{"id":6837,"date":"2017-01-06T08:02:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T08:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6837"},"modified":"2017-01-06T08:02:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T08:02:09","slug":"animality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/01\/06\/animality\/","title":{"rendered":"Animality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Animality<\/em>\u00a0was\u00a0an exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Soho that might be seen as a complement to the Wellcome<\/a> exhibition which I mentioned recently. \u00a0You can see a slideshow of the images here<\/a>. \u00a0This is how their press release\u00a0about the exhibition began:<\/p>\n

\u2018The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.\u2019
\nGeorge Orwell<\/p>\n

The very earliest cave paintings reveal that humans have cohabitated with animals for millennia. \u00a0Yet the relationship is fraught and contradictory: we simultaneously mythologize, venerate, sacrifice, and exploit those who are not of our species. \u00a0This paradox suggests that our connection with animals might be more complicated, and far richer, than commonly thought, and that the distinction between human and animal is not at all clear-cut. \u00a0If animals have been the protagonists of innumerable myths, subject to countless scientific studies, and featured in some of our most extraordinary works of art and literature, why have they not been more central to the way we humans study our own relation to the world?<\/p>\n

Taking this question as its premise, Animality lays down a novel artistic and theoretical framework for interrogating our relationship to animals. It proposes six interrelated themes \u2014 Origins, Markings, Crossings, Variations, Traces, Extinctions\u2014and involves more than seventy participants, mostly from the discipline of art but also from film, literature, philosophy, and science. \u00a0Its spirited structure juxtaposes artworks and artifacts new and old, high and low, allowing relationships between art and non-art materials to emerge, and creating links between historical and contemporary social and political realities. \u00a0While in large part playful and humorous, Animality also stresses the importance of addressing ethical issues, and thinking beyond one\u2019s own values and beliefs, to question accepted assumptions about our relationship to nonhuman creatures. \u00a0It suggests that while many distinctions between humans and animals are valid, the two groups are more productively imagined as parts of an ontological whole.<\/p>\n

Animality connects to a larger debate around the so-called animal question that has involved such iconic thinkers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Their interrogations around the relationship between animals and humans have inspired a growing contemporary discourse. Animality is conceived in part as a visual contribution to that conversation while also paying, of course, tribute to the diversity and beauty of the animal kingdom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this is a link<\/a> to a review in the Guardian. \u00a0Odd to find two exhibitions in London about the human-animal connection; something in the waters, perhaps. \u00a0Although Animality<\/em>\u00a0has ended, the Wellcome exhibition\u00a0continues into the new year. \u00a0You really should go to see it. \u00a0Maybe if you're spending precious carbon going to that celebratory bash on the South Bank next week, think again. \u00a0Stay on the Euston Road and go to the Wellcome Collection. \u00a0It will be good\u00a0for you! \u00a0 And the coffee will be much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Animality\u00a0was\u00a0an exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Soho that might be seen as a complement to the Wellcome exhibition which I mentioned recently. \u00a0You can see a slideshow of the images here. \u00a0This is how their press release\u00a0about the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}