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Title : The most fatuous art-talk I've ever heard.
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The most fatuous art-talk I've ever heard.

There's an artwork called "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other," in which pairs of live dogs are restrained on treadmills facing other dogs on treadmills. The dogs struggle for several minutes to attack each other. The original performance took place in a museum in Beijing in 2003, with the dogs present — struggling on treadmills — in the museum. A video of that event is to be included in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, "Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World." Facing criticism that the video is a recording of the abuse of the dogs, the Guggenheim has issued a statement:

Reflecting the artistic and political context of its time and place, “Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other” is an intentionally challenging and provocative artwork that seeks to examine and critique systems of power and control.

We recognize that the work may be upsetting. The curators of the exhibition hope that viewers will consider why the artists produced it and what they may be saying about the social conditions of globalization and the complex nature of the world we share.

They're posing as if they are calling us to a higher plane. Think about the symbolism, as the dogs represent people.

Yeah, I am familiar with artwork using dogs to represent people. It's real sophisticated:



But go ahead. Use dogs to represent people. Knock yourself out making paintings of dogs. But if you want to do shows with live dogs, you'd better treat them right, and we, the audience, need to stay firmly grounded in reality and refuse to participate if you're tormenting the animals. That's the highest plane: Stark awareness that the video "Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other" was made by tormenting dogs.

To slap abstraction on it — "examine and critique systems of power and control" — is ludicrous and disgusting. Power and control were used against the dogs. If we are to care about "systems of power and control," we must object to the treatment of the dogs, not drift off into musings about how somewhere else human beings are subjected to power and control.

"We recognize that the work may be upsetting" is an outrageous putdown, essentially accusing those who object to animal abuse of being snowflakes, too sensitive to confront challenging art. We are invited to consider the internal lives of "the artists": why they "produced it and what they may be saying." But if any internal life deserves consideration, it's the experience of the dogs, whose lives were appropriated for the purpose of expressing a message "the artists" chose to reduce to a form that used the suffering of other sentient beings.

What do frustrated, aggravated dogs have to say about "the complex nature of the world we share"? Human beings have entertained themselves with dog fighting since Roman times. Putting the dogs on treadmills saves them from getting bitten and makes big clowns out of them. It's funny and it works because — unlike human beings on treadmills — they don't understand what's happening and why they cannot progress to the violence they crave. So, yeah, that's like some real-world situations in which belligerent humans can't progress. We can easily figure out why "the artists" used dogs and what they are saying, but that isn't a terribly rewarding intellectual journey, and even if it were, it wouldn't justify the cruelty to the dogs.

I do get something out of hearing that such a performance took place in a museum in China in 2003. I understand something about debasement and numbness within that culture. But the Guggenheim is in my culture now, and it should not be showing a video of the animal cruelty and palming off fatuous rhetoric calling us into debasement and numbness as if it were an elevated accomplishment.

ADDED: Here's the NYT article, "Guggenheim Exhibit With Video of Dogs Trying to Fight Stirs Criticism." There's a photograph of the poor dogs, with Beijing museum-goers looking on.

But so far the backlash has centered on the video by the artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, the husband-and-wife creators of often stirring and unsettling work. (In 2000, their transfused blood was injected into the corpse of conjoined babies in the performance piece “Body Link.”)...

In an interview last year, Mr. Sun and Ms. Peng defended “Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other” and dismissed claims of animal cruelty.

“Where is the soft spot in all of this?” Ms. Peng said. “Were the dogs being abused? The answer should be no. These dogs are naturally pugnacious... In fact, human nature and animal nature are the same. China hosted the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. What is the goal of this type of sporting event? Actually, it is the conversion of actual fighting into regulated competition.”

If "These dogs are naturally pugnacious," it is because human beings have bred them and trained them to serve human needs. 

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