freedom of expression vs. animal welfare
Tonight I attended a very interesting public debate about art and censorship. The work of art in question was Huang Yong Ping's Theatre of the World, a part of his retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The piece featured live animals--lizards, scorpions, spiders, and insects--that were enclosed in a panopticon, a structure based on a type of prison designed so that occupants are always visible to the observer. After a complaint from the public, the SPCA launched an investigation. (In Canada, the consequences of an SPCA investigation are enforceable under Canadian law.) The SPCA's investigation found that the animals were in distress; they required the artist and the gallery to change the exhibit so that the animals' needs would be met; the artist felt that such changes would destroy the original intent of the work, and so the exhibit was closed down. [Note: in the CBC news article linked here, the Vancouver Humane Society is consistently conflated with the SPCA. As I learned from the public debate tonight, they are two different organizations, and it was the SPCA that required the changes and had the legal ability to enforce them.]
I went to the discussion with an open mind, because I had never seen the exhibit and didn't know that much about it. I am generally anti-censorship and pro-freedom of speech, but I am also against the mistreatment of animals. I was interested to hear both sides of the story.
The panel consisted of the CEO of the BC SPCA, an artist and animal rights activist, an artist and art historian who happened to have gone to art school in China with Huang, the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association, an anthropology professor, a legal reporter/columnist from a local newspaper, and the chief curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
It was an absolutely fascinating discussion, with both sides well represented (those who felt the artist's freedom was compromised, and those who felt that his freedom did not include the right to impose distress on living beings). Interestingly, although I began with no firm opinion on the subject, by the middle of the debate I felt myself becoming more and more certain that I agreed with those who said that the artist's freedom of expression did not extend to causing these animals distress.
I had already made up my mind when the first speaker from the audience went to the open mike: he turned out to be the veterinarian who had done the assessment of the animals in the exhibit. He said that he is not affiliated with the SPCA and he is not an animal rights activist; however, he said that when he examined the animals, he found that they were being kept in unacceptable living conditions. The environment was both too cold and too dry; in fact, the animals were freezing to death. (Several of the animals did die during the time the artwork was shown; the artist and gallery argued that these deaths were natural and that the dead animals had been healthy.) He added that the conditions in the exhibit fell far below even the standards for housing animals in research laboratories.
I think that artistic freedom is important, and I do not believe in censorship of art, but I also don't think that the SPCA's requirements--that the exhibit be modified to provide an acceptable standard of living for the animals--constituted censorship. If the artist wants to argue that the artwork cannot be modified in this way without changing the original intent of the piece, then that means the art is predicated on a certain amount of indifference to suffering, and I cannot condone that.
I went to the discussion with an open mind, because I had never seen the exhibit and didn't know that much about it. I am generally anti-censorship and pro-freedom of speech, but I am also against the mistreatment of animals. I was interested to hear both sides of the story.
The panel consisted of the CEO of the BC SPCA, an artist and animal rights activist, an artist and art historian who happened to have gone to art school in China with Huang, the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association, an anthropology professor, a legal reporter/columnist from a local newspaper, and the chief curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
It was an absolutely fascinating discussion, with both sides well represented (those who felt the artist's freedom was compromised, and those who felt that his freedom did not include the right to impose distress on living beings). Interestingly, although I began with no firm opinion on the subject, by the middle of the debate I felt myself becoming more and more certain that I agreed with those who said that the artist's freedom of expression did not extend to causing these animals distress.
I had already made up my mind when the first speaker from the audience went to the open mike: he turned out to be the veterinarian who had done the assessment of the animals in the exhibit. He said that he is not affiliated with the SPCA and he is not an animal rights activist; however, he said that when he examined the animals, he found that they were being kept in unacceptable living conditions. The environment was both too cold and too dry; in fact, the animals were freezing to death. (Several of the animals did die during the time the artwork was shown; the artist and gallery argued that these deaths were natural and that the dead animals had been healthy.) He added that the conditions in the exhibit fell far below even the standards for housing animals in research laboratories.
I think that artistic freedom is important, and I do not believe in censorship of art, but I also don't think that the SPCA's requirements--that the exhibit be modified to provide an acceptable standard of living for the animals--constituted censorship. If the artist wants to argue that the artwork cannot be modified in this way without changing the original intent of the piece, then that means the art is predicated on a certain amount of indifference to suffering, and I cannot condone that.
posted by Melinda at 9:38 PM
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