to think this isn't art?

[mrz]

In 2007, the 'artist' Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery, and starved him to death. For several days, the 'artist' and the visitors of the exhibition have watched emotionless the shameful 'masterpiece' based on the dog's agony, until eventually he died.

But this is not all... the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American decided that the 'installation' was actually art, so that Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the biennial of 2008.

PLEASE HELP STOP HIM.

www.petitiononline.com/ea6gk/petition.html
It's free of charge, there is no need to register, and it will only take 1 minute to save the life of an innocent creature.

morningpaper the jury is still out as to whtehr it is a myth or not, I do my bit on every campaign/petition etc that I see, I can;t do more than that.
This just happens to be something that if it is real, I don't agree with, so I signed. Is that really so bad?

Well, he could not string up a starving child to illuminate the state of affairs in his country, now, could he?

Hypothetically speaking, and I am very tired, and sick, and should possibly not be online. BUT (and I am prepared that I possibly will get flamed)

If hundreds of people enter the gallery see the exhibit with a starving dog (which hopefully got food and water), looked at the dog and thought "hey, thats wrong, thats evil, that is what we do to dogs every day, we should stop that" and go out and start caring for animals, feed them, and it translate to the street childreen too, what then?

Art is supposed to be thought provoking. (But not cruel) Maybe on some level the exhibition did a lot of good?

I dont think it should be repeated though.

Why would a starving African baby in a war ravaged part of Africa have to do with some art installation in S America??

Can we not choose care about both??

They are only after a signature...

If it helps any, the photographer did f all to help that kid and killed himself shortly after winning the prize for taking that 'delightful' photo...

PARP

I'm going to bed.

Night night.

Love you all really.

All of you, even good ol' Lav.

The one Colditz linked?
Ugh. It actually made me physically sick, how could he have just stood by?

Yip - said it was art and it wasn't his job to infere..

Bit of an an unintentional own goal there...

Was it of the vulcture stalking the child by Kevin Carter? It won the Pulitzer Prize and he was part of a group of photograhers that made up the Bang Bang Club.

Carter came under intense scrutiny about if he helped the child to the feeding station a few hundred yards away and he avoided answering for a long time, then said he did but the child was never traced and the picture did end up haunting him. He did commit suicide just after the pic was give the Pulitzer I think.

I really don't get the fake outrage here from MP and Colditz. In a post about cruelty to animals - urban myth or not - why is our first thought supposed to be of kids?

By that logic, you should be trolling the animal welfare forums with the same wrongheadedness.

Surely this isn't actually true right??? Surely it's some urban myth or something! Have signed anyway just incase but it's disgusting. I agree with colditz though, perhaps we should be focusng on humans too!

My outrage concerning people weeping and petitioning about one starving dog when millions of children starve unnoticed by the majority is not fake.

Of course it's not. I feel the same as you. I thought the dog thing was fake!

Start a thread about humans if you want us to focus on them FGS. This is just backward think.

So let me get this right Colditz, you are expressing outrage about animal cruelty on a thread about cruelty to animals?

Justified indeed

Do you somehow think that expressing one outrage without adding on every other outrage you might feel is somehow disrepectful to all the starving children of the world?

I'm sorry, I now have no idea what you are rattling on about. I've made my point as well as I can make it. I can't make it clearer, I'm just not that clever.

Fine, but don't judge other people as being morally inferior to you just because you have a different opinion on animal cruelty

Something not very nice may or may not have happened to a dog.
Any decent person, vegetarian or not, sponsor of childrens charities ir not, would at least think "hmm, that's not really on"
So they sign a petition, it takes half a minute.

What exactly is there to get so het up about. Really? Without the hyperbole.

Just read Edams links. I am very suprised that no one apparently helped the dog, but if it was being fed then it wouldn;t have been suffering.

Not sure what the artists intentuion was, to test the spectators intimidation of authority, credulity or what.

But I agree JV. Just don;t get it

I think smugcolditz was simply expressing her opinion and actually putting the dog thing into perspective. I mean, yes, it's vile that any living creature is treated this way. However, we are more than happy to look in the other direction when children are in desperate need. Not just children- entire nations are crippled and we get into an uproar over a dog. As disgraceful as the animal criely is, I see where colditz is coming from. Colditz is not condoning the animal cruelty, nor was she condemming any of us for being against it. She was just putting forward another relavant view.

Shit, my spelling!

it is rather interesting in a kind of academic way how a certain thing like this dog thing captures some sort of popular imagination

there is however probably a dog starving at the end of your street in a shed

and not much further away a child too

random petitions arent going to make these things better

Don't set me up as your straw man by putting words into my mouth. At no point have I either said or implied that I am morally superior to anyone let alone the people on this thread.

Yes, there are lots of wrongs in this world. We cannot put everything right. We can in fact do very little to change it. A petition is the closest most of us will ever get to changing something cruel/wrong/unethical. Should we not sign simply because we cannot do more and try correct every wrong there is?

"But it upsets me greatly that so many people can weep about a dog and ignore a starving baby."

What starving baby? You set this up, conscioulsy or otherwise to get upset over nothing.

No-one is ignoring a starving baby, as I said earlier I sobbed my heart out and was violently sick after seeing that picture, me siging a petition about possible dog abuse doesn't stop me caring about starving children.

The point is, as awful, disgusting and terrible it is that children starve every day, it is not at all what this thread is about. Just because people are upset about a dog it doesn't mean they are not equally, or more upset about starving children. The fact that there are starving children does not mean you aren't allowed to get upset aboout animals.
It all awful and wrong and I wish none of it was going on.

Set what up? I don't understand, I didn't start this thread!