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CONTENTS ANTENNAE ISSUE 19 5 Steve Baker: What are the Relevant Questions? Steve Baker, Emeritus Professor of Art History at UCLan, and author of the seminal books The Postmodern Animal and of Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation introduces this issue of Antennae. Text by Steve Baker 9 Beyond Animal Liberation In this exclusive interview with Antennae, Peter Singer discusses animal rights, speciesism, animals in contemporary art, and role played by the field of human-animal studies. Questions by Giovanni Aloi 16 Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation In this exclusive interview with Antennae, John Simons discusses human-animal divides, the role played by anthropomorphism in our culture, and his experience as British man who moved to Australia. Questions by Rod Bennison 21 Animal Rights and Wrongs In this exclusive interview with Antennae, controversial philosopher Roger Scruton talks to Garry Marvin about the concepts of “right” and “person”, battery farms, pleasure, suffering and hunting. Questions by Garry Marvin 27 The Moral Status of Animals Antennae presents Chapter #7 from Roger Scruton’s Animal Rights and Wrongs. 42 The Case for Animal Rights In this exclusive interview with Antennae, Tom and Nancy Regan discuss animal activism and cognitive ethology. Questions by Carol Gigliotti 50 Animal Rigths, Human Wrongs What makes right acts right? What makes wrong acts wrong? Some moral philosophers believe that the best answers to these questions require the recognition of moral rights. This is the position I favor and the one I will try to defend in subsequent chapters. It will therefore be useful to say something about the nature and importance of rights, the better to frame the discussions of other positions that differ from mine. Text by Tom Regan 53 Discussing Animal Rights and the Arts Vancouver-born photographer and writer Zoe Peled chairs a discussion on animal rights and the arts between philosophers, academics, art critics and artists: Carol Gigliotti, Peter Singer, Robin Laurence, Noah Becker and Ashley Fruno. Questions and text by Zoe Peled 62 Artists, Animals and Ethics In Art Crazy Nation (2001), Matthew Collings made the following observation: Brits are very fond of animals and children. Their exhibitions are now full of animals, usually mutants of some kind, or sexually aroused, or dead – for example, sharks and pigs by Damian Hirst, which symbolise death and racehorses by Mark Wallinger, symbolising class, but with the front ends different from the back ends – symbolising mutant breeding. Text by Yvette Watt 73 Jonathan Horowitz’s Reclamation of a Meat Plant Associate Professor of Art History Mysoon Rizk discusses the work of controversial artist Jonathan Horowitz. Text by Mysoon Rizk 82 The Visibility of Violence Zoological parks are contradictory institutions. Such an understatement is almost taken for granted in our contemporary discourses concerning animal welfare, zoological display, and global biodiversity. These spaces have been designed to promote popular interest in zoological wonder and global wildlife protection, but do so at the expense of animal freedom and well-being. As a species, we human beings love zoos, but also struggle with their implications. Text by Noah Cincinnati 96 The Tiger Next Door Camilla Calamandrei is a documentary filmmaker who specialises in small stories, which connect in different ways to a larger, complex American nervous system. She had been researching tiger-breeder/hoarder stories in the USA for some time before learning about Dennis Hill, who when we are first introduced to him in her film The Tiger Next Door, keeps 24 tigers, 3 bears, 6 leopards and 1 ageing cougar in makeshift cages in his backyard compound, near the tiny town of Flat Rock, Indiana. Text and questions by Lucy Davis 106 Sue Coe: I Am an Animal Rights Activist Artist Sue Coe, one of the most committed activist artists in America, has during her thirty-five-year career charted an idiosyncratic course through an environment that is at best ambivalent toward art with overt socio-political content. In this issue of Antennae, the artist presents a new portfolio of images on the subject of animal welfare. Questions by Giovanni Aloi and Rod Bennison 120 Let’s be Simple for Starters: Reflections on Elisabeth de Fontenay’s ‘Le Silence des Bêtes, la Philosophie à l’Epreuve de l’Animalité’: For the Defence of Animals. Text and Images by Julien Salaud 4
B y its title alone, Antennae’s current issue on “Animal Wrongs and Rights” raises expectations about its likely contents. The reversal of the more familiar formulation “rights and wrongs” suggests that a few surprises may be in store, as indeed they are. A variety of voices crowds in, many of them very well known, but not always saying what might have been expected. Most contributors address the theme of the issue with direct reference to the arts, but not only to the arts. The tension between the practical demands of animal advocacy and what is often regarded as the more reflective approach of the arts is evident in several contributions. Contemporary artists frequently characterize their work as posing questions rather than providing answers, but for artists (and for writers on art) concerned with animal advocacy, what are the relevant questions? The essays and interviews in this issue offer plenty of scope for considering that particular question, but they also offer numerous memorable one-off statements: some of them amusing, some striking, some – well, how shall I put this? – preposterous. Here, in no particular order, are just a few of them. In a compelling interview, offering real insight into her working methods, Sue Coe characterizes herself as “an art worm eating dirt.” (Why? Read the interview.) Philosopher and hunting STEVE BAKER: WHAT ARE THE RELEVANT QUESTIONS? Steve Baker, Emeritus Professor of Art History at UCLan, and author of the seminal books The Postmodern Animal and of Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation introduces this issue of Antennae. Text by Steve Baker 5 enthusiast Roger Scruton, discussing his book Animal Rights and Wrongs, argues in relation to animals that “we do them harm” by attributing rights to them. Nancy Regan reveals the title of the cookbook she could imagine Tom Regan writing: “Cooking with Tom: One Ingredient: Soy Sauce!” – and I have to say that that really is my kind of cookbook. And Peter Singer offers the blunt assertion that the field of animal studies generally “fails to make an important contribution either to the cause of animals or to our understanding of the world.” The interview with Singer is also revealing in terms of how it articulates a far more widespread tension between philosophy and art. Singer explains that he likes ideas to be “clearly presented” and to be “argued as rigorously as the subject-matter permits.” This perhaps explains his lack of sympathy for art that engages with questions of animal life in a more nuanced manner, but does not necessarily explain his view that films such as Bambi and Babe “have taken over the role of art.” More perplexing still is his criticism of the way that “the energy used by … the air-conditioned art galleries in which we view art” contributes to climate change – a criticism that apparently does not extend to the airconditioned lecture theatres in which philosophers present their ideas. But in Singer’s view art simply matters less than philosophy, and he dismisses “the
Page 1 and 2: Antennae Issue 19 - Winter 2011 ISS
Page 3: EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 19 O ne of
Page 7 and 8: 5 Leading Thinkers on Animals Exclu
Page 9 and 10: P eter Singer is considered to be o
Page 11 and 12: objectively as we can, and understa
Page 13 and 14: Marco Evaristti Helena, mixed media
Page 15 and 16: john simons Interviewed by Rod Benn
Page 17 and 18: John Simons Animal Rights and the P
Page 19 and 20: Ethel C. Pedley Dot and the Kangaro
Page 21 and 22: R oger Scruton is an English philos
Page 23 and 24: there have been arguments made for
Page 25 and 26: N on-moral beings The account of mo
Page 27 and 28: their own equivalent of the social
Page 29 and 30: acing. Such creatures, deprived of
Page 31 and 32: Livestock, and the eating of meat I
Page 33 and 34: consider the fate of the animals wh
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Page 37 and 38: absolute owners, of the world in wh
Page 39 and 40: ehest. Besides, if they were in cha
Page 41 and 42: tom and nancy regan Interviewed by
Page 43 and 44: Debate, with Carl Cohen (2001); Ani
Page 45 and 46: ecent books, Empty Cages, “To Mud
Page 47 and 48: most fascinating and provocative of
Page 49 and 50: from Chile, Spain, Australia, Franc
Page 51 and 52: “No Trespassing” Possession of
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wasn’t, for one reason or another
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y the “so-called doctrines of ani
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animals, the methods which are used
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society. It is imperative that the
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Damien Hirst The physical Impossibi
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More recent examples of animal deat
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These comments made by Jones and Mc
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ambiguity.”[31] While it is not c
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distinctions of mind-body/male-fema
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“I f slaughterhouses had glass wa
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Jonathan Horowitz Billboards, insta
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of the floor was also respectively
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Jonathan Horowitz If Slaughterhouse
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Bollen, Christopher. “Jonathan Ho
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Fig. 1, Gorillas and humans view ea
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all classes of people, and the prom
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capture and their implications shou
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Fig. 4 Captured Indian elephants. P
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Fig. 6. Zoo employees load a large
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Fig. 8. View of the National Collec
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[12] Henry Osborn, From the Greeks
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Camilla Calamandrei Still from The
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Camilla Calamandrei NYPD officer re
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Camilla Calamandrei Still from The
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international trade in illegal weap
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sue coe A new portfolio Interviewed
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from 112 lbs annually to 108lbs, bu
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education. As one activist has said
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Sue Coe Image List Finning, 2011 Th
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Elisabeth de Fontenay Le Silence de
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animal towards man,” between paga
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Antennae.org.uk Issue twenty will b
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