5/20/2003: Fish in a blender

[Undertoad]

In the IotD theme of interesting/controversial art, this is an installation in a Danish museum. Not only are the fish and blenders real, they are plugged in, and a display invites visitors to blend the fish if they like.

The museum director was initially charged with animal cruelty, but he was acquitted yesterday after it was decided that the fish, if they are blended, are killed instantly and thus humanely.

That brings up questions. Why the director? Shouldn't it be the visitors who choose to press the button who are charged? Why was the artist left out of it? If it's OK to kill them, why is it suddenly not OK if it takes a while for them to die?

Is it good art? It's provocative; without even seeing it, all of us are provoked to answer the question of whether we'd press the button. (I wouldn't.)

On the other hand, it's too simple. It's easy to provoke people via cruelty; we are guaranteed to react to it. Art is not good solely because it makes you think. The best art, it seems to me, is deeper and more inspiring as it makes complicated statements in subtle ways.

Maybe one could come up with a complicated statement about this; "Look, the dark side in humanity is all around us, maybe standing right next to you, maybe in your family, and it's demonstrated in simple ways, just by offering the push of a button." But "Duh!" -- we knew that already, and it's been well-explored, and at the end of the day our cruelty is not the truly interesting thing about humanity.