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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Vancouver Art Gallery Censored by the SPCA

posted by on April 14 at 18:44 PM

In a press release sent out less than an hour ago, the Vancouver Art Gallery, hosting Huang Yong Ping’s installation with live animals, Theater of the World, announced it will remove all the animals by end of business tomorrow. In their place—as a protest—the museum plans to put up documentation of the museum’s dialogue with animal-rights activists, who envisioned the artist’s intended artificial microcosm instead as “something that resembles a zoo or a pet shop, where each species is neatly separated into different glass boxes,” the artist wrote in a statement.

I wrote a few days ago about the controversy brewing up north over the installation.

The museum and the artist still contend that the conditions for the insects and lizards were absolutely livable. When I asked for an interview, the Vancouver Art Gallery did not respond. But at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, the installation’s display depended on first consulting a local exotic pet expert to ensure that the animals were fed and watered properly, although the stress of the strange, bare environment was unavoidable—and part of the artist’s intent. By the end of the exhibition, the Walker curator noted, most of the animals had adjusted to the presence of each other and to their new surroundings, “and just looked bored.”

But the prospect of an imagined bloodbath was too much for the Vancouver SPCA to bear, evidently.

I’d like to know why the museum folded (the Walker made its case to local animal-rights activists, and they backed down), and maybe to do that I’ll need to visit the show and talk to the curators, providing they make themselves available. My hunch is that the censorship is a shame, and a sham. Human culture is built on the exploitation of animals; this installation, intended to prompt a consideration of that among other things, to me would barely seem to register on the scale of abuse.

RSS icon Comments

1
Human culture is built on the exploitation of animals; this installation, intended to prompt a consideration of that among other things
Nifty! So, if they had a dogfight pit with dogs fighting each other, that could be intended to prompt consideration of our exploitation of animals? How intriguing.

Look, maybe the SPCA up here just has more sway than the ones down in the states. But frankly, a lot of the arguments that I hear are how it's all right because they're just lizards or snakes or spiders. If it's ok because of that, I want to know why. What is it that makes them expendable, that allows for people to treat them inhumanely in situations where people wouldn't dream of allowing other animals to be treated that way?

Posted by wench | April 14, 2007 8:09 PM
2

Jen Graves: Animal experimentation as art.

I'm always troubled by people who have no empathy for animals.

Posted by fillibuster | April 14, 2007 9:26 PM
3

What a funny idea. I was dangling this puppy off the freeway overpass and you censored by free artistic expression by interfering!

Posted by fillibuster | April 14, 2007 9:29 PM
4

Hey filibuster, don't take anymore aspirin or cough syrup, or cholesterol meds or just let people who need organ transplants die. The exploitation of animals makes this possible.

Posted by Your naivete is charming | April 14, 2007 9:37 PM
5

Jen yer a douche. I don't need to go to a gallery to see animal exploitation--just look in the meat section of the supermarket. Artists who do "art" w/ animals are also major douches.

Posted by manuelita saenz | April 14, 2007 9:59 PM
6
The exploitation of animals makes this possible.
So, from this... what does exploitation of animals for art make possible? What life-threatening illness is scorpions and snakes attacking each other in a glass box going to cure? Boredom?
Posted by wench | April 14, 2007 10:16 PM
7

It's not as if the art exhibit involves people coming in and stepping on the animals, it is allowing nature to play out, and this is as much art as anything else...

Posted by Ryan | April 14, 2007 11:49 PM
8

For the record, I'm on the animals' side, but I don't think a dogfight is a good comparison to this particular controversy (@1). It doesn't seem like the animals are being abused, but they ARE being exploited. I can imagine what the curator said-- the animals were weirded out but then they adjusted and just seemed bored. It's just odd. What the hell is the point? I love art that makes you uncomfortable and forces you to ask questions, but I don't see why live animals must be used. They are used and exploited enough already. I think the controversy and the dialogue that has come about is far more interesting than whatever the piece may have been.

Posted by Jamey | April 15, 2007 1:28 AM
9

oh, and-- @7
I don't think "the stress of the strange, bare environment" in an art gallery is what I'd call "allowing nature to play out"

Posted by Jamey | April 15, 2007 1:31 AM
10

Hey #9--maybe the Vancouver Art Gallery should put Jen, Kangas and Regina in a cage and "allow nature to play out."

Posted by manuelita saenz | April 15, 2007 6:07 AM
11

dogs are cute, bugs are not, case closed.

Posted by Giffy | April 15, 2007 6:40 AM
12

@10 - think of the slog as the cage, akin to CBS's Big Brother. or perhaps the Stranger office is like a cage, the writers are making alliances with one another, supporting one another's posts, suppressing others. Each person challenging one another. Who will eat the fried hotdog, how will they decline. They'll take pics for evidence. Is it an embarassing photo of her eating madeline? The sublime torture is exquisite. And this art show is free, you get to participate, how will you 'allow your comments to play out?'

Posted by hmmm | April 15, 2007 8:38 AM
13

I really don't understand why the next logical step from an art installation featuring a variety of arthropods is suddenly to drop puppies from an overpass. That alone speaks of a damaged mind that could use a meat-protein pick-me-up.

But moreover, objection to this on the basis of it "hurting animals" is complete and fucking hypocrisy. You, and yes, I mean every single one of you have in your life killed an exponentially larger number of arthropods than what are in this display. There is no question- directly or indirectly, you are a mass-murderer of insects, by virtue of being a human living in this society.

Opposing an art installation because it's cruel and unnatural? How about we criminalize every person who has killed a spider in their house?

Posted by TW | April 15, 2007 10:59 AM
14

I just take issue with the headline. How did the SPCA "censor" the art museum? Did they personally go in and remove the art, or barricade the doors of the museum? The museum caved to the SPCA and censored itself.

I saw this piece at Mass MOCA in North Adams last year, and I must admit I thought it was kinda cool. Guess I'm a bad vegan.

Posted by Levislade | April 15, 2007 11:42 AM
15

This is just phenomenally stupid, bad art. Crying censorship is intellectually dishonest.

Posted by Kevin Erickson | April 15, 2007 1:17 PM
16

Perhaps I wasn't clear. How about putting the puppy in a metal cage and hanging it off an overpass over the freeway? If I let it out every couple of hours to pee and eat and poop? Would it be appropriate to stop me if I said it was art? Performance art? Would it be "censorship"?

I think there is difficult values question here that is hard to bridge by intellectual argument. Some people disapprove of causing the suffering of any animals for no important purpose. Some people extend that to vertebrates only (my first and very wonderful college biology teacher). Some only to mammals. Some only to humans.

It is hard for those in the first camp to understand those in the others and visa versa I suppose. God made the animals to serve at the whim and pleasure of the humans who HE created in His image, right?

Posted by fillibuster | April 15, 2007 9:54 PM
17

Putting living creatures cute or not together in an unnatural enviornment just to see what happens is sadistic. Accidentally killing a house spider or benefiting from medical research is a little different from exploiting these creatures for some bullshit "ART". What purpose does this installation serve? It's pointless and I find people that enjoy this kind of thing disgusting. It's like a slightly more sophisticated version of little kids enjoying stomping on ants, setting earthworms on fire or putting a firecracker up a cats ass.

Posted by Sally Struthers Lawnchair | April 16, 2007 9:18 AM
18

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Just like your resource :).

Posted by Jonney_wua | April 27, 2007 6:00 PM
19

Hi, my name is Jonney, I am from Zaire.
Just like your resource :).

Posted by Jonney_wua | April 27, 2007 6:00 PM
20

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Just like your resource :).

Posted by Jonney_wua | April 27, 2007 6:01 PM
21

Hi, my name is Jonney, I am from Zaire.
Just like your resource :).

Posted by Jonney_wua | April 27, 2007 6:01 PM
22

Hi, my name is Jonney, I am from Zaire.
Just like your resource :).

Posted by Jonney_wua | April 27, 2007 6:01 PM
23

Modern art has open meaning allowing every viewer to come to his/her conclusion.Bad art is a reflection of the viewer's own value.This art is a success in bringing about this kind of exciting and rather heated debate about animal rights.Beuys made an important exhibit with live coyote.From the gallery's web-site,animal experts were consulted but it still would not satisfy SPCA.It doesn't matter this go on in the wild.I guess the next logical step is to bring the small and weak insects home to protect them and provide them with a comfortable environment,making sure they are in separate cages.With all the extra steps to protect animals,it is odd that not enough are done to protect humans.There are widespread reports,especially about people of muslim conviction and middle-east descent,whose rights are violated.Natives are protesting.Canada did not sign UN treaty to protect their rights.Mr.Arar and Afgans were handed over by Canadians.In Guantanamo,Iraq and Palastine,people are dying.

Posted by GeoffWong | April 28, 2007 2:46 AM

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