Mar 05 2009
Animal law and art showing violence against animals
The weekend is upon us and here goes a suggestion of links for some thoughtful reading. The Missouri has a great article about the growth of animal law in academia and how cases of cruelty are being handled these days. It says:
Lewis & Clark opened the first Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter in 1992. Today it has branches at more than 115 law schools in the United States and Canada. In 2000, nine law schools had animal law studies. Today, about 100 do.
It’s a very though-provoking article for anyone interested in how animal rights activism is progressing in the courtroom.
Last year an exhibition in San Francisco that included video work showing animals being bludgeoned to death was shut down. The French artist Adel Abdessemed refused to reveal the context of the footage and so it remained unclear whether the damage done to the animals had been staged for the camera, which anyone with a hint of mercy in their blood would not condone. Now, the same artist had an exhibit suspended in Italy, for similar reasons. Doris Lin from the Animal Rights blog on About.com writes about the case.
The thing is, were an artist to deal with the theme, say, of rape, would he feel entitled to reproduce a real situation for show in a gallery? Surely not - if he or she did attempt that, he wouldn’t even get started because no gallery would touch such material. It’s not about censorship, it’s about common sense. The same principle should apply to animals. Real violence should only be shown in documentary form, with the context very clearly marked. Otherwise it’s just sheer exploitation.
