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Art and Animals and the Ethical Position
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Art and Animals and the Ethical Position

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 10479

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ang Bartram

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Innovation and Research, University of Derby, Derby DE22 1GB, UK
Interests: art and animals; animals within social contexts; documenting ephemeral artwork; artistic research
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The creative arts have an interest in animal studies, the subject of the nonhuman animal and what marks and positions it as such. In recent years, artworks and exhibitions have contributed increased criticality, probing enquiry and poignant and provocative analysis to this engaging field. Increasingly, ethical considerations inform artistic research, including concerns for the acknowledgement and avoidance of anthropocentrism, the denial of the reduction of nonhuman bodies to symbolic representations of human values, and a recognition of the agency of the nonhuman animal to contribute more than its image. Interspecies potentialities have come to the fore as a consequence of this engagement with ethical contemporary practice.

The aim of this Special Edition is to offer a perspective on contemporary interspecies artistic research that aligns with an ethical and moral methodology. The journal contains texts written by artists from the perspective of their own practice within the subject, and from their position as artistic researchers within the field. It will convey a sense of what artists are currently exploring, and in significant ways, to provide a unique and analytical snapshot of related and inter-related concerns. Written from the artists’ own perspectives, as those who are methodologically submerged in the discourse through artistic research, the contributions will offer critical insight into ethical considerations and their application through an interspecies dynamic.

Prof. Dr. Ang Bartram
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • art
  • critical art and theory
  • artistic research
  • cultural and creative
  • animal studies
  • human–animal
  • interspecies

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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9 pages, 246 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Legality of Artists’ Use of Animals: Ethical Considerations and Legal Implications
by Yolandi M. Coetser
Arts 2023, 12(4), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040155 - 13 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1779
Abstract
A burgeoning field of literature considers animal law, the status of animals as legal objects, the protection of animals in laboratories, wild animals, etc. One aspect not often considered in the literature is the intersection between animal law and freedom of speech and, [...] Read more.
A burgeoning field of literature considers animal law, the status of animals as legal objects, the protection of animals in laboratories, wild animals, etc. One aspect not often considered in the literature is the intersection between animal law and freedom of speech and, more specifically, the freedom of speech of artists. While these might seem disparate and mutually exclusive, they are not. A small but notable number of artists use, harm, or even kill animals in the creation of artwork. Elsewhere, this practice has been termed ‘cruel art’, defined as “the infliction of physical and/or emotional pain on non-human animals for the sole purpose of creating art that steps beyond the confines of the artist’s right to freedom of speech”. This article elaborates on the concept of ‘cruel art’ by considering animal law and the artist’s freedom of expression. Interesting questions arise at this intersection: Can the law grant rights or otherwise protect the animal from being used, harmed, or killed for an artwork? Alternatively, can the law encroach on the artists’ freedom of speech to protect the animals? There are good reasons to protect both parties—animals deserve protection from unnecessary suffering, and the artist should not be unduly censored from making art. This article seeks to engage with the following question: how can one consider an animal’s legal standing in relation to an artist’s freedom of speech? In order to answer this question, this article first briefly unpacks the concept of animal law and the need for legal reform in this arena. Secondly, this article considers freedom of speech as it relates to artists specifically. Third, it discusses the rising conflict between the legal protection of animals and the artist’s freedom of expression. This article argues that certain artistic uses of animals should be legally prohibited, despite the fact that artists enjoy the right to freedom of artistic expression. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
21 pages, 7602 KiB  
Article
Shared Brains, Proprioceptiveness, and Critically Approaching the Animal as the Animal in Artworks
by Angela Bartram and Lee Deigaard
Arts 2023, 12(3), 119; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030119 - 06 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1315
Abstract
The animal and being animal is a proposition and position that invites observational and critical debate. Yet, the presence of the non-human animal is usually and normatively confined to representational artworks rather than the animal itself in the gallery or museum, which is, [...] Read more.
The animal and being animal is a proposition and position that invites observational and critical debate. Yet, the presence of the non-human animal is usually and normatively confined to representational artworks rather than the animal itself in the gallery or museum, which is, potentially, problematically anthropocentric. Using diverse methods, processes, and materials, and curious to a myriad of opening potentialities, Bartram + Deigaard, in contrast to this problem, explore working as humans from an animal-centric perspective through artistic research. They bring sensitivities to their handling of the animal, as both artistic subject and collaborator, to observe and engage with empathy and openness to animal insight and revelation and behaviour. Their works in performance, video, drawing, and printmaking foreground animal proximity and behaviour, inter-species proprioception, reciprocal caretaking, synchronised respiration, and companionate movement. This article explores the socialised and familiar in close observation, directly and indirectly, in their individual yet companion practices, illuminating the benefits of a radically enlarged sentiocentrism. It reflects on the allowing and embracing of other species within their artworks, and of being mindful and sensible with balancing sympathies and empathies as humans within an often unbalanced system of agency. Specifically, it gleans patterns and insights from their exhibition at Tippetts and Eccles Galleries at Utah State University in 2021, where they invited a canine collaborator into their thinking through praxis and the interventions and residual outcomes this created. This essay discusses two individual video artworks from each artist, which document their invitations to non-human animals into the gallery or museum, and two durational artworks curated within this exhibition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
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12 pages, 15123 KiB  
Article
You Look at Me Looking at You Looking at Me
by Brigitte Jurack
Arts 2023, 12(2), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020073 - 04 Apr 2023
Viewed by 2125
Abstract
Living and working for a month at the Sanskriti Foundation in Delhi, the artist’s life was watched and observed by a group of resident monkeys. This paper is based on notes begun during that studio residency and represents the critical reflections emerging alongside [...] Read more.
Living and working for a month at the Sanskriti Foundation in Delhi, the artist’s life was watched and observed by a group of resident monkeys. This paper is based on notes begun during that studio residency and represents the critical reflections emerging alongside the hands-on sculptural practice. It is illustrated with close-up photographs of the artist’s sculpture that asks how encounters with fabled animals in densely populated 21st century urban areas can alter our understanding of the gaze as an inter-species gaze. The sculpture and paper begin to ask broader questions, including how can sculpture provide a different, and perhaps more tacit and empathetic, encounter with the other to enable a physical, mental or spiritual experience of cultural entanglement between the various onlookers? In how far is modelling the other’s gaze a form of embodiment and mimicry? Do the fast-changing camera angles and soundtracks of natural history programmes hinder an empathic inter-species encounter? Or, does the slow animation of the artist’s sculpted surface heighten a sense of being alongside equally curious, cunning and adaptable others such as crows, foxes and monkeys? Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
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Other

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9 pages, 226 KiB  
Essay
Artist Ethics and Art’s Audience: Mus Musculus and a Dry-Roasted Peanut
by Rosemarie McGoldrick
Arts 2023, 12(4), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040174 - 10 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1288
Abstract
The museum’s instrumentalisation of contemporary art as a visitor attraction has come to mean that any use of live animals in art now must participate in and acknowledge the politics of spectacle, which for other animals means the optics of the zoo or [...] Read more.
The museum’s instrumentalisation of contemporary art as a visitor attraction has come to mean that any use of live animals in art now must participate in and acknowledge the politics of spectacle, which for other animals means the optics of the zoo or the circus. At the same time, established social media can now deliver mass criticism of an artwork, requiring artists to learn how to manage reputation as a matter of professional art practice. In this article, I examine art’s changing ethics by working from a dilemma I faced recently as an artist over a simple 30-s video I had made featuring a wild house mouse that I had trained between COVID-19 lockdowns to take food from my shoe. Subsequently, I decided not to exhibit, publish or broadcast that video. I argue that it is the digital—its exposure of the micro-issue, its close focus on the individual case, its onus on linguistic precision and its diligent proofing and testing of arguments large or small—that now transforms the work the artwork does. This may now push artists into a much wider range of ethical decision-making about artworks to arrive at the artist’s regular mode of reflection and evaluation via a level of hyper detail and super nuance that, historically, artists of no particular celebrity have had little or no reason to engage with before. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
17 pages, 6904 KiB  
Essay
Decolonizing Photography
by Mary Shannon Johnstone
Arts 2023, 12(4), 140; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040140 - 05 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1479
Abstract
How can photography challenge anthropocentrism and contribute to the decolonization process for animals? The first part of this article offers two historical examples of photography’s colonial ties to hunting, and explains the harm done to animals through linking cameras and guns. The second [...] Read more.
How can photography challenge anthropocentrism and contribute to the decolonization process for animals? The first part of this article offers two historical examples of photography’s colonial ties to hunting, and explains the harm done to animals through linking cameras and guns. The second part of this article focuses on three contemporary photographers dedicated to challenging anthropocentrism, and discusses how their work engages in decolonization as a process. The analysis and the examples presented in this article will help us to work toward a more just, peaceful, and inclusive world for all; human and nonhuman alike. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
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13 pages, 2862 KiB  
Essay
Deep Canine Topography: Captive-Zombies or Free-Flowing Relational Bodies?
by Darren O’Brien
Arts 2023, 12(2), 68; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12020068 - 03 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1126
Abstract
For the last three years I have been making walks with my canine companion as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded fine art practice-based PhD at Nottingham Trent University, UK, which considers walking art as a shared human–canine practice. In [...] Read more.
For the last three years I have been making walks with my canine companion as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded fine art practice-based PhD at Nottingham Trent University, UK, which considers walking art as a shared human–canine practice. In this paper I reflect upon the doings of deep canine topography as a practice, with particular attention to the ethical questions raised. In the short meditation on the ethics of human animal artistic collaboration that follows, I will wander through the complex web of human–canine kinship, explored through art practice. Joining us on our walk through this tricky landscape are Rosi Braidotti, Jack Halberstam, Dona Haraway, Ron Broglio, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and a host of other actors whose concepts and theories provide a rich source of ethical discussion, which fellow artists might find helpful. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art and Animals and the Ethical Position)
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