UPDATE, 3/29/08:
Nonstarvingartists.com has a description of the exhibit here, as well as an editorial about the whole “killing-animals-for-art” phenomenon here.
I crossposted this over on easyVegan.info, where there’s now a comment thread. Despite Sue’s protestations, I still believe that all the info included in this alert is accurate, though the photo I found on Flickr may be of another exhibit, since it doesn’t quite match the stills at nonstarvingartists.com.
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Note to those who carelessly toss out some variation of the complaint that “animals are treated better than people” (usually taking the form of a lamentation that ‘x’ minority group is treated worse even than mere animals; e.g., “women are treated worse than animals” or “dogs are treated better than women!”): Does this mean that I can, say, fillet a baby and get away with my crime, just so long as I videotape it and call it “art”? No? Then STFU.
And for Chrissakes, it’s not as though Abdessemed has to go out and slaughter another six animals to make such an exhibit; animal abuse is everywhere. She could have aired any six of the hundreds (thousands?) of undercover investigations conducted by animal activists. How is exhibiting something you can find on YouTube with distressing frequency “innovative” or “art”, even? Yawn. She’s not an artist, she’s a sadist.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: In Defense of Animals – takeaction [at] idausa.org
Date: Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:27 PM
Subject: Tell San Francisco Art Institute to remove snuff video exhibit from gallery
The “Art” of Animal Cruelty
Tell San Francisco Art Institute to remove snuff video exhibit from gallery
Walk into the Walter and McBean Galleries in San Francisco’s posh Russian Hill neighborhood, and you may be shocked to see what passes for contemporary “art” these days. Six televisions display video images of six different animals — a doe, a goat, a horse, an ox, a pig, and a sheep — being bludgeoned to death with a large sledgehammer by “artist” Adel Abdessemed of Paris. Entitled “Don’t Trust Me,” this sick exhibit is Abdessemed’s and the Institute’s self-serving attempt to pass off the brutal abuse and killing of animals as legitimate artistic creation.
What such “artists” and their patrons overlook is that animals are living beings who feel and suffer just like we humans — and we are no more justified in taking their lives at will than we have the right to kill another person. Such abuse of animals may elicit horror and disgust in viewers, but that does not qualify it as art. Far from it — in fact, “Don’t Trust Me” represents the very worst impulses of the human imagination.
It takes no artistic talent or ability to kill animals, and Abdessemed should have never been given a venue for his sickening “work” in the first place. To their great discredit, the San Francisco Art Institute agreed to sponsor this exhibit, lending it an air of credibility, but what makes matters worse are the obscene rationalizations this venerable institution of learning and culture offers in defense of the sleazy snuff films. These include pedantic claims that such killings “regularly take place…in the real world, on a regular basis,” and that the installation “(makes) typical moral and cultural constraints seem beside the point.”
Such statements betray not only a lack of compassion and basic human decency, but also a fundamental confusion of true artistic creation with the destruction of life. Abdessemed’s work is of no artistic value, and rather than raise people’s consciousness about the cruelties committed against animals every day, it will encourage them to accept animal abuse as a way of gaining attention and notoriety.
To call someone who murders animals an “artist” is an insult to every real artist who refuses to rely on violence and shallow, sensationalistic gimmicks to express his or her vision. While the work of such murderers will surely not endure, their antics may encourage and incite others to torture and kill animals, so it is crucial that people of conscience voice our outrage over this monstrous display of cruelty.
Please Take Action to urge the San Francisco Art Institute to remove Abdessemed’s disgusting exhibit immediately, and implement a policy explicitly prohibiting exhibits for which animals were exploited or killed.
(More below the fold…)
