The Lives of Animals

Artists: Noor Abuarafeh, Antonia Baehr (together with Dodo Heidenreich, Nanna Heidenreich, Mirjam Junker, Itamar Lerner, Catriona Shaw Ida Wilde, Steffi Weismann), Pierre Bismuth, Melanie Bonajo, Elen Braga, Sue Coe, Simone Forti, Piero Gilardi, Rebecca Horn, K.P. Krishnakuma, Laura Lima, Anne Marie Maes, Dafna Maimon, Ad Minoliti, Luis Lazaro Matos, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Lin May Saed, Rosana Paulino, Carolee Schneemann, Jean Painlevé, Panamarenko, Janis Rafa, Nicolás García Uriburu, Filip Van Dingen, Tomás Saraceno, Anna Tsing (together with Yen-ling Tsai, Isabelle Carbonell & Joelle Chevrier), Aleksanda Waliszewska among others

Sonic room with audioworks by: Izabela Dłużyk, Nathan Gray, Simone Forti, Kathy High, Lisa Schonberg, Charlemagne Palestine, Jean-Claude Roché among others.

We all know many stories about animals, they are part of the collective imagination. Since our childhood, we have spent time observing them in various circumstances. Often, we also have formed personal opinions about them. Animals are probably one of the most popular and, at the same time, most complex subjects accompanying us from the beginning of our species. Humans evolve together with animals and therefore our attitude towards them has changed in the course of history.

In the last two decades, animal studies have emerged worldwide as a new academic discipline. Scientists engage in questions regarding concepts of ‘animality’, ‘animalisation’, or ‘becoming an animal’, to investigate human-created representations and cultural imaginings on the subject. Animal studies strive to understand human-animal relationships from a historical perspective, paying attention to the complexity of the issue, in connection with animal rights movements, ethics of care, ecology, feminism, human rights, postcolonial studies, and other disciplines.

It is important to mention that the origins of the Animal Rights Movement can be found in nineteenth-century Europe. The increasingly widespread ideals of liberty associated with the suffragettes’ fight for women’s rights, as well as abolitionists’ struggle for the freedom of black slaves, created fertile ground for the nascent Animals Liberation Movements. Since then, various activists and researchers have examined the situation of animal objectification in the context of the food industry, clothing industry, and entertainment industries, to name just a few areas where animals are exploited.

The exhibition The Lives of Animals looks at the subject of animals from the perspective of the visual arts, asking the fundamental question about what an animal is and whether humans can be friends with animals. Participating artists critically examine the attitudes of ‘human exceptionalism’ stemming from the belief that animals do not understand the concept of death nor do they have a sense of past and future.

The title of the exhibition refers to the fictocritical novel by J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. The text has an unusual and polemic form of philosophical dialogue, in which two lectures given by the main fictional character, literary scholar Elisabeth Costello, are interwoven with the narrative plot. J.M. Coetzee presents various viewpoints on the matter of animals. Often, these are perspectives that are extremely polarized, which gives the novel an exceptionally contemporary character, reflecting the dynamics of the public debate around the subject of animals. The protagonist of the novel discusses the foundations of human morality, referring to the ethics of compassion and the ‘poetic invention’ (the ability to imagine oneself as someone else). Empathy and kindness, spoken of by Costello, become the starting point for the present exhibition, which proposes an interdisciplinary approach, blending literature, philosophy, ethics, and visual arts to explore and challenge conventional perceptions about animals, whilst encouraging visitors to rethink their relationship with them.

The exhibition begins with the works of artist Lin May Saeed (1973-2023), who has fully dedicated her artistic creativity to the subjects of animal liberation, domestication, and cohabitation. Her work which examines transcultural, complex relationships between humans and animals, is becoming one of the most important starting points for the creation of this project.

Laughing rats, inaudible frequencies in the Amazon forests, and the chirping of birds from different parts of the world are among many sounds visitors can experience inside of the sonic room. At the exhibition, a unique space has been created where one can experience the various animal’s languages.  Audio materials are created by artists and researchers in fields such as zoo-musicology and ecoacoustics (the acoustics of the soundscape), as well as field recordings. The space, filled with sound, gives the exhibition a more performative character, which aligns with the essential methodology of curatorial work on the subject that focuses on transdisciplinary works and artists who have complex and prolonged relationships with the subject.

The exhibition is carried out according to an ethical code. Therefore, it does not include taxidermy, living animals, or acts of violence against them. Animals become the main protagonists of the exhibition, focusing on their biographies and uniqueness whilst simultaneously questioning what gestures of empathy, kindness, and love towards animals could consist of.

Can we, and under what circumstances, adopt an animal perspective?