For the purposes of the kid's game 20 questions, it is OK to divide
the world up into plants, animals and minerals. The real world is much
more complex, of course. The plant/animal distinction is about as
useful as the fruit/vegetable one. Is a tomato a vegetable or a fruit?
Certainly botanists and chefs will not agree. And I don't care that
much that a strawberry isn't a berry, but a tomato is. However, when
busybodies try to force their notions of animal rights on the rest of
us, we're in for trouble.

* * *

Vancouver insect art exhibit removed
Sunday, April 15, 2007

The Vancouver Art Gallery will remove insects and reptiles from an art
exhibit after the city's humane society demanded changes to the
installation. "It is extremely disappointing that a major exhibition
of this important artist's work has been overshadowed by competing
concerns," said chief curator Daina Augaitis about the work Theatre of
the World by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping. Theatre of the World,
featuring toads, scorpions, snakes, crickets and other creatures, is
part of a retrospective of the artist's work. House of Oracles
features 40 installations by the Paris-based Huang.

Augaitis said the gallery had been working with a veterinarian and the
SPCA to make sure the creatures weren't harmed but she said the
Vancouver Humane Society was demanding more than what the artist was
willing to do. So instead of altering the exhibit, the gallery opted
to remove it. Theatre of the World had the lizards and insects placed
under domes of wire with lights shining upon them and a wooden python
suspended above the live animals. A veterinarian had recommended added
water bowls, giving the creatures a place to retreat and changing the
light. The text accompanying the piece says, "The work functions as a
metaphor for the conflicts among different peoples and culture — in
short, human existence itself."

Huang, in a statement from Paris, has asked the structure remain, and
also accused the SPCA of being unreasonable. "They completely ignored
the concept and ideology behind this particular art work, citing
instead the doctrines of so-called 'animal rights' that violently
interfere with the rights of an art work to be freely exhibited in an
art museum. "Their purpose is to modify the art work into something
that resembles a zoo or a pet shop, where each species is neatly
separated into different glass boxes in order to present a staged
'natural environment.'"

* * *

"Theatre of the World" houses several different kinds of cold-blooded
animals (snakes, lizards, spiders, scorpions, beetles) in an turtle
shaped container with a separate compartments and a central arena-like
space. The idea is that over the length of the show the animals will
fight and eat one another (leaving one victorious), thus mirroring the
national struggles for power we witness daily on political and
cultural levels.

* * *
What were your principle objections?

We were objecting in two ways. One was about the conditions and
appropriateness of the exhibit as a way to accommodate animals and the
specific effect on the animals. But our second objection was on
principle, one we hold across the board: We are against the display of
exotic animals for entertainment or artistic purposes. It is not
morally right to exploit animals in this way; to use [this] as art is
just wrong. We made this clear -- that no matter what the art gallery
did to improve specific conditions for the animals, we would have
objected to it on principle in any case.

The SPCA, based on the veterinarian’s report, made specific
recommendations. The lighting was changed, more materials were put in
to provide hiding spaces for the animals to retreat, and more water
was provided. The SPCA demanded removal of scorpions and tarantulas, I
think because of the potential for conflict. At that point the art
gallery, I believe on the instruction of the artist himself, refused
to make further changes and follow those recommendations because they
said they felt it would compromise the integrity of the artwork.

But had it just been insects, your response wouldn’t have been any different?

We would have definitely objected. One of the ways I explained it to
one journalist is that people may not value the life of a fly very
much, but if you came upon your child pulling wings off the fly, most
would find that extremely disturbing. Why is that? Perhaps it isn’t
because we value the life of the fly much but because we have a
responsibility -- and it’s an important human value -- to treat
animals and all life humanely. Even for people who wouldn’t value the
life of the insects, surely it is still inappropriate to put them in a
position where conflict between them is being used as entertainment or
as art.

One of the other things we pointed out was that some people who didn’t
have a problem with this would have certainly objected if it had been
kittens, puppies, or birds. Our position was that there is no
difference in principle. People generally have more affinity for
kittens, birds, and dogs than they do for reptiles and insects. But we
explained to people that just because people find puppies and kittens
cute, we can’t base our decisions on what is humane and what is not
humane on the level of cuteness. We must use other criteria.

Animal Sheltering July/August 2007

* * *

PS
This one issue where I agree with Adrian Wenner. We do NOT want honey
bees lumped together with cows and chickens. Entomology is a separate
field which deals with separate organisms. These are invertebrates and
as such are quite distinct from plants and vertebrate animals. While
we could debate on whether reptiles lack the same senses as rodents,
nobody is going to get very far with a case against cruelty to
insects. I love bees as much as the rest of you, but they're insects
and nobody has yet shown that they can suffer.

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