To counter act the previous article that I talked about, I read a newspaper article, Animal rights activists fail to close Italian art exhibition by Garrett Harris, that talked about the same artist: Adel Abdessemed. In 2009 the artist had a controversial exhibition at Turin-based gallery. Included in the exhibition were images of animals being slaughtered. Some of the images included where the same images that were closed in the San Francisco exhibition the previous year. These images are included in the work Don't Trust Me (2008). The exhibition also included more films shot in Mexico that showcased roosters and dogs fighting in an area that the artist has put them in.
The Italian rights group reported concerns about the works involved with the exhibition to Turin's councillor, Domenico Magaone. The outcome was that works didn't have anything incriminating or illegal about them. So, the show went on as planned.
There is also mention about the exhibition at SAIC and what happened there.
____________
My thoughts:
It appears to me that the Italian animal rights group approached this exhibition in a different way than In Defense of Animals did with the SAIC exhibition. There was no mention of any direct threats to the artists or anyone else involved at the Turin exhibition. Is this because there wasn't a more massive public outpour of the exhibition? I wonder how many people actually reported concerns? Was it just a handful of people or thousands of people like with the In Defense of Animal group? I think the more people that are reporting a negative aspect of the works would have a great impact of shutting down the exhibition.
Is a more forceful direct and even threatening approach the only one that is going to work? I found these two newspaper articles fascinating because it has two different groups trying to shut down the same artist's exhibition. I do not think that animals rights groups should be going ground treating people. That is just not right. The question then remains who can animal rights groups approach exhibitions and artists who are harming animals in order to get their message across to the public?
I really have no desire to research more about the artist Abdessened. The work is just something I don't want to deal with; however, these newspaper articles about his work allows me to see evidence of animals advocacy groups trying to close down exhibitions.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
A Rupture in the Field of Representation: Animals, Photography and Affect
A Rupture in the Field of Representation: Animals, Photography and Affect
Recruiting Strangers and Friends: Moral Shock and Social Networks in Animal
Rights and Anti-Nuclear Protests. Reviewed by Matthew Brower
{curator of the University of Toronto Art Center; book is Animal Traces: Early American Animal Photography.}
concept of punctum is used to look at the importance of animality related to
the concept. Jacques Derrida is also brought up and his work on animality.
Jasper and Poulsen feel that animal rights activists encounter images of animal
suffering and use activism as a response to the suffering imposed within the
photographs. The response is referred to as "moral shocks," which
they describe as, "when an event or situation raises such a sense of
outrage in people that they become inclined toward political action, even in
the absence of a network of contacts." Activists used the images to attach
meaning and symbols that have adding meaning as a recruitment tool. The moral
shocks help to develop the animal activist groups.
John Berger's canonical argument of photographs of animals used to reinforce this
separation among humans and animals and humans. {Find out if I can get
Berger's book Why Look At Animals?} Photographs can show us how animals
remain separate from humans and our society has completely disconnected from
the animals.
Jonathan Burt {Book Animals in Film} looks at the potential affect animals have in
emotional responses. Animals can signify a "rupture in the field of
representation" The body of the animal act, however, they can't perform
any function. The essay further explores Burt's analysis of animals in film.
The most important part of Burt's argument is that the filmic punctum of animal
bodies isn't a private matter, but rather social and political.
The anaylsis of Burt is used for the reader to understand Barthes's punctum.
Barthes discusses the studium and the punctum in Camera Lucida. The
punctum, which is most important for this essay, is when the photographs expose
a wound and something that is outside the image. He refers to this as
"madness." The image in the photograph shows us something dead or a
horrifying event. It exposes our own finitude.
Barthes's punctum is seen as a singular and unsharable event; however the punctum
can't function without sharing of the finitude. The essay then goes into
describe other's ideas on animals and death. Akira Lippit believes that in the
Western way of thinking the emphasize the animals inability to comprehend
death. Derrida argues that animals have to signify that they are social beings.
The "madness" of the image in any photograph is "the spectral logic of hauntology."The madness in the photographs are unable to be maintained because we have to share
the wound that has been exposed to the viewer. The animals haunt the Camera Lucida and if we are able to find away to take animals seriously, we can understand how the
punctum has an affect to the social realm.
_______________________________
Thoughts:
This article was very interesting. I am wondering what it means that this is a
Review Essay. I thought that this article was very concise and easy to follow.
Brower brought up some really valid points and was able to call upon some
major authorities on the topic. I really need to further explore Jaques
Derrida because I have seen his name mentioned in a lot of the articles
that I have come across on the topic of animal rights in the arts. I was
able to pull some great information on ideas that I wasn't aware of before, one
of them being the idea of the punctum. This was new to me and very
fascinating. The bibliography of the article is going to be extremely
helpful to me because it provides a lot of resources that I believe will be of
value to me topic!
I haven't thought about exploring photography as the object of my paper prior to
reading this essay. I think that photography is an important medium and
sometimes can be overlooked. I do believe that photography of animal rights
issues can have a big impact on society. I will need to further explore
photographers who deal with the topic.
Animal Activists Closing Exhibitions
I recently found two articles/newspaper writings that dealt with the same artist: Adel Abdessemed, an Algerian, Paris based artists. The first one, Terror campaign by animal rights group forces closure of exhibition by Charmaine Picard published in Art Newspaper, May 2008, Vol. 17, p3-3; 1p,2008.
The exhibition was held at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in March 2008. The curator, Hou Hanru had received numerous death threats by animal rights groups because the videos in the exhibition showed the killing of six animals. Abdessemed shot the videos in Mexico to show the documentation of traditional methods of food production. The animals were killed with the sledgehammer to their heads. The animal group, In Defense of Animals, set out emails to its members urging them to send letters for the exhibition to be taken down.
The group was classified as "extremists" by the president of SFAI, Chris Bratton. He said that the emails targeted the artist, staff, etc. It was shut down after one week of being open.
The artists' art dealer, David Zwirner said that the work was important political statement to make people aware of what is going on with the war. The animals were consumed for food. It is also about how other cultures view death.
_______
My thoughts:
I am not sure how I completely feel about the method of how the animal rights group approached the exhibition. I would also like to see proof of how threatening the emails actually were. I am sure that some of them were really threatening, but I don't believe that all of them could be. Having the exhibition shut down does show that activists groups do have some power.
I do not agree with what the artist had done for his work. I feel that he could have approached the political subject matter in a more tasteful way without harming animals.
For my thesis, I am not sure if I will want to deal with animal rights groups and there impact on artists/exhibitions. It is really interesting to see how powerful a group can be. Also, I wonder if the animals rights group have taken a more direct approach against other artists.
The exhibition was held at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in March 2008. The curator, Hou Hanru had received numerous death threats by animal rights groups because the videos in the exhibition showed the killing of six animals. Abdessemed shot the videos in Mexico to show the documentation of traditional methods of food production. The animals were killed with the sledgehammer to their heads. The animal group, In Defense of Animals, set out emails to its members urging them to send letters for the exhibition to be taken down.
The group was classified as "extremists" by the president of SFAI, Chris Bratton. He said that the emails targeted the artist, staff, etc. It was shut down after one week of being open.
The artists' art dealer, David Zwirner said that the work was important political statement to make people aware of what is going on with the war. The animals were consumed for food. It is also about how other cultures view death.
_______
My thoughts:
I am not sure how I completely feel about the method of how the animal rights group approached the exhibition. I would also like to see proof of how threatening the emails actually were. I am sure that some of them were really threatening, but I don't believe that all of them could be. Having the exhibition shut down does show that activists groups do have some power.
I do not agree with what the artist had done for his work. I feel that he could have approached the political subject matter in a more tasteful way without harming animals.
For my thesis, I am not sure if I will want to deal with animal rights groups and there impact on artists/exhibitions. It is really interesting to see how powerful a group can be. Also, I wonder if the animals rights group have taken a more direct approach against other artists.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Where is the Animal after Post-Humanism?
Where
is the Animal
after
Post-Humanism?
Sue
Coe and the Art of Quivering Life
By A l i c e K u
z n i a r
Kuzniar,
Alice. 2011. "Where is the Animal after Post-Humanism?." CR: The New
Centennial Review 11, no. 2: 17-40. Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost
(accessed November 27, 2012).
Bibliography
Kuzniar,
Alice. "Where is the Animal after Post-Humanism?." CR: The New
Centennial Review 11, no. 2 (Fall2011 2011): 17-40. Humanities International
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 27, 2012).
Article
begins by addressing Adorno and his take on the gaze of Homo sapiens. Kuzniar finds the quote from Adorno to
contradict each other.
Quote
from Adorno:
Nichts so ausdrucksvoll wie die Augen von
Tieren—Menschenaff en—,
die
objektiv darüber zu trauern scheinen, dass sie keine Menschen sind.
There
is nothing so expressive as the eyes of animals—especially apes—which
seem
objectively to mourn that they are not human. (Adorno 1970, 172/113)1
Die
Philosophie ist eigentlich dazu da, das einzulösen, was im Blick eines
Tieres
liegt.
Philosophy
actually exists in order to redeem what is to be found in the gaze
of an
animal. (Adorno in conversation with Horkheimer, cited in Claussen
2003,
305/255)
Adorno uses the term Menschenaff en to apply
to the expressivity of the humanlike animal gaze. The term is used to show the
slippage of the boundary between man and animal.
The
second part deals with another idea: “gaze is so incomprehensible, perhaps so
unhuman-like,
that it calls upon philosophy as its paramount task to think
through
and put into words all that is contained in it—to keep the promise,
as it
were, of what lies in the gaze of the animal. Philosophy thus becomes a
field
of inquiry less into the human being
than into sentient animal being” {page 18}
Kuzniar
goes on to further explore this relationship in the following paragraphs.
“In
sum, the mutual gaze is the contact point where human and animal meet,
where
the concrete interaction disrupts the “animal in theory,” where the
visual
disrupts the dominance of the logos,
where Lévinas stops short of
attributing
a face to animals, and where an attack is mounted against the
so-called
humanistic preoccupation with what the gaze could mean.” {page 19}
She
goes into further exploration of Sue Coe’s work as a graphic artist and animal
activist who has been mistrusted. She quotes Steve Baker on Coe’s work:
“Steve
Baker, forinstance, observes that her drawings “constantly risk being drawn
close toa stylistic sentimentality in order to express the artist’s moral and
political
outrage”
{page 19}
It
seems then Kuzniar disagrees with what Steve Baker has to say about Sue Coe’s
work.
Kuzniar
wants to look at Coe’s work differently than looked at by Steve Baker and other
critics. She describes Coe’s work by questioning, “to ask how she redefines the
parameters in which one can address compassion and respond to the face of the
animal without falling into sentimentality. In what ways can it be said that
her art indeed shatters the viewer’s sovereign gaze?” {Page 21}
In
order to examine Coe’s work, Kuzniar has to reassess her work in order to be
able to retrace the meaning.
{Pagee
22} provides some background information on Coe as an artist. There is some
really good descriptions and facts to look back on.
I
really appreciated how this article took a different look into the topic.
The
notes page provides a lot of good resources that I need to further explore.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Artists {Sue Coe}
Since I discovered the work of Steve Baker, I have been researching artists who specially deal with the rights of animals. I am not to familiar with contemporary art dealing with animals, especially artists who are critiquing the animal/factory farm industry. One artist that I found through Steve Baker's writings was Sue Coe, an English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing and printmaking.
I discovered an interesting video of Sue Coe from Our Hen House, a vegan activist group. It was really interesting hearing from the artist herself and what she thinks about her own work and the creative process. I think that is one benefit of researching and writing about an artwork/artist that is more contemporary. You can have a first hand account and your questions might be answered a little more easier, even though you can't always trust what an artist says about their own work.
http://www.ourhenhouse.org/2011/12/new-video-sue-coe-art-of-the-animal/
From watching the video and looking at her work, I am truly inspired. I haven't come across any types of prints like Coe's before. They move you and make you think about the factory farming industry. One thing that I really came to appreciate from watching the video was the face that Coe grew up near a factory farm and had a first hand account of the horrible acts that took place inside and outside the farm. Not many people are not able to have a direct account of the industry and how horrible it is.
I think that I would like to somehow include Sue Coe into my paper. I am just not sure how exactly I want to go about doing that. I know that I will be able to find a way, just not sure how I want to incorporate her works, either as an example or a main focus of the paper.
Exhibition at Galerie St. Etienne in New York.
http://www.gseart.com/- click on Sue Coe's name for information on her past exhibitions.
___________________________
I think when you are researching something that you really care about makes the process both easier and more enjoyable. When I first started researching on Mexican churches I was not really into it. I could tell that when I was trying to find out more information on the subject, it was more of a hassle and wasn't really interesting to me. When I switched over to animals rights through the arts, I wanted to keep researching and I found out more information. I think that it is very important to want to really ask questions and figure out something that you really care about. I am pretty certain that I will be writing on animal activism in the arts and not on Mexican churches.
I discovered an interesting video of Sue Coe from Our Hen House, a vegan activist group. It was really interesting hearing from the artist herself and what she thinks about her own work and the creative process. I think that is one benefit of researching and writing about an artwork/artist that is more contemporary. You can have a first hand account and your questions might be answered a little more easier, even though you can't always trust what an artist says about their own work.
http://www.ourhenhouse.org/2011/12/new-video-sue-coe-art-of-the-animal/
From watching the video and looking at her work, I am truly inspired. I haven't come across any types of prints like Coe's before. They move you and make you think about the factory farming industry. One thing that I really came to appreciate from watching the video was the face that Coe grew up near a factory farm and had a first hand account of the horrible acts that took place inside and outside the farm. Not many people are not able to have a direct account of the industry and how horrible it is.
I think that I would like to somehow include Sue Coe into my paper. I am just not sure how exactly I want to go about doing that. I know that I will be able to find a way, just not sure how I want to incorporate her works, either as an example or a main focus of the paper.
Exhibition at Galerie St. Etienne in New York.
http://www.gseart.com/- click on Sue Coe's name for information on her past exhibitions.
___________________________
I think when you are researching something that you really care about makes the process both easier and more enjoyable. When I first started researching on Mexican churches I was not really into it. I could tell that when I was trying to find out more information on the subject, it was more of a hassle and wasn't really interesting to me. When I switched over to animals rights through the arts, I wanted to keep researching and I found out more information. I think that it is very important to want to really ask questions and figure out something that you really care about. I am pretty certain that I will be writing on animal activism in the arts and not on Mexican churches.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The Postmodern Animal
While furthering my research, I discovered an authority on animal arts,Steve Baker, an art historian. {Further research on his background} His book, The Post Modern Animal, deals with the significant features of ironies and its relation to the postmodern art of animals. He mentions how irony has played a significant role in early postmodernism.
Chapter 2 from the book:
Chapter 2 from the book:
- The question being dealt with is whether the activities of an artist can save certain animals, homo sapiens, etc.
- Irony played an important part in self-consciously clever moves of postmodernism
- 1980s: Images of the animal seemed to proliferate across the arts. He discusses this 'first stage' of postmodernism and discusses it further in the chapter in order to get a sense of how exactly the newly visible animal got caught up in parroting and parodying and to what effect.
- pg 27: example used was the Royal Academy's exhibition A New Spirit in Painting, a return to painting was now a big focus
- two colorful paintings by Malcom Morley: Parrots & The Lone Ranger Lost in the Jungle of Erotic Desires
- pg 28: This exhibition wasn't embarrassing like Kitsch art had been; it was rather striking. Other images of animals were also present
- A presence of animals meant that there was an end to the 'austere' modernism which felt that there wasn't any place for animals
- Christos Joachimides addressed in a catalogue essay of avant-garde of the 1960s & 70s "bound to be self-defeating" on account of their narrow, purt art approach devoid of all joy and senses."
- Writers found Morley's animal imagery 'postmodern' formal expression and in his evocation of a sensual primitive pleasure
- Julian Barnes novel Flaubert's Parrot {1984} told a story of how an English doctor Geoffrey Bralthwarte went to France in order to find the parrot that Faulbert had wrote about. It was a really sad and serious story
- He attempted to do something by considering how Flauberts own animal imagery may now be understood
- Uses film exp. Greenway
- pg 37: psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: rage and how you can feel humiliated, revealing what matter to us
- "postmodern animals might productively be thought of as the rhetorical figure of the human, animal, and artist or philosopher whose purpose is to imagine it hold to idea of a good life"
- Adorno "from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy"
- pg 38: two stages of postmodernism
- ironic detachment and a freedom from humiliation
- vainly raging about things that matter
- Irony changes nothing; it will have little to contribute to creative work of postmodern animal
The chapter was very interesting and I would like to further explore Baker's works. I think that he is going to be a very vauable resource in my thesis.
To do: check out Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation from the library. Call number: 398.369 B168P
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Week 10
I am currently thinking about why I would want to write about animal advocacy in the arts. My top reason would have to be that I am extremely passionate about animal rights and how the world perceives and treats the animals, especially farm animals. It would be amazing if I was somehow able to connect the two together. I think that it is very well possible, but I am not quite sure the direction that I want to go. I know that previously their have been artists who have done performance pieces with dead animals or they tortured animals. I want to find out all the artists who have done art pieces with animals and figure out their reasoning behind choosing that for their art.
I think that we can learn a lot of our culture by how we treat animals. How does society perceive living among the animals? Why is it ok to treat a dog a certain way and a farm animal differently? This weeks reading on Social Art History as very interested to me and I would like to future explore this methodology. I really connected to what T.J. Clark had to say about social art history in this weeks textbook reading.
Current task: further explore the connect of animal advocacy in the arts. I want to figure out what is currently being down. I am also not to familiar with advocacy among the arts and would like to further explore. Find books. articles dealing with both animals in the arts and advocacy in the arts.
I am really excited about the direction that my topic is going! I look forward to learning more on the topic.
I think that we can learn a lot of our culture by how we treat animals. How does society perceive living among the animals? Why is it ok to treat a dog a certain way and a farm animal differently? This weeks reading on Social Art History as very interested to me and I would like to future explore this methodology. I really connected to what T.J. Clark had to say about social art history in this weeks textbook reading.
Current task: further explore the connect of animal advocacy in the arts. I want to figure out what is currently being down. I am also not to familiar with advocacy among the arts and would like to further explore. Find books. articles dealing with both animals in the arts and advocacy in the arts.
I am really excited about the direction that my topic is going! I look forward to learning more on the topic.
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