewers might expect when a blank sheet of paper is brought out – but at
origami.
It is
difficult adequately to describe the complex play of representation in these
juxtaposed images, but it reflects AshtonÕs concern that the animal on film is
an Ôenormous problemÕ because it is too real. She struggles even to articulate
this perception, saying that Ôit easily becomes too frightening, too involving
and distancing, too easy, too condescending to use real animalsÕ. But the work
shows very clearly how animal representations may themselves articulate and
highlight the visibility of living animals – and at the same time may
inadvertently but powerfully Ôsuppress the humanÕ, as she puts it.
The same
procedure is evident in reverse in Marion CouttsÕs 1999 film Epic. It traces the
funeral-like procession of a life-sized fibreglass black horse carried at
shoulder-height by its four human bearers through the streets and gardens of
Rome, commenting obliquely on the cityÕs equestrian statuary and creating
moments of humour when the legs of this otherwise realistic representation form
stiff diagonals as the horse is moved up or down flights of steps. Coutts
describes it as Ôa stately pantomime played not exclusively for laughsÕ. Its
most striking moment, however, does not directly involve the horse. It is an
unexpected shot lasting no more than seven or eight seconds of a large black
dog drinking at a fountain in the Borghese Gardens, and this brief glimpse of
animal vitality at the filmÕs centre resonates powerfully through its play of
representations.
Akira
Mizuta Lippit writes in his book Electric Animal that human identifications
with animals Ôresult from encounters with sensual excessÕ. This is nowhere more
apparent than in art. As Coutts understatedly remarks, an animalÕs will and
resistance mean that it Ôis not a sitterÕ. For Schneemann too the animal in art
invariably constitutes a Ôthreshold of disturbanceÕ rather than ever being
Ôsimple physical evidenceÕ. This is where and how art is Ôhaunted by the
animalÕ, to return to Deleuze and GuattariÕs phrase.
The
animal ÔhauntsÕ because it can simultaneously be vividly present and
bewilderingly absent. In the taxidermic constructions of contemporary artists
such as Jordan Baseman, Mark Dion, Angela Singer and Neil Hamon, for example,
the uncomfortable illusion of ÔlivenessÕ is no simple thing. For Singer,
recycling taxidermy that was once trophy kill, the process is a way for her Ôto
honour the animalsÕ lifeÕ. Cultural theorists such as Lippit and John Berger
have argued that in important ways the animal is already lost to the
contemporary world, and much of the most compelling animal art is now certainly
open to being read as a form of memorial to that loss.
It could
even be said that the use of the living animal in art is most telling when itÕs
caught somewhere between life and death, between reality and representation.
Whether or not viewers regard artistsÕ use of living animals as justifiable,
the resulting work is almost always difficult and uncomfortable, and can prompt
complex ironies and unlikely alliances when art and animal advocacy come face
to face. The clearest case of this is undoubtedly the furore surrounding
Eduardo KacÕs recent artwork, GFP Bunny.
Kac
(pronounced ÔcatsÕ) produces what he calls transgenic art: Ôa new art form
based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes
to an organism, to create unique living beingsÕ. In February 2000 at the INRA
research laboratory in France he created one of these unique beings, an albino
rabbit that glows bright green when illuminated with blue light. The rabbit,
named Alba by the artist, was created with EGFP, an enhanced version of the
green flourescent gene found in jellyfish, which was added to the unborn
rabbitÕs DNA. The procedure is an established one, which this laboratory had
previously used successfully for the purposes of medical research.
According
to Kac, the GFP Bunny artwork consists of the rabbit herself, the public
dialogue generated by the work, and the proposed Ôsocial integrationÕ of the
rabbit in KacÕs own family when she was brought back from France to live as the
family pet in Chicago. Alba was therefore not so much a living work of art as
Ôa participant in the GFP Bunny transgenic artworkÕ. The work is intended as an
Ôexamination of the notions of normalcy, heterogeneity, purity, hybridity and
othernessÕ, and a negotiation of Ôthe terrain between science and cultureÕ. It
seeks to offer Ôambiguity and subtlety where we usually only find affirmative
(Òin favorÓ) and negative (ÒagainstÓ) polarityÕ.
ÔResponsibility is keyÕ, Kac insists, and he in no way
condones Ôwork that harms animalsÕ. It is important to understand that the
transgenic work is carried out at the level of the individual reproductive cell:
ÔIn other words, you do not modify an existing animalÕ. Such art must be
accompanied by Ôa commitment to respect, nurture and love the life thus
createdÕ. He says this of the occasion when he first held the rabbit: ÔShe
immediately awoke in me a strong and urgent sense of responsibility for her
well-beingÕ.
Given
KacÕs entirely sincere concern not to harm animals in the production of
transgenic art, it is at the very least ironic that the easy availability of
transgenic mice has already led to an increase in the number of animal
experiments currently undertaken, and that the first GM primate was also
created in 2000, its genetic material having been modified in the same way as
that of Alba.
The
complex implications of this whole affair did not end there, because the
project did not work out quite as the artist had planned. As of June 2001, Alba
is still at the French research lab, which claims that Kac had never been
authorized to take her back to Chicago. His concerted campaign to secure AlbaÕs
release has attracted media attention in France and the United States, and a
representative of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals went so far as to
say that GFP Bunny was Ôhelpful for laboratory animals everywhereÕ, and could
highlight their plight.
What can
be learned from such a case? It certainly confirms that there is no consensus
on what constitutes ethical behaviour towards the animal in contemporary art.
More radically than this, however, it may suggest that ethical questions cannot
even be adequately framed in this context. Kac is surely right to say that the
question is more complex, because both Ôethics and aesthetics are branches of
philosophyÕ, and the Ôbias and prejudiceÕ of the Western philosophical canon
has been nowhere more evident than in its pronouncements on animals.
It may be
that those working within the arts are especially well placed to devise new
forms of responsible action – critical and improvisatory forms that
sidestep a rule-bound or unduly moralistic notion of ethics. The recognition of
such moves will call for a trust in the integrity of the artist, and a
reluctance to be outraged too quickly when the animal takes unexpected or
controversial forms.
Alejandro
Gonz‡lez I–‡rrituÕs brilliant film Amores Perros provides a fine example. The
mediaÕs focus has been on the jarring realism of its brief scenes of simulated
dogfights, and this has diverted attention from its serious, prolonged (and
profoundly Deleuzian) meditation on the relation of dogs and humans, most
notably as Cofi, the black dog at the filmÕs centre, tests almost to
destruction the scope for human-animal alliances. Amores Perros charts both the
complex proximity of human and animal lives, and the ways in which the subtle
work of representation can shift human preconceptions about the animal world.
Although the living animalÕs role in film is in some respects distinct from its
role in fine art practice, these same two themes are central to some of the
most committed and imaginative contemporary art.
Both are
evident in the work of Olly & Suzi, whose current exhibition at the Natural
History Museum traces their worldwide travels to paint endangered predators at
the closest possible quarters in their natural habitats. The fearful proximity
this often involves could not be further from Damien HirstÕs detachment from
his animal subjects, exemplified in his claim that Ôyou kill things to look at
themÕ. Often working with local guides and conservationists, Olly & SuziÕs
aim is to render visible the animalÕs impending disappearance, whether it is a
white shark off the South African coast or a tarantula in Venezuela. Painting
together, Ôhand over handÕ, they make every effort to enable the depicted
animal itself to contribute to the mark-making, so that the weight of the
creatureÕs fragile presence and reality is imprinted there. The finished
painting thus takes on the status of Ôa document É a genuine artifact of the
eventÕ, in a way that its striking photographic documentation can never quite
match.
In place
of prescribing (or proscribing) how the animal should be seen, other artists
have also engaged in the interplay of the seen and the unseen, and the
questioning of what is seen. Alert to the difficult and critical work of
representing animals, Britta JaschinskiÕs photographs sometimes create productive
ambiguities of exactly this kind. In the sharp focus of her current Wild Things
series, as in the hazy imagery of the marvellous Beasts series that preceded
it, viewers are liable to misread the evidence of their eyes. Unable to figure
out how the photographs have been made, they have often assumed that the
profile shots of the rhino or elephant in Wild Things show taxidermic animals
rather than living ones. Some of these animals have been photographed in zoos,
others in the wild. With the erasure of background and context, this
significant distinction is also erased – and with it, the dubious notion
that is peddled too often that the Ôzoo animalÕ is in some sense not a real
animal.
Marion
Coutts is equally concerned to question viewersÕ preconceptions. In a recent
video, Cat Piece, the face of a black cat fills the screen, disarmingly staring
the viewer down as its pupils dilate and contract in rapid response to unseen
distractions behind the camera. In such intense close-up, the animal is shorn of
comfortable familiarity. Its gaze is interrupted only by three brief
ÔintermissionsÕ that focus equally closely on other barely recognizable bits of
the animal so that, in the artistÕs words, Ôthe cat almost disappears into its
own bodyÕ. Like SchneemannÕs Kitch, this is a seeing animal rather than a seen
one.
In one of
their most remarkable pronouncements, Deleuze and Guattari state that artists
Ôexperience the animal as the only population before which they are responsible
in principleÕ – thus the animalÕs haunting presence for the artist. That
responsibility, however the word is interpreted, is the subject of much of the
art discussed here. Mark DionÕs provisional manifesto assigns the artist a
responsibility to be inventive, because Ônature does not always know what is
bestÕ. The Justice for Animals Arts Guild acknowledges the value of ÔmischiefÕ
as one of artÕs strategies, and the need critically to examine artÕs claims to
ÔtruthÕ. Both views recall Donna HarawayÕs Ôargument for pleasure in the confusion
of boundaries and for responsibility in their constructionÕ.
There
need be few such boundaries in artÕs dealings with the animal, though it can be
uncomfortable to acknowledge this. As one scientist has said in defence of
Eduardo Kac, ÔHow did I and my fellow scientists become anointed to do things
that should be prohibited to artists? Because we are contributing to the
understanding of things? So are artistsÕ. The value of the science is open to
question, but prohibiting the art is by no means certain to improve matters.
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