Can three starving piglets be called art?
A controversial art exhibit in Denmark is creating headlines, and for good reason, as the artist intents to let 3 piglets die, in order to point attention to that 25,000 piglets die every day in Danish pig farm productions.
This is the type of shock statement events that really creates emotional strong responses, exactly as the artist hopes it will. What I find interesting about these of sort of things is that it forces some sort of reflection, regardless of the reaction to the artist and the artwork we might have. The obvious easy response is contempt and disgust, as it is completely senseless to let three animals die just for the sake of âartâ. What I think is important here is to take a small step back and reflect what that reaction means in a wider context.
What is art anyway?
It is not surprising this has created headlines and heated reactions, including death threats to the artist, and in a way you could say he has already proven his point. That 3 piglets gets a stronger reaction than 25,000 daily deaths in just the Danish pig industry alone. Maybe he should stop now that the headlines has made their round, so as not to have focus too much on him and less on the actual issue he is pointing to.
The question whether something like this is art is in my opinion mostly a meaningless question. Everything can be art if someone has made something and points to it and call it art. Doesnât make it good art. By all means call something like this crap, but art isnât really about the piece itself but about the reaction. The human reaction, reflection and thoughts it instills in ones mind. That goes for any art form, be it music, films, literature, paintings, video games or any form of artistic expression. Art is created when a human observes the artwork. It can be a postive, negative or conflicting mix of emotions. I think art is basically about communication between people.
Shock art like this has the potential to force us to reflect on an issue we already know from traditional media coverage or campaigns from animal rights activists, but in a different manner. We are presented with a horrible paradox by having to form an opinion on what the difference is between 3 piglets in an art exhibit and the thousands of daily deaths in the meat industry - not counting slaughtering.
What is the point?
Does this actually changes peoples opinions or consumer behaviour? Probably not this alone. In general, people rarely completely change their views on something over night. I have the same values and opinions today as I did yesterday, but 10 or 20 years ago? Plenty has changed. A provocative art installation like this is just one more thing to add to an infinite list of things we are exposed to, and if you were already familiar with the problematic parts of the meat industry something like this could make you reflect about it again from a different angle. If not, you may seek out more information and learn for example that the high death rate comes from, among other thing, extreme breeding where more piglets are born than the sow has nipples to provide milk for. And other forms of pig farms have much lower mortality rates because they follow a more natural breeding program that doesnât exceed the basic capacity the sow can provide for the piglets. But of course that is more expensive, so it falls back on us as consumers whether we are willing to pay more for better animal treatment.
I am sure many will just have their negative reaction towards the artist and leave it at that, which is fine as art doesnât invoke the same thing in everyone. It is not an opinion piece in a newspaper and not necessarily made just with the purpose of changing peoples mind about an issue. It is however still a reaction, people hearing about this are forced to reflect on what they see one way or the other, which is exactly the point.
It highlights our priorities and hypocrisy in society, and I need to include myself here as I still eat meat, where the saying that goes âOne death is a tragedy, a million is statisticsâ is perfectly exemplified. It is easier to form a very strong opinion on the senseless abuse of three animals, but the millions of deaths that occur due simply profit seeking optimisations, seem too complex and unpleasant to really dive into and is mostly shrugged away as just a normal part of food production. I am guilty of that too.
Conclusion
This became a very long winded rambling, and I wished I could have written about this topic with the nature of art with inspiration from something less sinister. However, this is what came up and some discussions on this bit of news is what made me reflect about all those things and I have tried my best to write them down here. In short, always try and reflect on your experience and reaction to any sort of artistic output you encounter. There will likely always be more to it than the immediate reaction.