Oct 16 2007
Confused, really confused
My Spanish is not good enough to fully comprehend what is happening on the following blog;
I see a dog roped to an iron thread, looking out on dog biscuits glued to a wall, unreachable for him of course. The dog is so starved and flea infested that he has started to scratch and bite his skin with such vigor that the wounds are horrifying.
It is an art exhibit; a performance.. I think I get the message the artist is sending out; our disgust is enormous, while at the same time we try to ignore what is happening to many if not most Middle and South Americans.
Everybody is a critic of course. Somebody wrote: hijo de puta!! / no eres nada de artista!! / eres un asesino !! That I fully understand: Son of a whore!! / you are no artist!! / you are an assassin!! (I speak Prostitute Spanish.)
I am not confused because the pictures sickened me. Dogs are to me what cows are to Buddhists, so I am obviously upset. I am confused because only a few days ago I posted this video on camdogs.com of Neo Nazis smashing up Andres Serrano’s pictures — and now I feel like slaughtering an artist instead of his art.
Is it because artists make us reflect, or is our competitive society so much out of control that we need another horrifying marketing stunt every week to give some artist his or her (un)deserved media publicity? I think I already know the answer; there is nothing confusing about that. I am so confused because I seem to be part of that process.
PS: I kept following the comments on that blog and found a text of an American who spelled “concentration camp” as “consecration camp”. I am going to file these words as the worst Freudian slip I have seen in my entire life.