Slightly off topic, but I once attended an environmental conference in Brazil that had a parallel art exhibition. One exhibit that I will never forget was a water cooler in which a living eel was placed - it also included an air bubbler so the eel would not suffocate. However, a stack of paper cups was left beside the cooler, inviting the viewer to take a drink. I remember returning horrified at the end of the meeting to find the eel dead in a small pool of remaining water, discarded cups in the wastebin beside the exhibit. It raised a lot of conflicting feelings for me - how could the artist subject an animal to such torture? And how could other attendees be so oblivious to the animal’s plight that they would drink from the exhibit? Was I complicit for not having complained to someone about the exhibit? This was an environmental conference after all - most of the attendees would have an interest in conservation.
not involuntarily but he did have himself nailed to the vw as in nails driven through his hands to keep him attached. i wasn’t saying this was necessarily equal to the exhibit described just that they both represented extremes. i wouldn’t want to see either performance repeated but they both give me many conflicting things to think about.
the extremes i go to for my art are more along the lines of patience and the acceptance of decay.
That sounds like some of the dreams I have, the kind that make me wake up.
…and why would people drink eel water?
I didn’t see any mention of how long the filmed dogs were running. Whatever. I’ll save myself the time and go by a bunch of presumptions.
Because they’re in a BAD DREEEEEEEAM!!
The dogs looked like they liked running on the treadmill.
You obviously didn’t watch the video of the performance piece. Their was no dog baiting.
I mean drinking eel water sounds like a bad fucking dream to me.
The duration of the whole performance was 7 minutes
Brutal, but still voluntary, though. The animals can’t consent.
Do the same installment with willing volunteers that have actively voiced their consent, and then I have no problem.
The dogs weren’t being aggressive. They looked like they were playing. I’ve seen fighting dogs and those did not look or sound like fighting dogs. (I have a neighbor that works for a shelter and rehabs them.) A couple looked like they might have been a little stressed by the crowd. If you had lined up the treadmills against a wall in a dance studio it would have read completely differently. But they face the treadmills in opposition and pantomime the signifiers of a dog fight and it’s a completely different phenomenon. This piece isn’t about the dogs, it’s about the audience.
And yet every pet rescue und shelter in Germany is no kill, as it is illegal to kill a vertrebate unless it’s for food production or it is dying. There’s even enough pressure in those existing laws that the practice of killing male chicks is getting solved by research, as the upcoming generation of judges and state attorneys are holding a stricter view on the legality of this.
Germany also collects taxes from dog owners and requires that pets be spayed or nuetered by law. I understand that some places also require that pet owners pass a certification. I would LOVE to see laws like this in place in the U.S…Because no such laws exist, the numbers of homeless and abandoned pets are staggering:
"However, the tragedy is that there are millions of homeless dogs and cats in the U.S. with millions euthanized every single year. So the question remains: why are we producing more dogs and cats when there are already so many wonderful animals in desperate need of homes?
Let’s dig in to some of the cold, hard facts on pet homelessness, shall we?
There are about 70 million stray animals living in the U.S.
Of this 70 million, only about six to eight million cats and dogs enter the nation’s 3,500 shelters every year, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
That evens out to about five homeless animals for every homeless person in the U.S, reports DoSomething.org.
Out of six to eight million cats and dogs, one in four animals brought into shelters are pit bulls or pit-associated breeds and mixes – currently the most (wrongly) marginalized dogs in the U.S. and many other parts of the world.
The two main reasons animals end up in shelters are because they’ve either been surrendered by their guardians or picked up off the street by animal control officers.
Around 10 percent of animals entering shelters have been spayed or neutered, which is problematic considering in just six years, one un-spayed female dog and her offspring can create 67,000 dogs and one un-spayed female cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 kittens in seven years, reports Watatuga Humane Society.
About 30 percent of shelter dogs are eventually reclaimed by their guardians, with cats far behind at only 2 to 5 percent.
What’s more, only about three to four million cats and dogs are adopted from shelters each year.
Know what this means? Nearly half of all animals that arrive in U.S. shelters are euthanized because there is a lack of space and adopters, amounting to roughly 2.7 million dead animals every year or five out of every ten dogs and seven out of every ten cats – that’s like 80,000 animals per week.
Five out of every ten shelter dogs each year amounts to about 5,500 euthanized dogs every day.
Of all the dogs that enter the shelter system, pit bull types have it the worst with a shockingly high euthanasia rate of 93 percent.
To pay for all of this – the impoundment, sheltering, euthanasia and subsequent disposal of homeless animals – U.S. taxpayers shell out between one to two billion dollars annually."
There is nowhere near enough room or money available to care for the sheer number of abandoned or homeless/feral pets.
o_0 Granted I watched about half of the 5 min (because it may be art but I am not sure about it being good art) but I skipped around. Looked like excited dogs running. I heard some barks but no growling. No aggressive barking or snapping like when dogs actually fight. I didn’t walk away with seeing any signs of aggression.
While I am not a huge pit bull fan, most of the won’t attack other dogs at random. It looks to me these dogs were trained to run on the treadmills and that is what they were doing.
While I agree that one can’t save all animals, PETA doesn’t really try. That isn’t their thing. Their kill rate is astounding for an org that is supposed to be pro animal. They are right that animals need love and care, but instead of trying to pair up animals with people they just put the down. It’s rather twisted IMO. Like I said LOTS of other orgs out there that actually help animals including pairing the with humans.
It’s a subject of active and productive research.
Of course, it’s the sort of research that PETA takes violent offence to, regardless of how it is conducted.
That’s because PETA isn’t an animal welfare organisation, they’re an animal liberation organisation.
Basically, it’s anthropomorphism taken to a catastrophic extreme.
On the other hand, my cat thinks it is fricken hilarious …
