Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.


Text Content or SSML code:

Today, it seems like a common sense for scientists using rat to do experiments and for young medicals to anatomy breathing frogs. Personally, I do know the necessary of animals experiments, but it is also important to stand in animals’ perspectives to understand what is their value of death. In Donna J. Haraway’s (American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist StudiesDepartment at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States) book When Species Meet, Haraway focuses on how to compassionate in the space of the laboratory, with particular emphasis on the place of animals test subjects. After the experiment, those dead animals become ‘logic of sacrifice’ and their deaths can only be made the subject of calculations instead of living species, which is cruel and disrespect for life. In 25 Apr 2012, a young artist Jacqueline Traide did a performance aiming to draw attention to the cruelty of animal testing. During this performance, she went through a series of animal tests, including forced feeding, eye irritation test, and two (saline) injections, for around 10 hours but no "real" pain. When I watch this performance from the video, I did feel uncomfortable and cruel. However, the main reason is that as a human, in my common sense, when I am watching my own-kind being abused, I believe it is unacceptable from both law and moral. But if the same things happened on animals, personally I feel less guilty and numb also base on my common sense. Although we are saying all life is as precious, it is still difficult for us to compare the others’ life than ours. In my opinion, Jacqueline Traide’s performance did bring a perspective from test subject animals to show how painful the animals experiment is but cannot let people really empathize with those animals because people might put more sympathy on the artist herself due to being human. In order to arouse people’s sympathy for animals, artists only force on laboratory is not enough, some time they should also reflect on their own works . The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is an artwork created in 1991 by British artist Damien Hirst. Hirst spent £6,000 to hire a fisherman to capture a 14-foot long shark, and then immersed it in a formaldehyde solution diluted with water. At the same time, in order to consolidate the appearance of the shark, Hirst also used 200 needles to penetrate its body. When people ask Hirst why chose shark to do this art work, Hirst responded with that he wanted something “big enough to eat you”. However, Hirst rarely explains the meaning of his work. So, people always try to analyze the intention of the work. Some artists believe it is about facing death. And some artists think this work is about the opposition between nature and capitalism. They believe that sharks are a formidable animal, and also represents people's fear of being unable to control nature. Under capitalism, people get wealth and their lives are guaranteed. However, people still cannot fully overcome the threat posed by natural disasters. For anti-conceptualism artists, they deeply believe that a dead shark isn’t art. Personally, after having some understanding about this work, for me what most interesting is the value. Firstly, Hirst spent £6,000 for getting this shark’s body, and then in 2004, he sold this work for at least $8 million. As I mentioned before, human judge other species’ value based on our own perspective. So, the behaviour of defining how valuable this dead shark body is also the result of speciesism. From reading the title The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, I believe Damien Hirst did consider the relationship between human and nature. However, when people put a price tag on his work, the meaning of the work I am reading is human arrogance instead of the reflection on and respect for death. It is not difficult to imagine, with the same title, if there is a human body in this tank instead of a shark, how people will react differently and how many negative comment Damien Hirst might get. In 2015, German anatomist Gunther von Hagens collected and machined 20 dead human bodies then organized the Human Body Museum to show them in Berlin, aiming to show people what we are and how we move. However, his works make lots of people feel so extremely uncomfortable that he got suit before the museum opened. Not to mention people will be willing to price tag on these bodies. So, still, it is almost impossible for us to compare the others’ life than ours. But as artists, we should always reflect on our own works and at least give respect and sympathy to the death.