- exhibition catalog distributed by MIT Press, Massachussets Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass, copyright 2005
Exhibition organized by MASS MoCA and presented in North Adams from May 2005 through March 2006
Curator Nato Thompson: introduction called Monstrous Empathy
"Artist Kathy High unveils the biological and suprisingly personal connections between laboratory rats and herself.""how do we incorporate the new knowledge that the human genome is only a few strands away from that of a flea?" (8)
"The exhibition Becoming Animal takes a cue from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their seminal book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). When Deleuze and Guattari write of "becoming animal," they destabilize the strcit (and possibly artibraray_ boudnaries modernity established between humanity and the animal kingdom. Their sweeping notion of becoming takes on diverse fields such as "becoming geology", "becoming woman" and becoming imperceptible," but it as at its most acute with anaimals. Rahter than fixed and discreet, for Deleuze and Guattari the individual is an ever-shifting being, "a desring machine," that can take on a new forms of animal-ness (or an animal capable of taking conforms of human-ness. Similarly the term becoming bekjdka;fdslajflksja;kfl kah crap super boring and I don't care. . .
Georgio Agamben, "The Open: Man and Animal" 2004, might be something to look at. Thompson says this book traces the discussion of what is animal and what is human throughout history and talks about how we derive our meaning of who we are by defining "non-human" animals.
He says that Deleuze and Guattari challenge the "Cartesian notion of individuality--I think therefore I am--" and that this can be both "liberating" and very disturbing and challenging, bringing up the fears of hybrid human-animal type monsters, freaks, Chimeras, etc. that are very distressing to us. He mentions animal/human relationships being taboo "ever since" Eve is seen talking to the snake in the garden. Monstrous.
Donna Haraway is mentioned again. Hmm.
9 "However, radically sympathizing with the animal has had some of its strongest historical advocates in both art and zoology. As Giorgio Agamben traces animal theories of the great philosophers, he often focuses on the perspective of famed zoologist Jacob von Uexkull.
I get the sense that art and science are often posited against one another, or that art serves in some way as a critical lens on science, and science certainly imposes a judgement on the subjective realities of art. In his introductory essay, Thompson kind of says something like that, or maybe something that eludes to that dichotomy, referring to a long and descriptive quote by Jakob von Uexkull in Agamben's writing, he says "This gross explanation provides a tangible example of umwelt, and the underlying empathy feels more in cahoots with the art in this exhibition than with science." (10)
Joseph Beuys is mentioned - apparently, he founded the first political party for animals ("over one billion members" . . . mcdonalds?) and the the intro essay talks about his 2 most "notable performance pieces" the coyote one and this one where he cradles a dead rabbit and talks to it with his head covered in honey and gold leaf. "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare" which looks so sweet and super scary. There is a little more discussion of this piece, how it explores attempting to communicate with animals by first thinking like them. . . . (??)
10 - Commentary on Kathy High and work that specifically addresses lab rats.
"Leaving behind traditional categories for understand the 'other,' we enter a radical space of emptathy. Artist Kathy High evokes this territory well with her autobiographic project aptly titled "Embracing Animal" (2004). Over the telphone, Kathy High ordered a apir of laboratory test rats whom she named Echo and Flowers. The rats had been previously micro-injected with human DNA that caused their autoimmune systems to be weakened. Their incapacitated immunce systems are biolgoically re-eingineered to make them susceptible to dieases such as reactive arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammaotry bowel disease. In the normal course of science, the rats would be sued as test subjects for drugs to treat humans."
"High, suffering from a chronic illness herself, understood that these rats were being used to find cures fo rpeople. Echo and Flwoers were not simply becoming human, they had become integrally locked in a genetic relationship with humanity. As apart of the project High cares for the pair of rats, treating them with homeopathic medicines.(5) Her installation consistst of a lovely home for Echo and Flowers as well as elongated test tubes outfitted with LCD monitors displaying images of fear and anxiety that pervade phsyical crossovers between human and animal: footage of werewolves, vampires, and bvestiality flickers at the bottom of the tubes."
he then eludes to Nietzche's "last purported moment of sanity as he lurched at a horse being beaten, held onto its neck, and wept uncontrollably."
Thompson makes the point, and I agree, that after the mapping of genome in 2000 and other major advances in biotechnology, films, literature, and art began to play out our many fears this burgeoning science. Cloning and eugenics . . . this is another very close relationship to science but a slightly different one than the ethical quesiton of using animals for research . . . more like a broader ethical question of whether this kind of advancement is really as great as we think in general. He also says that "many artists have eagerly seized the tools of biotechnology" . . "to shock audiences" (12)
Then talks about Patricia Piccinini (Australian artist) that uses silicone sculpting to make those incredibly realistic "uncanny" sculptures of hybrids and genetic creations. He talks about the "Still life with stem cells" 2002 which shows the little girl holding onto a lump of fleshy thing and a few other lumps around, and he says that she looks fondly at them and "These lumps too can be loved."
Another comparison with womens' rights ". . . both feminism and the causes of animals must share a concern with the ways that the Other become subordinate." Lynda Birke and Luciana Parisi, "Animals, Becoming," 1999 (on page 12)
He talks about how feminisim and post-colonialism "provide a semiotic perspective" and talks about how "Theorists like Donna Haraway have used this analysis to interrogate both these scientific, as well as language-based, distinctions. In her groundbreaking Cyborg Manifesto, Harraway sews together ritical theory and science with a deft warning: "The degree to which the principle of domination is ddeeply embedded in our natural sciences, espeically in these disciplines that seek to explain social groups and behavior, must not be undersreestimated. Arguing that one cannot trust the claim of pure empiricism in science, she outlines a complex method for allowing hybridity between animal, machine, human and social politics in general--the cyborg."
"Connecting the 'animal' to that of the feminist and post-colonial 'other' can easily lead to ridiculous conclusions. However, cultural moments of debasement and exploitation have often found resonance with the phrase, "we were treated like animals." This refrain positions the becoming animal as the lowest form of human existence. But what does it mean to treat someone like an animal? In political terms it would bean to revoke a person's basic human rights." (13) And then of course he goes into Agamben a bit
Thompson says "if anything stands out as the most durable explanation of the difference between human and animal, it is the ability to speak." (13)
Quotes a book called "Why Look at Animals" by John Berger.
Talks about how Mark Dion "has been a major contributor o what is now a common genre in contemporary art, that of the exploded wudnerkammern."
Second introduction: "Of humans, animals, and monsters." by Christoph Cox
"Christoph Cox is Associate professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College. . . . editor at large at Cabinet magazine and writes regularly on contemporary art and music for Artforum, The Wire, and other magazines."He has the greatest little point at the beginning here. I went "ooo!" when I read it. :)
"An art exhibition that unsettles the boundary between humans and animals presents a paradox. Art--and culture in general--is supposed to be precisely that which defines the boundary in the first place. Whatever our similarities to animals, the argument goes, artistic creativity and aesthetic appreciation are uniquely human."
This essay talks about the hybrid nature of humans (have earthly, half divine, Adam as combination of earth and divine breath, Plato of soma and psyche, Descartes and physical/metaphysical, etc.) and then says that after Darwin, we are more likely to admit our relationships to animals than try to connect ourselves to the divine. He goes on to say that after the "death of god" something else came to fill in this hole . . "the machine" and then has a really interesting bit about how machines are sort of using us to evolve and that they are as much a part of us as the shells of oysters. :\
He points out that "religious doctrine, philosophical speculation, political thought, and biological classification" and "Western morality" have all been aimed at denying our animal nature and surpassing or showing how we are more. We don't want to be "merely" animals. Simon Critchley says "There is something charming about an animal become human. . . " but "when the human becomes aniaml, then the effect is disgusting." (19)
Remember that "the first human act is naming and classifying" the animals in Genesis (and that part about God presenting Adam with the animals as potenital mates or partners and to name them, which seems so sweet to me for some reason)
Oh, funny. Edward Topsell wrote a very "anthropocentric" "Historie of Foure-Footed Beasts" that classified animals as "edible/inedible, wild/tame, useful/useless" which is hilarious to me. "inedible." :)
20 - talking about Darwin's contribution to not only "eliminating the boundaries between species; he also flattened the ancient hierarchy that placed humans at the top" and was adamant that evolution is not progressive, it does not have long range goals or advancements, that humans are no more advanced than other creatures, and that "natural selection is local and temporary" which is actually not something I've ever heard anyone articulate before. Because people (even in science) still use "higher mammals" etc. even though Darwin apparently forbade the use of "higher" or "lower" since its misleading. :)
Talks about the Island of Dr. Moreau which is apparently about him trying to make a human from aniamls by reproducing evolution. So he uses a gorilla. Didn't know that. :) H.G. Wells.
talks about how Deleuze's philosphies are strongly "informed by biological thought" and that for him and Felix Guatarri, there are no distinctions between animals/plants/minerals etc. but rather a continuum . . .
Some interesting pieces mentioned:
Rachel Berwick apparently did a piece called may-por-e in which she taught a pair of parrots to speak this dead language (of the Maypure tribe) in Venezuela, because the story goes that the person to discover this language (Baron Von Humboldt) learned the language from the last surviving speaker - a parrot. This is totally cool and something I should look at. Parrot as conduit and repository of our lost languages. Hmm.Artist Brian Conley (the one that did this crazy frog balloon thing) used to be an animal researcher, monitoring negative-conditioning studies with goldfish . . . and since he was responsible for killing the fish, he decided to feed them to a larger fish, which then grew too big for its tank and broke it and got out. :) He said he believed in science then and its power for good, but developed issues with that idea over time. He is also a founder of "Cabinet" magazine -- page 44 of the catalog is his interview.
Mark Dion Interview
There is an interview with Mark Dion, which I put in another post.Kathy High Interview
Kathy High interview (66-67) which I think really relates to this question of sentimentality:"Nato Thompson: I would like to get your opinion of a quotation by Steve Baker from his book The Postmodern Animal. Can you comment on the following:
"What does it mean, exactly, to say that postmodern artists and philosophers fear pets? It is not that they fear the creatures themselves (though they may feel contempt for them). It is closer to what has been called"anthropomorphobia'--a fear that they 'ay be accused of uncritical sentimentality' in their depiction or discussion of animals. They seem almost unanimous in regarding sentimentality as a bad thing."
Kathy High: People are crazy about animals. And there is a lot of fear (by arts/intellectuals) of being sentimental around animals. People project all kinds of desires onto their animals--to make pets into 'little humans" I, too, suffer from this fear and am sometime suspicious of my own work with my pets. I try not to think of my pets as 'human' but rather as non-human. They represent extensions of ourselves, symbolic and archetypical.
There is a constant struggle for me between earnestness and irony when talking about pets. It is easy to describe them sincerely, but one doesn't want to appear to 'sappy' (picture wide-eyed kitties painted on velvet) Pets are, at the same time, paradoxical and difficult to unravel (picture twitching paws and gnarled teeth, tongues lashing). I think there is pressure on contemporary artists to be ironic and critical. Somehow, today, sincerity--to me00takes a certain amount of bravery."
(she uses her pets in her other work, and also uses animal psychics and a lot of new-age medicine type stuff (which is of course quite at odds with science and so plays against that. But she says "Day-to-day I'm very pragmatic, rational person, but even as a child I was fascinated by occult texts, and I practiced hypnosis, astral projection and telepathy. I don't know why I did that. Maybe it was from the influence of TV shows like Bewtiched or The Prisoner and movies like Wizard of Oz. These programs were psychedelic, dreamlike programs of people who were". . . (66) she says she has always been interested in that, looking at it in a sort of anthropolgical way as a possible way of coping with our "sometimes rootless" American culture or fulfilling our need to believe in something beyond ourselves (which she finds appealing).
She has been treated with homeopathic and alternative medicines.
Oh, she also said that she is not an animal rights activist, but feels that the animals used in research should be acknowledged for their contributions to science. 67 "The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals states that laboratory rats . .. and mice . . . are not covered by the national regulatory governances and the Animal Welfare Act amended in 1985, and are not reviewed under the Regulatory Enforcement and Animal Care Inspection. In other words, lab rats and mice are not protected in the same ways that other animals such as cats, dogs, and monkeys are. There are probably over 20 million rats and mice in use for research in this country, making up more than 90 percent of the animals used in research but they are undocumented--no one knows their exact numbers. This defies a kind of contract we have with animals who participate in our lives."
transgenic rats.
The word "undocumented" also reminds me of the undocumented workers, illegal aliens, etc. who definitely figure into Agamben. :)
Natalie Jeremijenko
Natalie Jeremijenko did a project where she re-engineered toy robotic dogs to sniff for environmental contaminants and then releases them in a pack to roam around and gather data. "Feral Robotic Dogs" project. I don't care for what it looks like, but the title, and the idea of a pack of these things brings me so much joy. :) (68). This was not part of the exhibition project, but her piece for that one was the bird perches that tell people to do things (an experiment in modifying human behavior). I also like this idea of taking experimental techniques on a group of museum-goers.Nicholas Lampert
Lampert talks about the Machine Animal Collages in his interview on 80 --"Loosely, the collages speak of a world engulfed in its own technology. An uncertain future where genetic engineering, robotics, and science have run amok." and talks about these questions of when and how animals and machines merge (which again reminds me of descartes and clocks.) He says "Locust Tank is metaphoric of industrialism and capital rolling over the planet," but says he's not as nihilistic as the interviewer suggests because there he doesn't think it's impossible to stop this and we should just give up. He is closely associated with the punk scene and anarchism, though, and does a lot of street art. The talk about the Locust Tank one also in terms of militaristic design and conquering (and he asks if progres smeans conqueiring nature or letting it be and existing in harmony)
He also did these "meatscapes" and they discuss monuments as physical cultural memories -- "a phsyical antedote for cultural amnesia' which I like w/r/t the monument project :)
Michael Oatman (not so interested in his bird-related painting things) does something he calls "maximum collage" which is really when is collections of crap get so massive that they become installations, so that a collage breaks out of that and becomes like this environment. I like that idea.
Motohiko Odani
- his work in the show, a taxidermy baby deer with legs in traction, called "Erectro" 2003, the deer is described as "what may be the cutest and most endearing of all non-human animals." :)And more "Odani's cute aesthetic becomes a transformed Garden of Edan in the short viedo loop "rompers" 2003, also featured in Becoming Animal" which has this candy and sugar kind of look but very subversive because the little girl in it is mutated with long toes and scary forehead and her dress is "dangerously short" and there is honey leaking from an orafice in the tree . . . so (92) I can see how this might be using cute aesthic, but definitely not in the way . . . its much more disturbing and therefore sort of undermined.
They ask him about the notion of cute in the interview, which he is quick to say is more about disabilities:
"What do you think the relationship is between cute and animals, and how do you use this as a source of inspiration?"
"I don't think baby animals are pure and innocent. In the case of baby animals born with disabilities by inheritance, mixed feelings run through me." (96) the rest of the interview focuses on the sexuality at play in the video and the sexuality associated with animals.
Patricia Piccinini
I think cuteness might kind of relate, or at least she kind of makes these things somewhat sympathetic "Piccinici confesses familial emotions toward her hybrid sculptures" (98) but they are still very scary, i think, or disconcerting. It says her sculptures began with this announcement of a laboratory-developed, fully-synthetic strange of DNA "[Synthetic Organism1] SO1 will have no specific function, but once it is alive we can customize it." so she made these silicon-based sculptures.She talks about the sculptures as though they were alive, in reference to their introspective gazes "They have their own worlds and their own concerns. They are, in the end, less interested in us than we are in them."
She also talks about "becomcing animal" as being about learning that our place is not what we think it is, acknowledging that we have all this in common with animals and even plants, etc. and the well-said idea that things we call "human traits" that we find in amails are just animal traits that we share in common. I agree with and like her position a a lot and think that this fundamental anthropocentrism is something that continually needs to be subverted (this goes back to Carl Sagan!! ;))
Makes me think of the phenomenon of the blog "cute overload" which is a very apt word choice because oftentimes the insanity of how unbelievably cute some animals can be is definitely an overload. Not sure why that is. :)
