Empathy, Witnessing, Trauma and Animals' Suffering

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE DEAD THINGS: EMPATHY, WITNESSING, TRAUMA AND ANIMALS’ SUFFERING

VOLUME I

lynn mowson

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (by creative work and dissertation)

Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts Melbourne University

September 2014

ABSTRACT

My PhD entitled; beautiful little dead things: empathy, trauma, witnessing and animals’ suffering, explores two pivotal themes through the medium of sculpture: the connection between the body and empathy, trauma and witnessing in relation to the suffering of animals. The initial investigation of empathy traces its emergence and elaboration in the work of Robert Vischer, Theodor Lipps and Edith Stein, citing key concepts of aesthetic and intersubjective empathy. I undertake primary research in applying these concepts in sculpture with specific reference to the human form. The application of these ideas is narrated within a studio practice context, and I detail key techniques of working with wax and latex in relation to referencing flesh and skin.

This project underwent a transition wherein my political and ethical position as an animals’ advocate emerged and became central to both the practical and theoretical research. I provide a contextual introduction to this position, drawing on the emerging fields of Human-Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies. I outline a position and context in relation to the place of the animal in my research through comprehensive introduction to concepts of trauma, witnessing and testimony, wherein I undertake research in the application of these concepts, through sculptural practice, within the Critical Animal Studies context.

The research commences by asking how an intersubjective empathic engagement can reveal the other (the subject) in the sculptural body (the object). However, a different configuration emerged from the research: can sculpture testify to the presence of the subject (animal) in the object (flesh/meat)? Can sculpture bring the animal subject into presence within the context of the consumption of its body parts? This question was embodied in the creative component of this thesis which was exhibited as a single installation under the title beautiful little dead things, 2014. These sculptural objects, which I pose as a form of testimony, draw attention to the violence of the subject/object fragmentation and the precarious nature of empathy. The works bear traces of violence, mass-production and dis-assembling: they are torn, flayed and ‘butchered’; however, each object is also completely unique, cared for and tended to. I have come to consider

the tension between violence and care in my work as a process of working with trauma and traumatic knowledge to bear witness to animal suffering.

DECLARATION

This is to certify that: i the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the preface ii due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used iii the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices

Signature:

lynn angela mowson

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is dedicated to:

My father Ernest William Thomson (23/6/1929 - 29/10/2013)

My beloved four-legged friend Ziggy (unknown - 2/6/2014)

To animals and animals’ advocates everywhere.

Thank you to: My supervisors Dr Elizabeth Presa and Associate Professor Barbara Bolt for their support and critical feedback, and Chair - Roger Alsop.

Especial thanks go to VCA staff: Tim Edwards and Mark Friedlander for the enjoyable hours spent problem solving sculptural issues; Kylie White and Scott Miles for their assistance with the exhibition; and Kate Elliot for reminding me that artists had something worthwhile to contribute to animals’ advocacy.

Members of the Institute of Critical Animal Studies who ensured I didn’t feel alone. Academics and writers who have conversed and shared their work with me, in particular: Kathy Jenni, Hans Theys, Dermot Moran and Greg Currie for providing me with prepublication or unpublished texts. Also the artists who have provided images and agreed for their work to be reproduced.

Caroline Wallace and Sary Zananiri for PhD team support, as well as many other VCA PhD students; Sophie Knezic, Sarah CrowEST, Andrea Meadows and Julie Sheils to name a few.

My sister Karen Thomson, animals’ advocate and inspiration. My family for being supportive of this lengthy endeavour. Finally, and most importantly, my husband Bruce, and my wonderful and distracting son Wolfgang.

Funding support: Australian Postgraduate Award.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME I

ABSTRACT i

DECLARATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix

PREFACE xxi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 situating the research ...... 6 fellow creatures - fellow beings ...... 9 concise chapter outlines ...... 14 1. SCULPTURAL BODIES: EMPATHIC ENCOUNTERS ...... 17 1.1 introduction ...... 17 1.2 in the studio ...... 18 1.3 empathy - an outline ...... 20 1.4 aesthetic empathy ...... 21 1.5 aesthetic empathy and the move to intersubjective empathy ...... 23 1.6 intersubjective ‘radical’ empathy ...... 26 1.7 contemporary empathy in visual theory ...... 29 1.8 empathy and sculptural body ...... 31 1.9 the problem of the ‘whole’ body ...... 33 1.10 fragmented bodies ...... 37 1.11 Antony Gormley ...... 39 1.12 Kiki Smith ...... 44 1.13 Berlinde de Bruyckere ...... 48 1.14 studio encounters ...... 51 1.14 empathy with fellow creatures ...... 53 1.15 conclusion ...... 59 2. FLESH AND SKIN ...... 61 2.1 introduction ...... 61 2.2 skins ...... 62 2.3 slink - traumatic knowledge ...... 63 2.4 flesh lumps ...... 68 2.5 fragmented bodies ...... 71 2.6 flesh and skin ...... 73 2.7 attending to animals ...... 88 2.8 representing flesh and skin ...... 91 2.9 conclusion ...... 93 3. WITNESSING, BEARING WITNESS AND TESTIMONY ...... 95 3.1 introduction ...... 95 3.2 definitions: witness, bearing witness and testimony ...... 96 3.3 witnessing witnessing ...... 97 3.4 who witnesses for the other? ...... 99 3.5 trauma and testimony ...... 109

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3.7 troubling representation ...... 117 3.8 summary ...... 121 3.9 bearing witness to animal suffering and death ...... 122 3.10 the problems of bearing witness to animal suffering ...... 132 3.11 conclusion ...... 142 4. TESTIMONY AND TRAUMATIC KNOWLEDGE ...... 143 4.1 introduction ...... 143 4.2 trauma and animals’ advocates ...... 144 4.3 atrocities ...... 151 4.4 the wounded animal ...... 158 4.5 confessions of comparisons ...... 163 4.6 trauma, practice and testimony ...... 166 4.7 conclusion ...... 170 5. CONCLUSION ...... 173

VOLUME II

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1

ILLUSTRATIONS 25

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig.1 Standing Figure I, 2011, work in progress, clay and steel Studio documentation

Fig.2 Standing Figure I, 2011, work in progress, clay and steel Studio documentation

Fig.3 Inverted Figure, 2011, work in progress, clay and steel Studio documentation

Fig.4 Standing Figure II, 2011, work in progress, clay and steel Studio documentation

Fig.5 Antony Gormley THREE WAYS: MOULD HOLE AND PASSAGE, 1981-82 Lead and plaster, 60 x 98 x 50 cm (Mould), 62 x 123 x 80 cm (Hole), 34 x 209 x 50 cm (Passage). Installation view, Tate Gallery, London, Tate Gallery Collection, London, Photograph courtesy of Tate, © the artist

Fig.6 Antony Gormley, INSTRUMENT II, 1991 Lead, fibreglass, plaster, air and optical lens, 213 x 74 x 51 cm, 80 Kg © the artist

Fig.7 Antony Gormley, LAND SEA AND AIR II, 1982 Lead and fibreglass, 45 x 103 x 50 cm (Land (crouching)), 191 x 50 x 32 cm (Sea (standing)),118 x 69 x 52 cm (Air (kneeling)) © the artist

Fig.8 Antony Gormley, ANOTHER PLACE, 1997 Cast iron, 189 x 53 x 29 cm (100 elements) Installation view, Crosby Beach, Merseyside Photograph by Stephen White, London © the artist

Fig.9 Antony Gormley, SHIFT II, 2000 Cast iron, 204 x 54 x 25 cm, 630 Kg, Edition of 3 © the artist

Fig.10 Kiki Smith, Pee Body, 1992 Wax and glass beads (23 strands of varying lengths, 1' to over 15' long) 68.6 x 71.1 x 71.1 cm (27 x 28 x 28 in.) Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Promised gift in part of Barbara Lee and Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Purchase in part from the Joseph A. Baird, Jr., Francis H. Burr Memorial and Director's Acquisition Funds, 1997.82

Fig.11 Kiki Smith, Train, 1993 wax and glass beads 4'5" x 14' x 4'7" (134.6 x 426.7 x 139.6 cm) Courtesy of Pace Gallery, NY

Fig.12 Kiki Smith, Tale, 1992 Beeswax, microcrystalline wax, pigment, papier mache 160 x 23 x 23 in. (406 x 58.4 x 58.4cm) Collection Jeffrey Deitch, New York Courtesy of Pace Gallery, NY

Fig.13 Kiki Smith, Untitled III (Upside-Down Body with Beads), 1993 White bronze with glass beads and wire overall installation dimensions variable 37 x 14 ¾ x 19" (94 x 37.5 x 48.3 cm), figure 12' 4" x 6' 3" x ¼ " (375.9 x 37.5 x 0.6 cm), beads No. 25689 Courtesy of Pace Gallery, NY

Fig.14 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann Installation Hauser & Wirth, London 2006 Epoxy, wax, iron Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.15 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann III, 2006 Epoxy, wax, iron, 558 x 73 x 75 cm Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.16 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann IV, 2006 Epoxy, wax, iron, 415 x 102 x 98 cm Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.17 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann V, 2006 Epoxy, wax, iron, 420 x 80 x 80 cm Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.18 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Into One-Another I To P.P.P., 2010 (detail) Wax, epoxy, iron, wood, glass 193 x 183 x 86 cm / 76 x 72 x 33 7/8 " Photo: Mirjam Devriendt Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.19 Berlinde de Bruyckere, We are all Flesh, 2009 Wood, wax, polyester, steel. 105 x 110 x 203 cm / 41 3/8 x 43 1/4 x 79 7/8 in Installation view, 'Berlinde De Bruyckere, Luca Giordano. WE ARE ALL FLESH', Hauser & Wirth London, Old Bond Street, 2009 Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

Fig.20 Standing Figure I, 2011 Studio work in progress

Fig.21 Standing Figure I, 2011 Studio work in progress

Fig.22 Models for figures, 2011 Studio documentation x

Fig.23 Original taxidermy form cast in wax and creature cast into latex, 2011 Studio documentation

Fig.24 Various creature forms, 2011 Works in progress. Studio documentation

Fig.25 creature, 2011 (detail) Latex Studio documentation

Fig.26 Latex detail, 2011 Studio documentation

Fig.27 Latex details, 2011 Studio documentation

Fig.28 creature, 2011 Microcrystalline wax, pigment, thread Studio documentation

Fig.29 creatures, 2011-12, details, eye sockets Microcrystalline wax, pigment Studio documentation

Fig.30 creatures, 2011-12, details, eye sockets Microcrystalline wax, pigment Studio documentation

Fig.31 creature, 2013 Clay original form, work in progress Studio documentation

Fig.32 creatures, 2011-13 (various) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and wooden stands Studio documentation

Fig.33 creatures, 2011-13 (various) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and wooden stands Studio documentation

Fig.34 skins, 2011, various forms Latex, tissue and thread, works in progress Studio documentation

Fig.35 Interior of latex sewn form, 2012 Latex, tissue and thread Studio documentation

Fig.36 skins, 2012, flaying Standing Figure II, Latex, pigment and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.37 skins, 2012, work in progress - sewing Latex, pigment and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.38 skins, 2012 (detail) Latex, pigment and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.39 skins, 2012 Latex, pigment and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.40 skins, 2011-13 Latex and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.41 skins, 2011-13, surface details Latex and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.42 skins, 2011-13, surface details Latex and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.43 Various studio items, 2013

Fig.44 slink, 2012-13, babyforms in progress Plaster and PVA Studio documentation

Fig.45 slink, 2012-13, (detail) freshly ‘skinned’ Latex and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.46 slink, 2012-13, (detail) freshly ‘skinned’ Latex and tissue Studio documentation

Fig.47 slink, 2012-13, detail sewing Latex, tissue and thread Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

Fig.48 slink, 2012-13, various forms hanging Latex and tissue Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

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Fig.49 slink, 2012-13, various forms hanging Latex, tissue and string Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

Fig.50 slink (sac), 2012-13 (various) Latex and tissue Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

Fig.51 slink, 2012-13, various forms hanging Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.52 slink (sac), 2012-13, (detail) Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.53 slink (screen), 2012-13 Latex and tissue Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

Fig.54 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment Installation documentation Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2014

Fig.55 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax, pigment, fabric Studio documentation

Fig.56 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment beautiful little dead things, 2014 Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.57 flesh lump, 2013, (detail) Microcrystalline wax and pigment beautiful little dead things, 2014 Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.58 flesh lump, 2013, (detail) Microcrystalline wax and pigment beautiful little dead things, 2014 Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.59 flesh lump, 2013, hanging form Microcrystalline wax, pigment and muslin Project Space, Student Gallery, VCA, 2013

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Fig.60 flesh lump, 2013 (various) Microcrystalline wax and pigment

Fig.61 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax, pigment, cling wrap Studio documentation

Fig.62 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment Studio documentation

Fig.63 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment, children’s book Studio documentation

Fig.64 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment Studio documentation

Fig.65 flesh lump, 2013 (various) Microcrystalline wax, pigment, muslin Studio documentation

Fig.66 Figure IV, 2013-14 Works in progress Studio documentation

Fig.67 Detail of wax surface, microcrystalline wax and pigment Studio documentation

Fig.68 flesh lump (legs), 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.69 flesh lump (legs), 2013, detail Microcrystalline wax and pigment Studio documentation

Fig.70 flesh lump, 2013, various surface details Microcrystalline wax and pigment Studio documentation

Fig.71 Angela Singer, Sore I, 2002-3 Recycled taxidermy support, mixed media, 630 x 480 x 610mm Courtesy of Angela Singer

Fig.72 Angela Singer, Violante, 2011 Recycled vintage taxidermy quail, fawn, mixed media, 10 x 15 x 7.5” Courtesy of Angela Singer

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Fig.73 Steve Baker, Untitled, from the series Norfolk Roadkill, Mainly, 2009 Digital Print Courtesy of Steve Baker

Fig.74 Steve Baker, Scapeland VI, 2013 Giclée print, 20 x 60” Courtesy of Steve Baker

Fig.75 Steve Baker, Scapeland VIII, 2013 Giclée print, 20 x 60” Courtesy of Steve Baker

Fig.76 John Isaacs, Further uses of the dead to the living, 2008 Wax, oil paint, polystyrene, stage blood, latex, 238 x 56 x 18cm Courtesy of Aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels

Fig.77 John Isaacs, The Lie, 2013 Wax, oil paint, polystyrene, steel, bronze, latex, stage blood, 81 x 207 x 117cm Courtesy of Aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels

Fig.78 John Isaacs, Everyone’s talking about Jesus, 2005 Wax, epoxy resin, polystyrene, 200 x 150 x 150cm Courtesy of Aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels

Fig.79 John Isaacs, Other People’s Lives (scapegoat), 2003 Studio photograph Courtesy of Aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels

Fig.80 John Isaacs, Other People’s Lives (scapegoat), 2003 Wax, steel, glass and oil paint, 90 x 80 x 120cm Private collection, Verona Italy Courtesy of Aeroplastics contemporary, Brussels

Fig.81 Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1992-93 (detail) Installation The Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts, St. Louis Photo: Robert Pettus Image courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York

Fig.82 Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios, 1992-93 Installation The Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts, St. Louis Photo: Robert Pettus Image courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York

Fig.83 Sue Coe, Meat Flies, 1991 Graphite, Gouache and ink on board, 76.2 x 101.6cm Courtesy of Sue Coe

Fig.84 Sue Coe, Me drawing in the slaughterhouse as a child, 2011 Lithograph, 15 x 20” Courtesy of Sue Coe Fig.85 Jo Anne McArthur, Untitled: Factory Farming Courtesy of Jo Anne McArthur / We Animals

Fig.86 Jo Anne McArthur, Pigs at Slaughterhouse in Canada Courtesy of Jo Anne McArthur / We Animals

Fig.87 Jo Anne McArthur, Untitled: Factory Farming Courtesy of Jo Anne McArthur / We Animals

Fig.88 Jonathan Horowitz, Go Vegan!, 2010 Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Fig.89 Jonathan Horowitz, Go Vegan!, 2010 Installation view, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY Photo by Thomas Mueller Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Fig.90 Jonathan Horowitz, Go Vegan!, 2010 Installation view, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY Photo by Thomas Mueller Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Fig.91 Jonathan Horowitz, Go Vegan!, 2010 Installation view, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY Photo by Thomas Mueller Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Fig.92 Jonathan Horowitz, Go Vegan!, 2010 Installation view, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY Photo by Thomas Mueller Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise

Fig.93 Yvette Watt, Untitled (from the ‘Animal Factories’ series), 2012 Giclee print, 30 x 128cm Courtesy of Yvette Watt

Fig.94 Jo Frederiks, Invitation for The Animal Holocaust exhibition, 2014 Courtesy of Jo Frederiks

Fig.95 Jo Frederiks, Every. Day. Courtesy of Jo Frederiks

Fig.96 Jo Frederiks, The greatest weapon on earth is the table fork Courtesy of Jo Frederiks

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Fig.97 Sue Coe, Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they are only animals, 2009 Woodcut on cream kitika paper, 15 1/2 x 52”, edition of 25 Courtesy of Sue Coe

Fig.98 beautiful little dead things, 2014 Exterior of Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.99 slink (screen), 2013-14 Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.100 slink (screen), 2013-14 Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.101 slink (screen), 2013-14 Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.102 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.103 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.104 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.105 slink, 2012-14 (various) Latex, tissue, wire and string beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.106 slink, 2012-14 various) Latex, tissue, wire and string beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.107 slink, 2011-14 (various) Latex, tissue, wire and string beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view

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Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.108 slink, 2011-14 (various) Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.109 slink Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.110 slink Latex, tissue, wire and string beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.111 slink Latex, tissue, wire and string beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.112 slink (sac), latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.113 slink (detail) Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.114 slink (detail) Latex and tissue beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.115 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.116 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

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Fig.117 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.118 beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.119 flesh lumps, 2013 Microcrystalline wax and pigment beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.120 flesh lumps (legs), 2013 Microcrystalline wax, pigment and studio furniture beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.121 flesh lump, 2013 Microcrystalline, pigment and studio furniture beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation view Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.122 flesh lumps, 2013 (various) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and studio furniture beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.123 flesh lumps, 2013 (various) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and studio furniture beautiful little dead things, 2014 installation views Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.124 flesh lump (body), 2014 (detail) Microcrystalline wax and pigment beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA

Fig.125 untitled, 2013-4 Microcrystalline wax, pigment and steel stand beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

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Fig.126 untitled, 2013-4 Microcrystalline wax, pigment and steel stand beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.127 untitled, 2013-4 (detail) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and steel stand beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

Fig.128 untitled, 2013-4 (detail) Microcrystalline wax, pigment and steel stand beautiful little dead things, 2014 Student Gallery, VCA Photo: Kerry Leonard

PREFACE

As a child I had two elder sisters, and a brother who was companionable, fun and a good friend. It was not significant that he had four legs instead of two, constantly knotted curls of white hair all over his body and a wet black nose. Pepe the poodle was a member of my household before I was born, and was my brother until I was 14. Just like many children I loved my dog and ate the bodies of other animals.

There were three key experiences in childhood that transformed my way of thinking about other animals. Firstly was William Blake’s poem The Fly, 1 published in 1793: Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away.

Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me?

For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death,

Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

Secondly, was a dull afternoon spent on my elder sister’s bed reading through her well- worn copy of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.2 While Blake’s The Fly, made me think of animals as my fellow beings, Singer’s text called for an awareness of the mistreatment of animals, and made rational arguments to support liberating animals from harm. However, it was not until I was stuck in traffic on a school bus, heading off

1 Available at http://www.portablepoetry.com/poems/william_blake/the_fly.html 2 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (HarperCollins, 1975).

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on a school holiday, that I made my own connections about the animals I ate for food. Sitting on that bus, a truck drew up next to us, a truck crammed tight with pigs. I do not know where that truck was going, although now I would speculate the slaughterhouse. The truck and our bus maintained a slow side-by-side crawl, for what felt like hours. I looked at the pigs and they looked at me. It seemed like a lifetime spent looking into the eyes of the pigs, at their full fleshy embodiedness, their shuffling and bumping, as they squeezed to the edges of the truck; for air or for a limited sight of life. Their eyes were full of expression and personality. So profound was the experience, that I declared at the age of 14 that I would not eat meat again. If I thought others shared this experience, I was to be quickly disappointed. While one other joined me refusing meat on arrival at our destination, the availability of vegetarian food was miserable. I was left alone: eating potatoes, limp salad, bread and wondering how and why others did not see or experience the pigs in the same way I did. These three experiences represent a combination of art, philosophy and personal experience, which remain formative influences in this research.

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INTRODUCTION

This project, both in studio practice (‘the practice’) and thesis investigate the utilisation of sculpture in bearing witness to animal suffering and death. The thesis component of my PhD entitled beautiful little dead things: empathy, trauma, witnessing and animals’ suffering explores two pivotal themes: firstly the relationship between the body and empathy within the context of sculpture; and secondly, it investigates trauma and witnessing in relation to bearing witness to the suffering of animals, and how the process of working with the traumatic, through sculptural practice, maybe be able to provide the conditions to bear witness to animal suffering. The project draws these concerns together — through my sculptural practice — to consider the nexus between empathy, trauma and witnessing in relation to animals suffering, and art’s capacity to provide an method to bear witness.

The creative component of this thesis comprises a number of sculptural objects created in latex and wax, exhibited as a single installation entitled beautiful little dead things, 20143 [Fig.98-128]. These sculptural objects evoke the violence of fragmentation and the precarious nature of empathy. The materiality of the sculptures emulates the aesthetic qualities of skin and flesh. While these sculptural objects bear traces of violence, mass-production and dis-assembling of the animal body — in that they are torn, flayed and butchered — each object is produced haptically — and is completely unique, tended to and cared for. The conflict between violence and tenderness in my work is, I suggest, the result of a process of working with the traumatic to bear witness

3 beautiful little dead things, 2014, Student Gallery, VCA, 6th – 14th, March, 2014

to animal suffering. The crafting of a material language of suffering in the practice raises ethical questions and problems that provide the direction for this research.

* * *

This introduction firstly traces the development of the research and practice, then situates the context of the research, and concludes with a concise chapter outline.

The focus throughout this research is the question of how to sculpturally bring attention to the subject (a being) in the object. The research emerges from a sculptural practice that engages with the body. The phenomenological encounter with the sculptural body was the starting point of this enquiry. This idea prompted some initial questions: is there a different response deriving from phenomena of embodiment? The focus on subjectivity drew my research to empathy theory – which engages questions about how we recognise others as subjects.

In this research I draw attention to the overlooked phenomenological potential of figurative sculpture; that is, its ability to present a body that we can encounter empathically in space and time. The research emerges from a sculptural practice that engages with the body. The practice uses the form of the human body (the ‘sculptural body’) and is focused on animals in the broadest sense including humans. Working with a non-ironical and affective approach to contemporary figurative sculpture is fraught with accusations of humanism, traditionalism, modernism and conservatism. Additionally, the human body is often used in contemporary art as a trope; that is to represent ideas. In order to focus on the phenomenological potential of the sculptural body, the research by necessity excludes: the broader uses of the human body in contemporary art practice; examining the full scope of the ‘return’ of figurative sculpture from the 1990s; considering sculpture which prioritises the use of the human body to convey ideas over-and-above the opportunities of an embodied encounter; and sculptural objects which ironically critique sculptural figuration.

The initial research explores the scope for empathy to facilitate a phenomenological encounter with the sculptural body. I consider whether the notion of phenomenological empathy might be extended to take into account a sculptural body. Focusing on Edith

Stein’s theory of empathy, which brings into play the ethics of alterity, I explore whether her account enables the sculptural body to be perceived as both an object (sculpture) and a subject (another being). That is to say, can phenomenological empathy theory - which articulates the perception of intersubjective encounters (subject to subject), be considered active in relation to sculptural objects that resemble the human being – the encounter between the subject and object/subject?

To consider this I trace a historical trajectory from aesthetic empathy through to intersubjective empathy in phenomenology. I have examined the literature on empathy theory, which is as broad as it is contested, and the sheer volume of this material has necessitated making my argument through selected accounts, rather than attempt a full examination of the theory. In doing so, I have selected, after considerable primary and secondary research, key accounts that contribute to developing an explanation of sculptural empathy, and which also demonstrate corresponding ideas with ethical witnessing and testimony. The scope of the project is determined by the characteristics of the studio practice. As such, I have focused on the resemblances of sculpture, and sculpture’s potential to generate affective responses, but excluded mimesis. I have looked at empathy theory within aesthetics and philosophy, but not within psychoanalysis. I note that in this project the exclusion of psychoanalysis (although interlinked with many of the ideas developed, and offering potential extension of these ideas) was necessary for the current scope of this project, and I hope to extrapolate these linkages in the future.4

Also propelling this project was my concern as to whether it is possible for sculptural bodies to present the suffering of an other, and whether empathy has a role in translating that experience to a broader audience. In particular the research responds to the provocation: “How do we make those whose suffering does not matter, matter?”5 The focus on suffering directly responds to Jeremy Bentham’s question in relation to animals: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they

4 George W Pigman, "Freud and the History of Empathy," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 76(1995). 5 J Donovan and Adams C.J, eds., The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 23

suffer?”6. This concern generated supplementary questions for the research: can empathy play a role in human-to-animal relations? What can sculpture productively say about the suffering of animals?7 Further, what material and plastic languages of sculpture can be developed to express suffering?

During the research the practice underwent a decisive shift from focussing on the whole human body to producing body parts and fragments: fleshy lumps and skins. In retrospect, I articulate this as the process of working with traumatic knowledge about animal suffering and death. In doing so I allowed the practice to align with my ethical concerns about the treatment of animals. The research does not deal with the broader philosophical ‘question of the animal’, but focuses specifically on the animal who is farmed for human consumption. As such, the research is grounded on a fairly simple and yet powerful sentiment: that animals are my fellow creatures, they suffer, and that what we are doing to them is wrong.

This thesis discusses how the practice generated what I now call ‘emergent objects’: that is to say they developed unexpectedly through the haptic practice and demanded attention. Through the decisive shift mentioned above, the scope of the thesis was significantly expanded to accommodate the direction of the practice. This was motivated by the recognition that the sculptural objects not only made an appeal for

6 Jeremy Bentham, Chapter XVII, Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Justice, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. 1789, Note 122. Available at http://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthPML18.html#Chapter%20XVII,%20Of%20the%20Limits% 20of%20the%20Penal%20Branch%20of%20Jurisprudence. Full extract: “The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.* It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” 7 I draw this idea of ‘productive’ from Steve Baker’s contention and provocation to artists and writers alike: “Contemporary art, along with literature and nondocumentary film genres, is a field in which the killing of animals can undoubtedly figure as a subject but where it is not necessarily clear how the field can usefully contribute either to knowledge of the other-than-human or the more-than human world or to what might broadly be called the cause of animal advocacy”. Steve Baker, "'You Kill Things to Look at Them': Animal Death in Contemporary Art," in Killing Animals, ed. The Animal Studies Group (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 70 Yvette Watt attends to this in her substantial thesis on the topic of art and animal advocacy see Yvette Watt. "Animals, Art and Activism: An Investigation into Art as a Tool for Engaging an Ethical Consideration of Human-Animal Relationships." PhD, University of Tasmania, 2009.

empathy, but they also attested to something. That is to say, they appeared to bear witness through a sculptural testimony to a condition or treatment of the animal. Animals’ advocates commonly use the term witnessing and bearing witness to describe activities that bring to our attention the lives and deaths of animals. The second part of this research considers whether human-to-human concepts witnessing can be used to consider animal suffering. Further to this, it questions how my emergent and troubling sculptures of flesh and skin can be situated within the framework of witnessing.

In order to do this the thesis explores theories of witnessing to examine the possibilities of applying these to our relationship with animals. The research has examined a broad range of academic and testimonial accounts of witnessing, primarily from Holocaust Studies. It does so in order to establish how witnessing operates and consider whether these concepts can be used in relation to human-to-animal witnessing.

Further, the research seeks to define some of the specific features of human-to-animal witnessing. I consider: the relationship between witnessing and the visibility and invisibility of animal suffering; the fragility of empathy in witnessing; trauma as it affects animals’ advocates; and the problems of language to communicate animals’ suffering. I use ‘language’ in this discussion to denote the visual, the sculptural, as well as verbal and textual languages. Further I consider how it might be possible to use art as testimony in relation to the suffering and death of animals.

The research draws attention to empathy’s inherent contingency and fragility. However, aligned concepts such as: looking, attentiveness and witnessing are considered, in order to realise the project of bringing the subject into presence in the object. To attend to this I develop aspects of empathy theory that emphasise empathy’s inherent capacities to witness for an other. In this paper I make an argument for a wilful repression of knowledges and empathic indifference and I have aimed to substantiate this throughout the text. What is revealed by the research and the practice is that the underlying concern to witness the subject (animal being) in the object (sculpture) is built on my broader concerns about animals. That is to say, my concern is located in how people empathically recognise or not the subject (the animal) in the object (meat). Further I explore how this situates the sculptural practice as testimony that bears witness to both the visibility and the invisibility of the animal in the physical object.

I provide a wide and detailed field of enquiry and description in order to establish the necessary context for the reader. In particular I focus on the difficulties of witnessing on behalf of, or for, the animal subject. I have done so, because to work with the animal (marked out for human consumption) in a critical arts practice requires negotiating dominant systems of thinking about the animal. To bear witness to animal suffering is to negotiate the ideological hegemony, which allows the body of the animal to be used as an object for consumption.

In this research the textual and sculptural work form a parallel enquiry, which proceeds from the position that text and sculpture are categorically distinct languages of knowledge that are formed and communicate in their respective modes. Throughout the research the development of each of these has informed the other. Although I have drawn attention to the links and relationships throughout the written text, I also position each as immanent with itself. Accordingly I offer them to audiences to be read in parallel, without attempting to over-prescribe the interpretative relations between them. As such I have provided extensive photographic documentation of the practice in Volume II of this thesis. It is designed to be ‘read’ in parallel with the text, and to reinforce the presence of the ‘visual’. situating the research

I situate this research in the emergent interdisciplinary zone of Human-Animal Studies,8 and in doing so I take a certain well established position: humans are animals, animals are subjects not things, animals can suffer, and humans cause immense and preventable suffering to animals.9 There is a strong and able literature that defends this position,

8 Human-animal Studies is a relatively new and developing field in academia, bringing together perspectives on the relationships between the ‘human’ and the ‘animal’ from a variety of disciplines, including literary studies, visual arts, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and history to name a few. Critical Animal Studies is an aligned field, with a more radical activist and advocacy stance. Critical Animal Studies is committed to abolishing the suffering of animals (human and nonhuman). 9 Margo DeMello, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Clifton P. Flynn, ed. Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader (New York: Lantern Books, 2008). Margo DeMello, Teaching the Animal: Human-Animal Studies across the Disciplines (New York: Lantern Books, 2010). Dawne McCance, Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction (New York: Suny Press, 2013).

and it is outside the scope of this thesis to outline these positions.10 Further, I am an animals’ advocate, committed to the liberationist cause, as such my thinking is aligned with the objectives of Critical Animal Studies [CAS]. CAS confronts the actual condition of the animal11, rather than just raise the ‘question of the animal’. CAS creates a meaningful interaction between activism and academia, theory is engaged theory: “intended to support social change directly or indirectly”.12 Critical Animal Studies takes the position that animal exploitation of any form is unacceptable; I take this position in this thesis.

A note on terminology used in this project; it is usual in Human-Animal Studies to use the term human-animal to reference human beings, and more-than-human animal, other- than-human-animal or non-human-animal to denote the multitude of different animal beings. However, for clarity in this research, I use the term ‘human/s’ to refer to human animals and ‘animal/s’ to refer to other-than-human-animals.13 When I refer to the suffering and death of animals, I am particularly referring to animals farmed for food and clothing. I use the term animals’ advocate to include the broad range of people who are active in attempting to change the current paradigm between humans and animals. It is more usual to see the term animal advocate, with animal in the singular; however, the reduction of the multitude of animal species and individuals to the term ‘animal’ is problematic on many fronts.14

I use the term carnism to describe the ideology of using animals as products for human consumption. By consumption I mean in the broadest sense of commodification, and also the obvious consumption - to consume, or to eat. Carnism is a term coined by psychologist Melanie Joy to describe both meat eaters; carnists, and the society which

10 See: Singer, Animal Liberation., Peter Singer, ed. In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006)., Tom Regan, Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004)., McCance, Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction., Nik Taylor and Richard Twine, eds., The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre, Routledge Advances in Sociology (epublication: Taylor and Francis, 2014). 11 Taylor and Twine, The Rise of Critical Animal Studies. 1 DeMello, Animals and Society. 17 12 Taylor and Twine, The Rise of Critical Animal Studies. 6 13 This echoes Richard Twine’s position: “In this paper I have also decided non-ideally to use the word ‘animal/s’ instead of ‘nonhuman animals’ which I have used before. Both are problematic and I think that eventually CAS must challenge the discourse and binary of ‘human’ and ‘animal’ in more satisfactory ways” Richard Twine, "Revealing the 'Animal-Industrial Complex' - A Concept & Method for Critical Animal Studies?," JCAS: Journal for Critical Animal Studies 10, no. 1 (2012). 35 14 For a discussion of this see: Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Also Erica Fudge, Animal (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2002).

normalises the eating of animals; carnism.15 As Joy points out, only people who deviated from the ‘norm’, such as vegans and vegetarians were marked out as having a diet and an ideology. By creating the term carnism, Joy makes visible the invisible ‘normative’ habits of meat eating.16

I use the term atrocity to describe the use of animals for human consumption. This is not an emotive term, but rather a considered term, one well supported by other writers, even those who are not liberationist.17 The problem of what languages to use to describe and convey the horror of what is occurring on the bodies and minds of animals, in immense numbers on a daily basis, is something I consider in greater detail in this research.

Much of the work occurring in Human-Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies and related writings focuses on making visible that which is invisible. On a theoretical level this is as broad as re-examining the philosophical relationship between humans and animals.18 It also includes the development of new languages and terms, such as; carnism and carnist, to describe what has been considered a neutral, ordinary or invisible position. Making the visible the invisible is also a concern of animals’ advocates, to expose the harm inflicted on animals. This is where the potency of witnessing and bearing witness, through the visual arts, will be explored.

However, although this thesis is about bringing the invisible into the visible, I avoid where possible graphic images of animal suffering and death. This thesis goes part way to explaining the difficulties of using such images. There is a place for such images, but it is not in this thesis. I, like other writers I draw upon,19 leave it to the reader to conjure these images from what they already know. I provide a trigger warning,20 that chapter 2

15 Melanie Joy, Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows; an Introduction to Carnism (San Franciso, CA: Conari Press, 2010). 16 I also note Derrida’s coining of the broader philosophical term carnophallogocentrisim. Daniel Birnbaum and Anders Olsson, "An Interview with Jacques Derrida on the Limits of Digestion, October 25 1990," e-flux (2009), http://www.e-flux.com/journal/an-interview-with-jacques-derrida-on-the-limits- of-digestion/. 17 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 25-26, Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2008). 336 18 DeMello, Animals and Society. 17 19 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26. Also J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). 19 20 Trigger warning is the phrase used to indicate that images or words that one might find traumatic will be included.

contains fairly graphic textual material. I have provided textual descriptions that are mostly dispassionate, though in some cases it can be the awful horror of the dispassionate wording that can create a chilling affect.

My practice considers the relations between humans to animals as being one of fellow creatures, or fellow beings. This idea is supported by the work of philosophers Cora Diamond and Mary Midgley, amongst others. To contextualise the fundamental underpinnings of my research this concept is described below. fellow creatures - fellow beings

one does not have to go so far as to affirm that animals have rights to agree that the present system of meat production is abhorrent. Animals are not things, any more than humans are. They are creatures, and creatures command a very different sort of treatment than the sundry inanimate objects that dot our landscape: this not for reasons having to do with morality, but simply as a matter of fact. To be in a room with a raccoon is a very different sort of experience than to be in a room with a toaster. Try it sometime. The raccoon is an other; the toaster is an object, and you do not have to be particularly sentimental about cute and fuzzy things in order to grant this21

I consider the term fellow creatures to have emanated from the philosopher Cora Diamond, although I acknowledge this term has its lineage in philosophy; for example, Immanuel Kant uses the term fellow creature in the following passage:

When he first said to the sheep ‘the pelt which you wear was given to you by nature not for your own use, but for mine’ and took it from the sheep to wear it himself, he became aware of a prerogative which, by his nature, he enjoyed over all the animals; and he now no longer regarded them as fellow creatures, but as means and instruments to be used at will for the attainment of whatever ends he pleased.22

In this passage Kant describes how the relationship between human and animals as fellow creatures is destroyed once humans start to use animals for their own ends. Once this occurs animals become mere instruments: objects.

21 Justin E.H Smith, "An Animal Holocaust?," Justin Erick Halldór Smith November 2013(2006), http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2006/12/an_animal_holoc.html. 22 Kant quoted in Christine M. Korsgaard, "Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals," in Tanner Lecture on Human Values (www.TannerLectures.utah.edu: University of Michigan, 2001). 13

Cora Diamond takes the phrase fellow creature from Walter de la Mare’s poem, The Titmouse; a ‘fellow creature’ that may be ‘sought as company’. Diamond is pertinent to this research because her arguments are mostly focused on animals that we eat. In Eating Meat and Eating People,23 she argues against the necessity to develop philosophies of animal rights. Animal rights debates she argues, create impossible comparisons between human and animal attributes. In this comparison human attributes are considered the measure or the norm, and distinctively animal attributes are ignored such as: an animals’ ability to fly, to see in the dark, or swing through trees. Comparisons with human qualities, she argues, positions animals as sharing some biological, emotion and intellectual features with humans, but usually at the level of the infirm; comparable with infants, the elderly and disabled.24 Yet clearly, she argues, this does not explain why we treat other humans, no matter what their intellectual and physical capabilities, differently from how we treat animals. Comparisons tend to overlook and undervalue differences. They overlook the differences which should be respected, and tend to overlook the very things we share with animals: fear and pain; birth and death; social and emotional bonds. Animals, she contends, are our “fellows in mortality”, 25 they have the possibility for independent life, and this should be enough to generate respect for that life and pity.

Pity is something Diamond feels is undervalued in the consideration of animals:

Pity, [. . .] depends upon a sense of human life and loss, and a grasp of the situations in which one human being can appeal for pity to another, ask that he relent. When we are unrelenting in what we do—to other people or to animals—what we need is not telling that their interests are as worthy of concern as ours. And the trouble—or a trouble—with the abstract appeal to the prevention of suffering as a principle of action is that it encourages us to ignore pity, to forget what it contributes to our conception of suffering and death, and how it is connected with the possibility of relenting.26

Diamond argues that we need to be attentive to both our compassion and our pity. This is sometimes difficult, as Tom Regan states: “there is a stereotype of ARAs [Animal Rights Advocates] out there that pictures all of us as emotionally unbalanced bunny-

23 Cora Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People," Philosophy 53, no. 206 (1978). 24 For further elaboration on direct claim arguments, common capability claims and species membership implications see Alice Crary, "Humans, Animals, Right and Wrong," in Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond, ed. Alice Crary (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2007). 25 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 474 26 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 478

huggers who wouldn’t recognize a logical argument if one fell on us.”27 Emotion, compassion and pity are often drained from the logical argument of animal rights. This is something that concerns this research quite directly. 28 In articulating this idea of the fellow creature, I am pointing to the fact that I work with a particularly intuitive, compassionate and attentive position towards the suffering of other beings.

Of further importance to this research, Diamond contends that most rights debates overlook the most important aspects of human and animal relationships: when we think of animals, our thinking has already been culturally developed. That is, when we think about animals we have already started from an early age to eat them: “The difference between humans and animals is being ignored, the argument for morals will assume that we will all find it morally wrong”, however this overlooks the fact that: “we learn what a human being is in – among other ways – sitting at a table where WE eat THEM”.29 Eating animals is a cultural habit of mind; what animals we eat, and don’t eat, and how we go about killing them are all culturally inscribed. In Western cultures we rarely eat scavenged or fallen animals, and we do not eat dead humans or human body parts. We eat particular species of culturally approved slaughtered animals. Diamond insists that we cannot draw animals into a rights debate without recognising that we eat animals, but we do not eat our own dead: we don’t eat the unwanted body parts of humans and we don’t raise humans to be eaten as meat.30 Acknowledging the cultural nature of eating meat is fundamental, she argues, to any discussion we can have about animals.

Therefore, to re-consider our relationship with animals, Diamond argues, we need to consider how our relationship with animals is structured. Our relationship with animals is in fact actually a pre-moral relationship. It is developed when we start to eat meat, and eating meat is a learned behaviour. The tension and confusion within our relations with animals becomes apparent when we consider how we teach our children to be kind to animals at the same time as we teach them to eat meat. Diamond cites a poem Learning to be a Dutiful Carnivore, 1969, by Jane Legge, which works with dark humour to expose our developmental process of double-think in relation to animals:

27 Regan, Empty Cages. 3 28 Supported more recently in Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26. See chapter two. 29 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 470 30 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 470

Dogs and cats and goats and cows, Ducks and chickens, sheep and sows Woven into tales for tots, Pictured on their walls and pots. Time for dinner! Come and eat All your lovely, juicy meat. One day ham from Percy Porker (in the comics he’s a corker), Then the breast from Mrs Cluck Or the wing from Donald Duck. Liver next from Clara Cow (No, it doesn’t hurt her now). Yes, that leg’s from Peter Rabbit Chew it well; make that a habit. Eat the creatures killed for sale, But never pull the pussy’s tail. Eat the flesh from “filthy hogs” But never be unkind to dogs. Grow up into double-think – Kiss the hamster; skin the mink. Never think of slaughter, dear, That’s why animals are here. They only come on earth to die, So eat your meat, and don’t ask why.31

Diamond uses this poem to demonstrate the way in which some types of animals are figured as our companions and as our fellow creatures - to be treated well, and other types are to be eaten and worn - not to be thought about. Legge’s poem reveals this contradictory treatment of animals to the point of making it discomfortingly clear.

Diamond does not resolve or even develop a theory of fellow creatures, but rather points to the direction that we should consider our possible relationships with animals. This involves a detailed thinking through of the relationships, and the possibilities of relationships between animals and humans, something Jacques Derrida addressed in part in The Animal Therefore I am.32 Further, Diamond admits that the concept of a fellow creature will not work with those who do not experience such responses to animals, people “devoid of all human imagination and sympathy”.33 However, she goes

31 Jane Legge, Learning to be a Dutiful Carnivore, 1969, available at http://www.all- creatures.org/poetry/ar-learning.html 32 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 33 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 479

on to add that this is neither a limitation, nor a reason, to avoid condemning any mistreatment against fellow creatures.

Philosopher Mary Midgley echoes the importance of an emotional connection with animals, stating that:

What makes creatures our fellow beings, entitled to basic consideration, is surely not intellectual capacity but emotional fellowship. And if we ask what powers can justify a higher claim, bringing some creatures nearer to the degree of consideration which is due to humans, those that seem to be most relevant are sensibility, social and emotional complexity of the kind which is expressed by the formation of deep, subtle and lasting relationships.34

That is to say, animals display complex social emotional responses that we can recognise. Midgley’s text Animals and Why They Matter35 demonstrates that our fellow feeling towards other human beings has changed over time. She reminds the reader that ‘who’ has been considered a fellow being and ‘who’ is capable of sharing our fellow feeling is not only capable of change, but has already changed historically.

Since encountering Diamond’s work I have used the term fellow creatures, and while I prefer Midgley’s fellow being, which gives animals a more just recognition of animals place in our moral experience, I retain fellow creature for this research. Fellow creature historically describes a kindred creature, especially a fellow human, but not limited to them.36 The word creature describes someone who is created, such as a “lower animal; especially: a farm animal”, and creature is also “one that is the servile dependent or tool of another”,37 which is currently the situation for farmed animals. It is also fitting for sculptural objects which are dependent and created objects. I entitled a series of my works creatures due to the multiplicity of potentials in the word: animals; critters; fellow; individual; living thing; creation; brute; being; and beast.

The key themes outlined above: witnessing animals as fellow creatures; responding to pity; the examination of our cultural relationships with our fellow creatures; and the

34 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/midgley01.htm 35 Mary Midgley, Animals and Why They Matter (Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books, 1983). 36 Dictionary.com, origin 1640-50 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fellow+creature 37 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creature

necessity to condemn the mistreatment of our fellow creatures, are underpinning concerns for this research. concise chapter outlines

The chapters in this dissertation thread their way through the issues of empathy, witnessing and trauma as they relate to both the material practices of sculpture and animal suffering and death. Chapter 1 and 2 commence with issues specifically related to the studio practice, chapter 3 (witnessing) and 4 (trauma) draw out these concerns and trace them theoretically, and while I do not always explicitly discuss my work in these chapters I speak indirectly to it throughout. Chapter 5 concludes the thesis. chapter 1 - sculptural bodies: empathic encounters

This chapter explores how concepts of empathy provide an understanding of the phenomenological encounter with a sculptural body. I signal the empathic encounter with sculpture as an overlooked and under-examined opportunity in relation to figurative sculpture. I explore the theories of aesthetic and intersubjective empathy in order to consider the empathic encounter with both a sculptural object and a subject. I focus on empathy theory as developed by the phenomenologist Edith Stein, to position the empathic as an ethical act that fundamentally recognises the alterity of the other. Further, I develop a reading of her work that facilitates its application to the sculptural body.

This chapter also attends to the critical discourse of working with the sculptural body as it affects my practice. I explore the work of three sculptors who engage directly with this sculptural discourse, and who demonstrate strategies to focus on the embodied potentiality of sculpture. I trace how my practice engages reflexively with the critical discourse.

Finally, I show how the practice refocuses attention specifically onto the animal and how the practice and the research raise questions about whether intersubjective empathic encounters are possible with fellow creatures.

chapter 2 - flesh and skin

This chapter considers the material languages of flesh and skin developed through the practice-led research. The (mostly) absent animal in my sculptures is made present through a reading of Carol J Adams’ concept of the absent referent38. I show how ambiguity is sculpturally utilised to draw attention to this. I consider the tension between violence and care that operates in the practice, and question how this relates to animal suffering. I then consider the troubling provocations of these sculptural objects, situating the practice amongst critical discourse and contemporary artists working with flesh and skin as a sculptural material. I do this in order to articulate some of the specific issues in relation to using and representing the animal.

I also consider how the practice demonstrates the contingency and fragility of empathy. In doing so, I draw a link between the practice and testimony, that necessitates further investigation into witnessing, bearing witness and testimony. chapter 3 – witnessing, bearing witness and testimony

Witnessing is articulated as to ‘see’ or ‘experience’, while bearing witness is to convey this experience, through testimony, to others. Bearing witness is commonly considered, particularly in animals’ advocacy, to be a representation of the real or the factual. This chapter turns to witness theory within Holocaust Studies, to explore the intricacies and ethics of bearing witness and the production of testimony.

Further, this chapter considers whether ideas of witnessing developed in relation to human suffering can be used in relation to animals’ suffering. In turn the research asks the question of whether art practice, in particular sculpture, can bear witness to animals’ suffering, and considers some of the difficulties of doing so.

38 Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1990). Carol J. Adams and Tom Tyler, "An Animal Manifesto, Gender, Identity, and Vegan-Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, and Interview with Carol J. Adams," Parallax 12, no. 1 (2006). J. Donovan and Adams C.J, eds., The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

chapter 4 – testimony and traumatic knowledge

This chapter draws attention to the necessity to focus on the distinctive characteristics of witnessing in relation to animals. Witness theory is predicated upon a human-to-human witnessing, it cannot simply be transferred to the human-to-animal contexts. It is outside the scope of this research to identify all the possible differences and their impact on bearing witness, therefore this chapter explores two examples that emerge from the practice. Firstly I examine the issue of trauma as it can affect animals’ advocates through witnessing and bearing witness. Secondly, I explore the difficulty in finding languages (including visual) for testimony. I do this in order to create an understanding of the broader context in which an animals’ advocate bears witness to animal suffering, and further to consider the specific impacts on the production of testimonial objects.

1. SCULPTURAL BODIES: EMPATHIC ENCOUNTERS

1.1 introduction

For what is so uncommonly certain and definite in a sculpture is that, because it presents a human being, a fully animated body, it speaks to us as an act; it seizes hold of us and penetrates our very being, awakening the full range of responsive human feeling

Johann Gottfried Herder39

Herder’s statement that figurative sculpture, in particular the animated human body, might ‘speak to us as an act’ was an initial provocation for this project. In order to consider this suggestion I examine whether aesthetic and phenomenological accounts of empathy might provide particular opportunities for the sculptural body. I consider whether empathy offers a way of understanding how a viewer interacts with an artwork, in particular an artwork that resembles a living being. I raise the question - can a sculptural body generate an empathic encounter, and if so, how does this operate? Additionally, the research questions whether there are methods I can employ in the practice to engage an empathic encounter.

Firstly, this chapter commences with a discussion of the practice and the question it raises in relation to empathy: is it possible for sculpture to present a subject (being) in the object? Secondly, I consider the possibilities of the empathic encounter through an examination of empathy theory. The research prioritises the sculptural body, and

39 Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion's Creative Dream, trans. Jason Gainger (The University of Chicago Press, 2002). 80

therefore I draw on relevant ideas from both aesthetic and phenomenological (intersubjective) empathy. The theories of empathy I examine generate a set of assumptions to be tested sculpturally. In particular, for example, the idea of presenting a body that is ‘whole’ or ‘alive’.

Within sculptural discourse the issue of ‘wholeness’ has its own critical concerns. Therefore, I set out some of the critical problems of representing the body in sculpture. In doing so, I consider the work of three contemporary sculptors working with the human body whose practice addresses these concerns. I move on to consider how the concepts emerging from this research could be tested sculpturally. Finally, I question whether the empathic theories I have outlined, which focus primarily on human-to- human encounters, can be expanded to include empathic encounters with our fellow creatures.

1.2 in the studio

[Fig.1 and Fig.2] A sculptural body stands head bowed, shoulders hunched, skin tight to the body. Bones protrude through the skin and veins bulge. Standing is not quite the right word, the body leans: precariously as if the centre of gravity has been forgotten. Supported by armature and straps, the body is held upright.

[Fig.3] Another body is upside down, somewhere between: a yoga pose, historical representations of saints martyred upside down and animals strung up in the slaughterhouse. This is a strangely calm body, ‘whole’ with the exception that the arms and a lower limb are removed. [Fig. 4] The third figure is another standing figure, this time the figure leans even further forward, impossibly balanced, the arms and hands gesture ambiguously.

When producing these works the studio wall was covered in photos of Catholic martyrs, northern religious woodcarvings, Holocaust camp victims, victims of political and ideological struggle, anatomical drawings and a single image of a split carcass of beef. These provide anatomical source material for the bodies and visual images of suffering. I aimed to present suffering through the body without explicitly referencing the physical

particularities of suffering on the body, for example; wounds, bruises or tears in the flesh.

The impetus to research empathic encounters with the sculptural body derives from a specific phenomenological approach I have towards the sculptural body; which is to encounter the sculpture as both object and embodied form.40 This phenomenological approach is supported by Amanda Boetzkes, who articulates how interpretations of artwork are generated by a viewer’s perception of the “spatial, temporal and material conditions it [the artwork] shares with the viewer”.41 She argues that a phenomenological approach redirects the focus onto how we interpret artworks, rather than seek a predetermined meaning within the artwork, phenomenology focuses attention on the exchange between the artwork and the viewer. Meaning is developed in the encounter, and the development of meaning is contingent in that it is: “either enabled or encumbered by the viewer’s response to the artwork.”42 Boetzkes defends phenomenological interpretations from accusations of solipsism, arguing that phenomenology has embedded within it the awareness of the other, and the limitations of knowing the other, that is to say, a phenomenological interpretation brings about awareness of the alterity of the object/other. This is the contention of this thesis.

Phenomenological critiques have been widely used for minimalist and installation artworks, there is also I suggest, an additional phenomenological encounter at play in the spatial, material and temporal encounter between a viewer and an object that presents a form of a lived being (a subject). A sculptural body is something that can be encountered as: another body like our own body; one can imaginatively or physically imitate it; walk around it; one can look at it; and psychologically and physically engage with it. As an object that resembles our own body it can be somatically inhabited, and a sculptural body is an object that can be experienced by our full-embodied senses. These

40 Drawing on ideas from: Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). Edmund Husserl and Donn Welton, The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, Studies in Continental thought (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Routledge, 2000). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). Dermot Moran, "Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Experience," Contributions to Phenomenology 62 (2010). 41 Amanda Boetzkes, "Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh," Art History 32, no. 4 (2009). 690 42 Boetzkes, "Beyond the Flesh." 690

ideas propelled the research towards theories of phenomenological empathy that offer opportunities to attend to the specificity of the sculptural body: both as object and as subject.

Therefore in the following sections: I outline the field of empathy theory; investigate the concept of aesthetic empathy to demonstrate how empathy is implicated in aesthetic encounters with objects; further, I outline how aesthetic empathy is historically linked to intersubjective empathy; I consider phenomenological (inter-subjective) empathy to question whether sculptural bodies can offer a further experience, such as an embodied encounter with another subject. I question whether this encounter with a sculptural body can transform the perception of the object, albeit briefly, and conditionally, from object to subject.

1.3 empathy - an outline

Aesthetic empathy was developed in the nineteenth century to describe an encounter between the viewer and an artwork. Intersubjective empathy was developed in psychology and phenomenology in the early twentieth century to account for the way we understand others to be subjects. Intersubjective empathy develops from aesthetic empathy: therefore the two theories are in many instances similar and yet distinct. Empathy in phenomenology is not a singular phenomenon: “but is a rather loose term for a large constellation of interrelated and many layered experiences and activities”43. Phenomenological empathy theories position empathy as a fundamental “irreducible, perception based understanding of the other”44.

Empathy theory is a contentious and complex field45, and while empathy theory was important in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it subsequently fell into disrepute46, and underwent “a century of benign neglect and denigration”47. A revival

43 Rasmus Thybo Jensen and Dermot Moran, "Introduction: Intersubjectivity and Empathy," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 11, no. 2 (2012). 126 44 Jensen and Moran, "Introduction: Intersubjectivity and Empathy." 127 45 See: Magdalena Nowak, "The Complicated History of Einfühlung," Argument 1, no. 2 (2011). 46 Dan Zahavi, "Expression and Empathy," in Folk Psychology Re-Assessed, ed. D.D. Hutto and M. Ratcliffe (2007). Dan Zahavi, "Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity," Journal of Consciousness Studies 8, no. 5-7 (2001). Juliet Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy," Art Bulletin LXXXVIII, no. 1 (2006). 47 Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy." 139

of interest in the field of empathy has paralleled developments in the field of neuroscience: the discovery of the mirror-neurons in the 1990s, by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese,48 are positioned as a scientific validation of intersubjective empathy theory. Empathy theory has become popular and is diversely articulated in such different disciplines as psychology, philosophy (particularly phenomenology), behavioural sciences and neurosciences.49 The research is focused on the possibilities empathy theory offers for the empathic encounter with the sculptural body. As such, the interdisciplinary complexity of empathy theory, and the substantial arguments about distinctions between empathy and sympathy are beyond the scope of this research.

1.4 aesthetic empathy

Firstly I commence by reviewing the relevant aspects of aesthetic empathy as developed by Robert Vischer in On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics 1873.50 Vischer developed the term Einfühlung [feeling-into] which was translated into

48 Giacomo Rizzolatti et al., "Understanding Motor Events: A Neurophysical Study," Experimental Brain Research 91(1992)., Vittorio Gallese et al., "Action Recognition in the premotor cortex," Brain 119, no. 2 (1996). 49 Key texts that demonstrate the breadth of the field include: Lou Agosta, Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, (Palgrave Macmilan, 2010). doi:10.1057/9780230275249. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie, eds., Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011., 2011). Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer, Empathy and its Development, Cambridge studies in Social and Emotional Development (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). D. Freedberg and V. Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience," Trends in cognitive sciences 11, no. 5 (2007); Husserl and Welton, The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Bornstein Lictenberg, Silver, ed. Empathy (Hillsdale, N.J: Analytic Press, 1984). Jensen and Moran, "Introduction: Intersubjectivity and Empathy." Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, eds., Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, Texts & documents. (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities; Distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 1994). Karl F. Morrison, 'I AM YOU' The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology, and Art (Princeton University Press, 1988). Chrystopher L. Nehaniv and Kerstin Dautenhahn, Imitation and Social Learning in Robots, Humans and Animals: Behavioural, Social and Communicative Dimensions (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Andrea Pinotti, "Empathy," in Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics, ed. Hans Rainer Sepp and Lester Embree (Springer 2010). Michael J. Tansey and Walter F. Burke, Understanding Countertransference: From Projective Identification to Empathy (Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press : Distributed by L. Erlbaum, 1989). Karsten Stueber, R, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2006). Arne Johan Vetlesen, Perception, Empathy, and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). 50 Reproduced in Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. Some of the ideas of Einfühlung were pre-existing, Johann Gottfried Herder used Einfühlung in 1778 to describe the way in which an inner sympathy allows a form of transposition onto the sculptural body. Herder, Sculpture.

Empathy in 1909, and for clarity I use the term ‘empathy’ throughout this paper. 51 Vischer’s aesthetic empathy articulated the way in which a viewer could imaginatively project themselves, and thus feel-into, an object of contemplation. This act allows the viewer to have an embodied experience of the form, and where appropriate share the experiences or feelings generated by the object. His articulation of the empathic response directed attention to the role of the active and engaged spectator.

Projection into an object is imaginative, and Vischer describes a process of merging with the object, releasing of one’s own ego, in order to experience the feelings generated by another. This allows one to experience the feelings generated by the form of an object, for example feeling constricted if the form is small, and expansive if the form is large.52 Empathy with an aesthetic object activates the body of the viewer: from the way our eyes moves across different surfaces; to the imaginative sense of touch on an object; and the feeling of our body imaginatively transposed, projected, into the object. Lines, shapes and colours can all produce different embodied responses.53 We are ‘transformed’ into the other, yet the object remains distinct to perception of ourselves: “Only ostensibly do I keep my own identity although the object remains distinct. I seem merely to adapt and attach myself to it as one hand clasps another, and yet I am mysteriously transplanted and magically transformed into this Other”.54 Vischer’s articulation of being ‘transplanted’ and ‘transformed’ into the other has led to criticism of his work. The criticism that empathy is a colonisation of the other plagues the use of empathy theory. A close reading of Vischer’s work establishes that aesthetic empathy engages with the other in a way that generates a strong physical awareness of one’s own body, and prefigures the ethical dimensions of intersubjective empathy discussed later in this chapter.

For Vischer empathy is an instinctual drive, part of what he calls a pantheistic urge for unity with the world. Empathic projection is possible with all objects in the world, however the process is heightened in the contemplation of art objects. A representation

51 The translation is attributed to the psychologist Edward Titchner, who treated it as a new concept separate from sympathy. Jahoda argues that the terminological problems between empathy and sympathy emerge from this translation. Gustav Jahoda, "Theodor Lipps and the Shift from "Sympathy" to "Empathy"," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41, no. 2 (2005). 161 52 Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. 25 53 Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. 94 54 Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. 104

of another human subject generates an experiential union with other, and it is through this process, he states, that we recognise that the object is a subject. Aesthetic empathy is thereby articulated as a process by which the encounter with an object can change into an encounter with a subject. He contends that we are able to project into, to feel- into the subject and experience their emotions. For example, if another is feeling (or is represented as feeling) joy, we can experience this feeling, yet we always understand that the other generates the experiences.55 Vischer explains that we encounter another human form in art as living, despite representations being essentially lifeless, that in effect we “imagine the dead form as living”.56

Thus in Vischer’s account of aesthetic empathy: we encounter representations of the body of an other as living; our empathic encounter is one of an embodied projection; this brings into presence the body of the other; this is accompanied by an awareness of self embodiment. Through this empathic process we can encounter representations of the other as a subject, that is to say, our perception of the object can be empathically translated into subject. Our encounter with the sculptural body can be considered in terms of aesthetic empathy as active, embodied and potentially intersubjective.

1.5 aesthetic empathy and the move to intersubjective empathy

At the turn of the nineteenth century the philosopher and psychologist Theodor Lipps develops Vischer’s aesthetic empathy into an account of intersubjective empathy in the emerging field of psychology. Lipps argues that the empathic urge is fundamental in the development of self hood and the understanding of other selves. The importance of empathy was such that he states: “The concept of empathy has now become a fundamental concept especially of aesthetics. But it must also become a fundamental concept of psychology, and it must furthermore become the fundamental concept of sociology”.57

Lipps emphasised Vischer’s focus on the necessity to be active and directed in order to conceive objects in the world, “Let us speak more precisely” he said: “Every object of

55 Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. 103 56 Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space. 104 57 Lipps, 1907 quoted in Pigman, "Freud and the History of Empathy." 242

sense evokes in me a certain activity. If it does nothing else, it at least demands of me that I grasp it, that I “apperceive” it in a certain way”.58 To follow this demand of the object is to act. We can choose whether to say yes or no to the demand, we can be “sympathetic or antagonistic to the call to respond”.59

Lipps’ empathic response, like Vischer’s, involves an imaginative projection into the other. Lipps defines the stages of the empathic process. First, the object evokes an activity. Second, we are free to respond. Third, if we respond we can speak of it as an ‘act’. Fourth it is this act that allows us to perceive the object. Fifth, we use our senses, and our imaginative senses of sight, touch, movement, to grasp the ‘whole’ object (synthesize). Sixth, if we respond freely and meet no opposition there is an ‘objectivated self-enjoyment’, that is to say an aesthetic pleasure. These actions bring forward the object into presence in the viewer: “The object as it exists for me, is, as is commonly said, the resultant or product of two factors, that is, something sensuously given and my own activity”.60 Essentially the object exists only as it is formed by the activity of the spectator. For Lipps this is the “commonest signification of ‘empathy’. It means that when I grasp an object, as it exists and indeed must exist for me, I experience an activity or kind of self-activity as an attribute of the object”.61 In Lipps’ account things are not just presented to be perceived, there is a directed engagement required by the spectator.62

Further, Lipps develops Vischer’s aesthetic empathy to consider the intersubjective processes that occur when we encounter another human being. This, he contends, is a somatic relationship of gesture, movement, and feelings – an inner imitation of the body. Lipps states:

when I see a gesture, there exists within me a tendency to experience in myself the affect that naturally arises from that gesture. […] Then the idea of the affect in the other’s gesture, or the thinking of the affect into the gesture, has then become the experience of the affect, has become fellow- feeling [mitfühlung] or sympathy.63

58 Theodor Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure," in Aesthetic Theories: Studies in the Philosophy of Art, ed. Karl Aschenbrenner (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965). 406 59 Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 407 60 Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 407 61 Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 407 62 Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 408 63 Lipps 1907, translated in Jahoda, "Theodor Lipps." 157

Lipps’ account delineates empathy as the precursor and generator of sympathetic responses, which allow one to experience shared feelings.64 That is, he states that when we see happiness in another we feel happy due to a process of inner imitation.65 Lipps delineates between positive and negative experiences of empathy. A negative experience, or emotion such as anger or suffering is experienced differently, in that the object becomes separate from the self, and generates the awareness of the “existence of other individuals”.66 He argues that this is not a conceptual activity, that is to say it is not inferred by what we see. Rather, this is an embodied activity, which occurs because in the empathic encounter our body’s internal senses imitate the body of another. This aspect of Lipps’ work has led to accusations of empathic contagion;67 however Lipps argues that that the origin of any empathic content is always to be found outside of oneself.68

Therefore in Lipps’ theory of empathy we have an encounter with an object that in turn evokes an activity — it calls on us to act, if we respond we can experience an embodied inner sensation of being with or in the object. Further the encounter with another subject is experienced through the inner imitation of the gesture and posture, creating an embodied encounter that allows us to recognise other subjects. Empathy is again delineated as a responsiveness and attentiveness directed towards an object or subject. It is a process that is inherently contingent upon the response of the viewer.

The writer Violet Paget (aka Vernon Lee) undertook a number of empirical explorations of the affect of empathic encounters with artworks, with her colleague Clementina Anstrutter-Thomson. “Beauty and Ugliness” published in Contemporary Review, 1897

64 Lipps translated Hume into German and was very familiar with the philosophic concepts of sympathy. He did not consider that empathy belonged to a different category of operations to sympathy. He describes the positive experience of empathy or feeling into as a sympathetic feeling-into. Lipps 1906 translated by Jahoda, "Theodor Lipps." 159 and also Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 408. 65 I note that Lipps has written about inner imitation as being directed and also as being automatic. Unfortunately little of his work has been translated into English to date, and resolving this has fallen out of the scope of this project. 66 Lipps quoted in Pigman, "Freud and the History of Empathy." 242. Pigman alerts us to the influence of these ideas on Freud’s development of the self and other in psychoanalysis. 67 Husserl was critical and considered that Lipps had collapsed empathy into an understanding of expressions, and had overlooked the fundamental contribution empathy played in intersubjective encounters. Dan Zahavi, "Empathy and Mirroring: Husserl and Gallese," in Life, Subjectivity & Art, Phaenomenologica (Netherlands: Springer, 2012). Stueber argues that Edith Stein and others have been uncharitable in their analysis of Lipps’ complex account of empathy. Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences. 8 68 Lipps, "Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure." 404

details how their: “method of psychological introspection revealed a kinesthetics of art and reception that moved the body in a manner both emotional and actual”.69 Anstrutter-Thomson documents in detail the affect of encountering a range of artworks, the impact on her: “eye movements, breathing patterns, feelings of pressure, tension and balance”70. Lee and Anstrutter-Thomson also articulate the way that different artistic forms generate different responses, for example, the way the body has to move and shift to experience sculpture in the round.

In agreement with Vischer and Lipps, Lee considers that empathy is part of the perception of everyday life, and the experience is heightened in the aesthetic response. Between 1901-04, while reading Lipps’ account of intersubjective empathy Lee conducts her own experiments. Her empirical analysis finds that the empathic encounter with artworks creates sensations in the body, and that if one is attentive to the body one can experience a multitude of affects. Lee also notes that the response is dependent upon the subjectivity of the individual.71 In 1912, Lee sets out her analysis of empathy and her findings that: “both psychological and motoric responses to the work of art could contribute to aesthetic reception; body and mind were often both engaged”.72 However, Lee’s work was against the prevailing tide, which emphasized the role of the mind, over that of the body, in aesthetic appreciation.73

1.6 intersubjective ‘radical’ empathy

In order to trace the development of empathy theory into the field of philosophy I focus on the work of philosopher Edith Stein. Stein’s analysis of intersubjective empathy developed in On The Problem of Empathy, 1917, situates empathy firmly in the field of phenomenology.74 Stein’s account specifically attends to the way the empathic encounter creates an awareness of the alterity of the other. Stein produces her thesis

69 Susan Lanzoni, "Practicing Psychology in the Art Gallery: Vernon Lee's Aesthetics of Empathy," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 45(2009). 331 70 Lanzoni, "Practicing Psychology in the Art Gallery." 340 71 Lipps however reviewed Lee’s work ‘savagely’ in particular the focus on the body. Pigman, "Freud and the History of Empathy." 240 72 Lanzoni, "Practicing Psychology in the Art Gallery." 334 73 Pigman, "Freud and the History of Empathy." 248 74 Stein’s thesis was originally published under the title ‘The Empathy Problem as it Developed Historically and Considered Phenomenologically’. Produced under the supervision of Husserl. Edith Stein, On The Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989).

under the supervision of Edmund Husserl, with whom she later works and Husserl drew on many of Stein’s observations in his research into the topic.75

For Stein, our embodied knowledge is a precondition for empathy. We use all our senses to witness and experience our own body. Our body is not simply perceived externally: we can’t walk around it or move away from it, and while every other object in the world can be considered from a multiplicity of positions, this is not the case with our body, which is always here.76 The inward perception of our body, the feeling of our muscles, movement, and our external senses combine to create our psychophysical sense of self.

This embodied self-knowledge allows us to see and encounter another living body as a self, or a subject: that is a living body is understood to be another body like ours. When we perceive another body we draw on our own interior and exterior experiences of our body, for example, it is not necessary to move around another body, we know what bodies are because we are embodied.77 Husserl uses the example of one of our hands touching the other and notes the doubled sensation of touching and being touched. This experience of our own exteriority, our body as it might be experienced by others, is a precondition for empathy.78 Through our own embodied experiences the living body of another is ‘seen’ (perceived) as a whole, a psychophysical subject, and not as a thing, like an object.79

Stein builds her empathic theory on Lipps’ work but she was also critical of his and Vischer’s connection between the process of empathy with the generation of emotion and feeling. Stein distinguishes her account by focusing on the way the empathic encounter brings the other into presence while simultaneously demonstrating the

75 Dan Zahavi has demonstrated that Husserl used many of the ideas developed by Stein. Zahavi, "Empathy and Mirroring." 225. Further, Dermot Moran argues that Merleau Ponty’s ideas of embodied experiences owe much to Husserl’s (and thus Stein’s) exegesis. Moran, "Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Experience." 76 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 41-42 77 Zahavi, "Empathy and Mirroring." 231 and Dermot Moran, "The Problem of Empathy: Lipps, Scheler, Husserl and Stein " in Amor Amicitiae = On the love that is friendship: Essays in medieval thought and beyond in honor of the Rev. Professor James McEvoy, ed. Thomas A.F. Kelly and Philipp W. Rosemann (Belgium: Peeters, 2004). 294 78 Zahavi, "Beyond Empathy." 161 I note the idea of touch and embodiment is more commonly ascribed to Merleau-Ponty’s works, however both Husserl and Stein develop accounts of the phenomenological body. 79 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 57

absolute difference and foreignness of the other. To explain this Stein gives the example of an encounter with a friend who is happy because of a good exam result: I experience my friend’s happiness now, primordially (experienced now, first hand), however the content of my friend’s experience, for example her joy over the exam result is not present to me, it is non-primordial (second hand). This is an important distinction from Lipps’ account, because it explains how we might experience the joy of our friend, but their joy does not become our joy. This articulates empathy as a directedness to the other, without the contagious experiencing of the other’s emotions or feelings. For Stein we do not share feelings with an other, and our inner imitation does not lead to a merging of experience.80

Stein’s articulation of empathy creates an account of empathy that is ethical: it responds to the call of the other, but it does not merge their experiences with our own. It is an encounter that recognises the alterity of the other, and an: “openness to others, a willingness to be affected by them, to have one’s own experiences shaped by them”.81 This is not considered a shortcoming of empathy but rather it is the way in which we are able to understand others to be others. Philosopher Dan Zahavi puts it this way: “the first personal givenness of the mind of the other is inaccessible to me, but it is exactly this inaccessibility, this limit, which I can experience, and which makes the experience in question an experience of the other”.82 To ask for more, to wish to read the mind of the other, would be to eliminate the alterity of the other, the difference between my self and an other. Matthew Ratcliffe describes Stein’s account of empathy as ‘radical empathy’.83 Radical empathy is a “phenomenological appreciation of someone’s experience as it is for them, achieved through a distinctive kind of other directed attitude”84. The radical empathic encounter is an engagement with the other, in which you experience the other without being able to “offer a clear and detailed account of what one has grasped or how one came to do so”85.

80 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 11 81 Matthew Ratcliffe, "Phenomenology as a form of Empathy " Academia.edu (2012). 19 82 Zahavi, "Expression and Empathy." 35 83 Ratcliffe, "Phenomenology as a form of Empathy ". 84 Ratcliffe, "Phenomenology as a form of Empathy ". 17 85 Ratcliffe, "Phenomenology as a form of Empathy ". 17. Lipps also contends that the experience of the empathic encounter not readily transmittable by language, but it is felt directly. In addition, the strength at which the encounter is experienced is directly related to the attention that one pays to the object. Lipps, “Empathy and Aesthetic Pleasure.” 408

With these concepts of empathy in mind, is it possible that when we see a sculptural body we can encounter not an object but another subject? Stein considers movement a crucial pre-condition for enabling an inter-subjective empathic encounter. A movement she describes as living and not mechanical. This is initially troubling for an analysis of the sculptural body, which is by nature a still object. For Stein, empathy is an encounter that happens with other living beings: beings move, and stillness does not correspond to our conception of what constitutes a lived body. However Stein goes onto state that movement can be perceived rather than actual, and the body interpreted as living. In fact, Stein goes so far as to say that empathic objects can include things that are “given to me as a living body”.86 So while it seems that Stein initially precludes empathy occurring with inanimate objects, I consider that perceiving and interpreting might make room for the sculptural body to create an intersubjective empathic encounter.

1.7 contemporary empathy in visual theory

Since the formative work by Vischer, Lipps and Stein, there has been a revival of interest in empathy theory. Much of the new work draws upon research in the neurosciences, which provides pathological evidence supporting some of the operations of empathy. However, despite the revival of interest in empathy theory, it is not without criticism or limitations.87 Juliet Koss’s paper On the Limits of Empathy88 outlines the demise of empathy as an aesthetic theory in the twentieth century. Firstly, empathy theory came under attack by art historian Wilhelm Worringer in Abstraction and Empathy 1907, which aligns empathy with a particular form of representational art. Secondly, Bertolt Brecht aligned empathy with an uncritical absorption: “an experience of psychological and emotional identification that encouraged spectators to lose control of their own identities and prevent the possibility of critical thought”.89 Koss notes that while Brecht’s understanding of empathy had little to do with the active and embodied experiences of empathy: “Brecht’s public mistrust of Einfühlung has been inherited by

86 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 63 87 See Gregory Currie, "Empathy for Objects " (kindly provided pre publication: University of Nottingham, 2010). 88 Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy." 89 Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy." 152

art historians who ignore his treatment of the concept in his journals and fail to distinguish between the Einfühlung he discussed and that of the nineteenth century”.90

The art historian David Freedberg argues that a general hostility towards emotions and feelings in art history and criticism has lead to empathy being overlooked: despite a corresponding interest in corporality and affect.91 Freedberg has published extensively on empathy and aesthetics, concentrating on the affect of paintings, and he also works in collaboration with key neuroscientists.92 The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s found that areas of the brain associated with action and movement were also discharged also upon seeing an action performed by another. The internal mirroring, in which the brain replicates the action and movement of others, is a pre-conscious, pre- lingual and automatic activity.93 The experiments demonstrate that: “observation of static images of action, leads to action simulation in the brain of the observer”,94 and also that muscles in the body respond to viewing others bodies, and especially facial muscles95. This appears at first glance to echo Lipps account of the automatic internal imitation one experiences seeing an other subject, and Freedberg argues that these findings are a scientific validation of Lipps’ theory and he concludes: “The topic of empathy needs no longer to be regarded as a matter of sentimentality, or of armchair intuition. It can be shown to be predicated on a particularly striking form of the cortical representation of action”96.

For this research there are two key findings of interest in Freedberg’s research: Corticomotor excitability during observation and imagination of a work of art,97 and

90 Koss, "On the Limits of Empathy." 157 Footnote 110 91 David Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion," in Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, ed. K. Herding and A. Krause Wahl (Berlin: Driesen: 2007). 92 F Battaglia, S.H Lisanby, and D Freedberg, "Corticomotor Facilitation during Observation and Imagination of a Work of Art," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 5(2011). David Freedberg, "Movement, Embodiment, Emotion," in Cannibalismes Disciplinaires, Quand l'histoire de l'art et l'anthropologie se rencontrent, ed. Th. Dufrenne and A.C. Taylor (Paris: INHA/Musée du quai Branly, 2007). Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion." David Freedberg, "Memory in Art: History and the Neuroscience of Response " in The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives, ed. S. Nalbantian, P.M. Matthews, and J.L McClelland (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: MIT Press, 2011). Freedberg and Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy." D Massaro et al., "When Art Moves the Eyes: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study," PLOS ONE 7, no. 5 (2012). 93 Rizzolatti et al., "Understanding Motor Events: A Neurophysical Study." 94 Freedberg and Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy." 200 95 Freedberg and Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy." 200 96 Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion." 30. Note Zahavi’s criticisms of the conclusions reached in these studies in Zahavi, "Empathy and Mirroring." 97 Battaglia, Lisanby, and Freedberg, "Corticomotor Facilitation."

When Art Moves the Eyes: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study98. Firstly, the findings that the mirroring process is also stimulated by representations of the human body in two dimensional works of art99, although I note that these studies have not yet investigated the body in sculpture experienced in the round.100 Secondly, the findings that we spend a larger part of our attention on examining the face, and our facial muscles respond to seeing expressions on other faces, when we look at humans.101

Freedberg’s research focuses on how art generates emotional responses, thus he argues that mirror neurons can explain how emotional symptoms occur as a precognitive process, in which the brain and the body respond to visual images. Freedberg states that an internal mirroring of a perceived emotion equates to a shared feeling (sympathy), and both Freedberg and Gallese have contentiously linked their findings to Husserl and Lipps’ empathy theories. However for Husserl and Lipps the process of empathy and subsequent possibility of shared feelings (sympathy) are two distinct processes.102 Further, the theories of empathy I have explored identify that there is an intentionality and directedness involved in the empathic encounter, which is not accounted for in these findings. Zahavi cautions against making these links with empathy theory, arguing that while the findings establish that unconscious minds mirror the gestures, postures and movements of others, it does not equate with a conscious understanding of the affect,103 nor does it explain how intersubjectivity is involved in the process. That is to say, it falls short of explaining the directed and intentional activity that Vischer, Lipps and Stein have posited.

1.8 empathy and sculptural body

These accounts of empathy can inform our understanding of how the sculptural body can act upon us. As an object, it can be encountered with aesthetic empathy: we can

98 Massaro et al., "When Art Moves the Eyes". Findings include the fact that figurative works slow the looking, and the face is the most strongly focused upon feature of the body. 99 Battaglia, Lisanby, and Freedberg, "Corticomotor Facilitation." 2 100 Battaglia, Lisanby, and Freedberg, "Corticomotor Facilitation." 5, 101 Freedberg and Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy." 200, Massaro et al., "When Art Moves the Eyes". 102 Stein also considers fellow-feeling (sympathy) as a process that follows, or is resultant from the empathic encounter, and despite her criticisms of Lipps, her account in this area echoes his work. Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. 14. For further clarification see Jahoda, “Theodor Lipps.” 103 Zahavi, "Empathy and Mirroring." 249

respond to the object as a form; we can feel into it; and perceive it on a physical level. As something recognisably human, it can also convey a lived experience, that is, it offers a potential opportunity for an intersubjective encounter, an encounter with another subject rather than an object.

Empathy with a sculptural body is not a given. As Lipps states, it is always a personal and subjective decision to respond to the object and to engage. There are also other reasons that the sculptural body might seem at first to elude any embodied response: for example, if the work is demonstrating particular concepts that need to be ‘read’ intellectually rather than physically. Also hyper-real or polychrome sculpture, due to its closeness and realistic resemblance to the human body can trouble the empathic encounter. The ‘uncanny valley’ is the term coined by Roboticist Masahiro Mori104 to describe the dip in empathy that occurs when encountering such objects. In the case of robots, the closer an object comes to resembling the human, be it by physical resemblance, movement or gestures, the more they generate empathy. However when the resemblance becomes too close, the response can turn from empathy to revulsion: the ‘uncanny valley’. Once the object is exactly like a human then empathy can return. Philosopher Catrin Misselhorn articulates this as a problem of concepts: when something appears to be human it triggers the concept of a human, but the application of the concept to the object will fail because we become aware that they are not human. This leads to an oscillating response to the object, as the process is re-triggered. It can lead to a constant alternation of the concept human and not human: whereby something alive becomes dead, this: “alternation between these two states amounts to the feeling of eeriness”.105 This process of oscillation can also occur in an intersubjective empathic encounter with the sculptural body: one can approach a sculpture as an object, one can respond to it as a subject, subsequently perceive it as an object.

Philosopher Dewitt Parker considers this affect in figurative sculpture, if a sculpture is too real, we treat it as a person, and when we reprocess it as an object: “we shall have toward it an uncanny feeling, totally unaesthetic, as towards a corpse”.106 The

104 Catrin Misselhorn, "Empathy with Inanimate Objects and the Uncanny Valley," Minds & Machines 19 (2009). 345 105 Misselhorn, "Empathy with Inanimate Objects." 357 106 Dewitt H Parker, "Sculpture," in The Principles Of Aesthetics (Project Gutenberg, 1946). Chapter XII Sculpture

sculptural body becomes alive and dead, subject and object. In order to avoid this response Parker advocates that sculptural bodies be removed from realism. Parker’s analysis of the aesthetic empathic encounter tends towards an idealistic and traditional approach to art, advocating a corporal beauty. His taste is for the body displayed with poses and gestures that demonstrate vigour, grace, symmetry and balance. However, some of his advice is still pertinent to this research: to encourage an empathic response the body should be life sized, without clothes or colours, and that: “there should be realism in one aspect, above all in shape, in order that there might be an aesthetic semblance of life, but not in all, in order that the statue may not be a mere substitute for life, awakening the reactions appropriate to life”.107

In terms of practical research, this discourse around empathic encounters led to a number of assumptions that I tested sculpturally. To create the opportunity for an intersubjective encounter, what seemed to be primarily at stake was the perception of a living body, which I interpreted as a ‘whole’ body.108 Working with the ‘whole’ body in sculpture requires negotiating sculptural discourse, which critiques the idea of wholeness, and prioritises fragmentation. The following section elaborates these concerns.

1.9 the problem of the ‘whole’ body

The philosopher and artist Elizabeth von Samsonow suggests that an act of iconoclasm occurred during the twentieth century on the ‘whole’ sculptural body. She refers to it as a “tacit ban on giving human shape to sculpture”.109 Then from the late 1990s there was a ‘return to figuration’ which artist Mike Kelley110 and Samsonow both note was met with a lack of theoretical readiness and acceptance. Samonsow states that art theory was: “insufficiently prepared for, or unable to cope with” the emergence of

107 Parker, "Sculpture." Chapter XII Sculpture 108 The ‘whole’ body is understood to be a living body and this includes bodies that are differently abled. I note that Marc Quinn took on the sculptural debate between the whole and the fragment in his series of sculptures The Complete Marbles, 2000, and Chemical Life Support 2005 109 Elisabeth Von Samsonow, "The Plasticity of the Real: No Body There?," in The Love of Objects: Aspects of Contemporary Sculpture, ed. Alexandra Schantl (New York: SpringerWien, 2002). 36. 110 Mike Kelley and John C. Welchman, Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).

contemporary figurative sculpture.111 In the 1990s figurative sculpture was predominantly categorised under the conceptual tropes of: abjection; fragmentation; the uncanny; a post-modern ironic quoting; or identity politics. These dominant theoretical ideas provide stimulating interpretative methodologies, however they overlook, or fail to look at the contemporary figurative sculpture as a phenomenological object.112

Benjamin Buchloh’s seminal text Figures of Authority: Ciphers of Regression113 gave voice to a number of concerns about the use of the figurative in contemporary art. As part of the ‘October Group’ Buchloh’s text was influential and his ideas were widely supported. Buchloh’s main argument is that any artist utilising the academic and classical traditions will reinstate those traditions, and their associated ideologies. Reutilising the language and styles of the past, he argues, is an inherently conservative and regressive act: any attempt to use or ‘resurrect’ figurative art, representational art or any traditional mode of production is essentially derivative and reinforces and reconfirms the associated ideological frameworks.

Buchloh positions the art of the past, and the ‘classical’ as homogeneous, whereas contemporary art celebrates heterogeneity via visual tropes of collage, assemblage: “modernist collage, in which various fragments and materials of experience are laid bare, revealed as fissures, voids, unresolvable contradictions, irreconcilable particularizations, pure heterogeneity”.114 The classical or historicist image, he argues, creates an illusion of unity, and the attempt to create this illusion conceals its particular historical epoch and political reality. He goes as far as stating: “The primary function of such cultural re-presentations is the confirmation of the hieratics of ideological domination”.115 In this text he argues that figuration and representation are inherently tied to academism and classicism, and these will always represent an attempt to create a

111 Von Samsonow, "The Plasticity of the Real." 37 Samsonow states that Rosalind Krauss originally raised this point, which she echoes, but I have not been able to find reference to it in Krauss’ writings 112 I note the following (undervalued) exceptions, however these deal with historical not contemporary figurative sculpture: Parker, "Sculpture." and David F. Martin, Sculpture and Enlivened Space: Aesthetics and History (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1981). 113 Benjamin Buchloh, "Figures of Authority: Ciphers of Regression," October 16, no. Spring (1981).. Buchloh restates his key positions in Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "Farewell to an Identity," Artforum international. 51, no. 4 (2012), http://search.proquest.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/docview/1239094479?accountid=12372. 114 Buchloh, "Figures of Authority: Ciphers of Regression." 119 115 Buchloh, "Figures of Authority: Ciphers of Regression." 124

homogeneous object. These assertions while influential were, of course, also overly encompassing.

A hostility and rejection of the classical and academic sculptural body in the twentieth century was supported by the appropriation of the ideal body by fascist and communist regimes, Elizabeth Cowling states:

the fact that the fascists embraced classicism for propagandist purposes, and that whenever artists were required to celebrate the aspirations or the power of their country they turned to classical models as if there were no possible alternative, has led to a mistrust of the language of classicism itself. There is a suspicion that it is at worst authoritarian and oppressive, at best rhetorical and sham.116

Patrick Elliot supports this contention further:

Representations of the idealised, muscular, healthy human form have come to be synonymous with the ideology of fascism. The hollow emblems of power and authority produced by German and Italian sculptors of the 1930s and early 1940s have cemented this link.117

Realistic representations of the body were also aligned with the forms and ideals of classicism. As Elliot points out: “it has become common, if erroneous, to refer to any naturalistic figurative sculpture as ‘classical’.”118

The idea that a return to figuration is inherently aligned with a return to suspect ideologies overlooks the agency of artists in selecting and using their form. It also overlooks the fact that the historical traditions of sculptural figuration were considered dead and buried. Folkloric tales of zombies and monsters reveal that nothing returns from the dead untainted. Mike Kelley discusses the contemporary interest in figurative sculpture as if artists were re-animating a corpse:

I’m interested in the re-emergence of realist figurative sculpture recently, and ask myself why so many artists are drawn to it. […] The fact that realism is such an outdated and tossed-aside conception is what draws people to it now. Because it is SO DEAD, because it has long since ceased

116 Jennifer Mundy and Elizabeth Cowling. On Classic Ground: Picasso, Leger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-30, (TATE Gallery, 1990) 11 117 Patrick Elliott, "Sculpture in France and Classicism 1910-39," in On Classic Ground. 293 118 Elliott, "Sculpture in France and Classicism 1910-39." 283

to be the topic of serious artistic discussion, artists want to give it life again. They want the wonderful feeling of making a corpse walk.119

The sculptural body was considered a dead art form, and also a taboo artform, Kelley continues:

the effect is compounded by the fact that, until recently, academic art was forbidden, taboo, in the realm of fine art practice. So not only is there this strange feeling produced by the question of realistic art being alive or not alive, there’s also the strange attraction/repulsion to something that’s forbidden. Figurative art itself is like a corpse or mummy, and one wants to resuscitate this forbidden thing, bring it back to life. Because it’s bad, one wants to make it good again – breathe life into it120.

Breathing life into a dead thing evokes the idea of the artist as Frankenstein labouring in his laboratory to reanimate the dead body of the ‘monster’. This is terminology the artist Kiki Smith uses about her process of creating ‘whole’ sculptural bodies from fragmented body parts, which will be discussed later in this chapter.

One of the dominant tropes regarding figurative sculpture is the apparent divide between the ‘whole’ body and the fragment. The ‘whole’ has been positioned as the conceptual foil for the fragment. Issues of wholeness and fragmentation of the body directly concern my practice in a number of ways: firstly to represent a lived experience of the body, a ‘whole’ body appeared to offer greater opportunities to engage an empathic encounter. Secondly, I was reticent about the impact of fragmentation considering that it might reduce the opportunities for empathy. The discussion in the next section indicates how the celebration of fragmentation’s heterogeneity and contemporaneity simultaneously aligns the ‘whole’ body with homogeneity and the much-maligned ideal classical sculpture. I investigate this in order to demonstrate how these ideas situate the ‘whole’ body as a fraught territory to be negotiated sculpturally.

119 Mike Kelley, The Uncanny (Liverpool: TATE Gallery, 2004). 36, Kelley curated the influential exhibition The Uncanny, 1993 Sonsbeck, it was subsequently exhibited at TATE Liverpool 2004. Featuring the alternative tradition of figurative sculpture; mannequin-related artworks, polychrome realistic sculpture, anatomical wax works, religious statues, pagan figurines, taxidermy etc. Taking cues from Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay The Uncanny. 120 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism. 61

1.10 fragmented bodies

Art historically, sculptural fragmentation is articulated as a style emerging from the sculptor Rodin.121 Rodin established a working method of piecing together fragments of casts taken from his sculpture. Fragmentation is situated as a critique of nineteenth century neo-classical or academic wholeness; and fragmenting the form of the body became a method to bypass the ongoing criticism of the whole body. In the exhibition The Partial Figure in Modern Sculpture: From Rodin to 1969 122 fragmentation was teleologically positioned as an essentially modernist move.

Aesthetically, fragmentation is validated by the argument that it creates an active spectator, the fragment is a synecdoche; a part used to stand in for the whole. It is a puzzle that must be solved by the viewer, the viewer must actively be involved completing the work: the viewer creates the whole. In contrast the ‘whole’ has been positioned as empty providing no intellectual stimulus.123 However, theories of aesthetic empathy demonstrate how the process of perceiving any object requires an active spectator regardless of the formal qualities of the work. Kenneth Clark provides a different explanation, considering that our aesthetic taste for fragmented art has been adapted by necessity in order to appreciate the fragmented artworks of antiquity. This adaption of our tastes has created a sense of the fragment as more authentic and concentrated.124

Peter Fuller examined the fragmented figure comparing the potency of the ‘fragmented’ Venus de Milo in contrast to a ‘whole’ work represented by Hiram Powers The Greek Slave, “which is now visually regarded as a discredited piece of kitsch”125. Fuller describes a problem with the physical wholeness: “As it is, the slave is formally all too complete: it offers the eye neither ambiguities, nor resistances”.126 Whereas he argues that that the Venus is able to transcend historical ideology and style because she is a

121 The distinction here being been a conscious working with fragmentation, versus artworks fragmented by time, damage, or artworks generated in imitation of antiquities. 122 Albert E Elsen. The Partial Figure in Modern Sculpture: From Rodin to 1969, (Baltimore Museum of Art, 1970) 123 Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). 66 124 Clark in Peter Fuller, Art and Psychoanalysis (London: The Hogarth Press, 1988). 108 125 Fuller, Art and Psychoanalysis. 122 126 Fuller, Art and Psychoanalysis. 124

fragment, she has been torn from her social references: “Fragmentation physically stripped the Venus out of its original signifying system”.127 The The Greek Slave remains locked into an ideological moment, too closely tied to social and cultural specifics of the time, which are now discredited, the: “Slave has passed into cultural oblivion whereas the Venus has not”.128 Mike Kelley articulates a psychoanalytic relationship between the art object and the psychological state, when he argues that the image of wholeness is: “comparable to a kind of acting out of socially expected norms, the presentation of a false ‘true self’, long after the notion of a unified psychological mind has given way to the schizophrenic model as the normative one”.129

The concept of the fragment is also aligned to the social and cultural changes of the twentieth century. This idea finds expression in the 1994 exhibition Essential Gesture that states:

the exhibition acknowledges the dominance of the fragment in the 20th century and posits it as the form most reflective of the present – incomplete, alternatively heroic, frail, ferocious and victimised. We will not find the coherent figure of classical art, complete and a measure of divine perfection. Nor will we see an ideal onto which humanity might project its own identity, seeming to discern a universal order, but rather the shattered reflection of material and process, mind and emotion.130

The whole sculptural body is thus positioned as ‘coherent’, ‘complete’ and an ‘ideal’. Another example is provided in the 1992 exhibition Corporal Politics, in which the curator Helaine Posner suggested the fragmented body gave form to the social and historical context:

The dismemberment of the body in late twentieth century art is no accident. It is the result of living in a world in which violence, oppression, social injustice, and physical and psychological stress predominate. We may long for the secure ideals of beauty and wholeness embraced by past generations, but experience tells us that this worldview is obsolete.131

Her account demonstrates how wholeness and beauty became conceptually intertwined: something historicised, something that we may long for, and something ‘obsolete’. The

127 Fuller, Art and Psychoanalysis. 108 128 Fuller, Art and Psychoanalysis. 124 129 Kelley, The Uncanny. 32 130 Bruce Guenther. The Essential Gesture, (Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1994) 10. See also Kristen Hutchinson. "The Body Part in Contemporary Sculpture: A Thematic Consideration of Fragmentation during the 1990s." PhD, University College London, 2007. 131 Helaine Posner. Corporal Politics, (MIT Visual Arts Centre, 1992) 30

fragment is articulated as the authentic experience of contemporary life, which is marked as somehow more violent and oppressive than any previous era. These accounts of fragmentation establish the contemporary validity of the fragment, but simultaneously position wholeness in opposition. The result is that the ‘whole’ is considered to be politically tasteless and socially out-dated. Accusations of humanism, idealism and even fascism, clings to the forms of the ‘whole’ human body.

Working sculpturally with the human body, and by this I mean prioritising the phenomenological sculptural body over the theoretical, is a troubled and contested territory. As a sculptor the iconoclasm towards figurative sculpture is difficult to ignore. In the next section I demonstrate how contemporary artists working sculpturally with the human body employ strategies to bypass or mitigate this criticism. This is a larger historical survey than can be covered in this thesis, so I restrict the scope to consider three artists: Antony Gormley, Kiki Smith and Berlinde de Bryckere. I made the decision to focus on these artists because of shared sculptural concerns with my research. These include: an awareness and negotiation of the problems of the whole body; a focus or desire to work with the whole body as an embodied form; and a focus on the specificities of sculpture, such as: materiality, spatiality, temporality and tactility. Additionally these artists have considered directly or indirectly the ideas encountered in my discussion on empathy.

1.11 Antony Gormley

[Fig.5-9] Gormley is relevant to this research because over the last 30 years he has created a significant body of works that centres around the idea and the form of the human body in sculpture. In responding to the criticisms of humanism and idealism in the tradition of figurative sculpture, he situates his work in negotiation of this tradition. To distinguish his practice from a return to figuration he uses the term ‘body’: “I have trouble with this word ‘figure’ because it suggests either academic notions or a kind of known use. I prefer ‘body’ ”.132 Gormley’s work with the body emerges from a materially focused, object-orientated installation based practice. What appealed to Gormley was the fact the experimentation with form, materials and space that had been

132 A Vidler, S Stewart, and W.T.J Mitchell, Antony Gormley: Blind Light (London: Hayward Publishing, 2007). 40

conducted throughout modernism were not enacted on the sculptural body. The modernist project emancipated art from representation, illustration and functionalism and it had simultaneously rejected the body. The body: “was in fact the lost subject that had been rejected by Modernism.”133 It is this conjunction of attention to the sculptural body as something to be experienced, and a concern with materiality, installation and object-hood, that distinguishes his work for this research.

Gormley’s sculptures draw attention to the body’s opportunities in relation to phenomenology: as a spatial object that can be experienced by our full range of senses. The body a vehicle that can represent an: “embodied moment of time captured in matter”134. The sculptural body provides a method to focus on things that can’t be directly communicated by language: to start where language ends, and where perception, experience, embodiment and being exist.135 Gormley’s aim is to reposition the sculptural body, from representation to embodiment:

My return to the body is not about representation, it is an attempt to engage the total sensorium of consciousness. This transition from body as representation to body as space is a translation from representation to reflexivity.136

He uses poses selected from non-western traditions and yoga, rather than the postures and gestures of traditional western sculpture [Fig.7]. Particularly selecting poses of a still body, related to the idea of sculpture as fundamentally a “still, silent object”.137 In Three Ways, 1981-2 [Fig.5] three figures are installed: standing, lying and crouching. The postures themselves are ambiguous, although it is possible to draw parallels with birth, life and death. However the ‘death’ figure, the supine figure, has an erect penis, which is not something you usually expect with a dead body, and thus indicates life. Life is not expressed in these sculptures through the depiction of movement and action, but rather through an “implied inner potency” and “through breath”.138 These still sculptures therefore offer a contention to the idea that empathy might rely on the

133 Vidler, Stewart, and Mitchell, Antony Gormley: Blind Light. 40 134 Vidler, Stewart, and Mitchell, Antony Gormley: Blind Light. 40 135 John Hutchinson et al., Antony Gormley (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1995). 136 Antony Gormley, "Body Space and Body Time: Living in Sculpture," Antony Gormley (2011), http://www.antonygormley.com/resources/essay. 137 Pierre Tillet, "Antony Gormley interviewed by Pierre Tillet," in Antony Gormley: Between You and Me (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Kunsthal Rotterdam, 2008). 138 Tillet, "Antony Gormley interviewed by Pierre Tillet."

perception of movement. The still bodies represent lived experiences: drawing attention to how it feels to stand, lie down, or sit for prolonged periods of time.

The ‘whole’ body is negotiated in his practice, because for Gormley: “It has to do with making the totality of the work count, as a whole, to deal with the mind/body as one organism, and re-present it as one organism rather than the current orthodoxy of the body in pieces, or the body as a battleground”.139 The whole is situated in his practice as an essential part of conveying an embodied form, and further he draws attention to the under acknowledged feature of the ‘whole’ body: that it does not exist as a self- contained unit, it is contingent and engaged. The ‘whole’ is not the ‘ideal’. The body is a supra-organism, it is configured of multiple organisms, the ‘whole’ body is not sealed off from the world – it has openings which bring the interiority of the body into relation with the exterior, and which take in and expel.

The contingency of wholeness is demonstrated in his sculptures through two approaches, firstly he draws attention to the fabrication:

The body is put together from these pieces of assembled mould taken at a particular time. That time has been fragmented, broken apart and then remade, healed in some way. It's a fragmented or broken body that has been reconstituted. The wholeness had to be found again by being made again. They express the potential of being whole, and like the capability of standing they do not take it for granted.140

This fabrication leaves traces of casting and welding visible. Secondly, the figures are punctured with holes or entry points, drawing attention to the way our bodies are connected with the world, and how the interior and exterior are linked. In Three Ways [Fig.5], the ‘ways’ of the title refers to the holes in the anus, mouth and penis. In Land, Sea and Air II, 1982 [Fig.7] Sea is standing facing out to the horizon, with eye holes open, Air is kneeling, its nose is open, and Land is crouching and has ear holes open to listen to the ground.

Embodiment is something we witness with our senses,141 Gormley considers that his sculptures: “bear witness to my experience of the human condition not as an objective

139 Hutchinson et al., Antony Gormley. 140 Extracts from interview with Udo Kittelmann. Udo Kittelmann, Total Strangers (Cologne, Germany: Edition Cantz, 1999). 141 Stein. On the Problem of Empathy 41-42

observer but as a participating experiencer”.142 I draw attention to Gormley’s Bodycases [Fig.5, 6] to consider how his witnessing of embodiment interacts with the empathic response of the viewer. Through banging lead over the outer case of a plaster mould taken from his body, the bodycases create an encasement around an empty space where the body has been. Working over the exterior of the casts mutes the features of the body, the face becomes unrecognisable, hands and feet merge into basic forms. Gormley calls this process ‘voiding’ and it operates in a twofold manner: firstly, it reduces the reference to a particular individual; and secondly, it becomes an outer shell for viewers to imaginatively inhabit or project into:

So part of this voiding in the work – the voiding of the subject, of gestures, or drama – is about trying to provide a context for just being, for reinforcing the being of the viewer. The work is, I believe, always trying to be a kind of flat surface, like a plinth or a platform, for the viewer’s experience.143

Gormley aims for his works to be experienced and not ‘seen’,144 and voiding the details of the body was part of his strategy to induce the empathic response in the viewer, he clarifies: “I don’t want the work to distract by suggesting a likeness or giving form to features: I want to make you aware of the whole”.145 This whole allows the viewer to empathically project into the empty space within the sculpture, to: “empathize with the inner space of the work which is not an object. […] It really presents the body as a condition, not as a given identity. It should become a catalyst.”146 This type of projection and imaginative inhabitation is closely aligned to theories of aesthetic empathy, and negotiates the ‘uncanny’ valley discussed previously. If one imaginatively projects into these sculptures one can experience the poses, the different experiences of sitting, crouching and standing, and this can bring about an experiential awareness of one’s own body. Gormley’s aim is to draw attention to what it:

feels like to be a human being […] I want to recapture for sculpture an area of human experience which has been hidden for awhile. It is to do with very simple things – what it feels like to look out and see, what it feels like to be

142 Tillet, "Antony Gormley interviewed by Pierre Tillet." 143 Gormley in Vidler, Stewart, and Mitchell, Antony Gormley: Blind Light. 59 144 Gormley in Vidler, Stewart, and Mitchell, Antony Gormley: Blind Light. 44 145 Lynne Cooke. Antony Gormley, (Salvatore Ala Gallery, 1984) 146 David F Peat, "Interviews: Antony Gormley," Antony Gormley (1996), http://www.antonygormley.com/resources/interview.

cold and frightened, or what it feels like to be absolutely quiet and just aware of the passage of air around your body.147

However, these works also demonstrate that projection into the bodycases is not always a comforting experience, the empathic inhabitation is never simply welcoming. Imagining or projecting oneself into these lead sculptures can lead to claustrophobia, a restriction of movement, a sense of being encased and trapped in lead. The casements can become like sarcophagi, a receptacle for a still, too still body. However, one can also breathe, relax and experience these as opportunities for a mediative state.

Later, Gormley reconsiders the role of empathy in his works, noting that the ‘lead boxes in human form’ were reliant upon an idea of empathy that he could not expect anyone to bring to the work, as a result he considers these works a failure. The absence of empathic response was also a warning for my practice, despite having worked upon whole figures for a significant proportion of the research project. I had hoped to create sculptural bodies that offered the possibility of embodied empathic encounters, but I had to accept that they might not evoke this response with viewers. This understanding brought into focus the contingency of the empathic encounter, which became a key element in the studio research.

I was also intrigued by the installation experiments that Gormley enacts on his sculptural bodies. Including his experiments with the installation of the sculptural body in space, for example Shift II, 2000 [Fig.9] the human form is strangely pressed into the wall, facing inwards, head tilted upwards, hands pressed to the wall; the body is somewhat hunched. It is as if the pressure of between the body and the wall is enough to keep it suspended in an impossible moment before sliding down the wall or falling. The welds are visible but ground down. The details such as fingers and toes are still indistinguishable. The body is no longer an encasement that one occupies, but is a body one might imaginatively inhabit. The rejection of gravity creates a sense of uncertainty in the viewer.148 He has also experimented with a range of installation possibilities to create different embodied sensations for the viewer. Placing bodies in the corners of rooms in Drawn, 2000-2007, embedded into ceilings and walls in Lost Horizon, 2008. Taking the sculptural bodies out of the gallery and into spaces that we share with them,

147 Paul Kopecek, "Antony Gormley talking to Paul Kopecek," Aspects 25, no. Winter (1984). 148 Richard Noble, ed. Antony Gormley (Gottingen: steidlMACK, 2007). 51

such as: in the streets in Total Strangers, 2008 and on the beach in Another Place, 1997 [Fig.8].

Another Place is a grouping of 100 individual figures: each essentially alone, facing out to the horizon between the sea and the sky. These figures, set at different points on the beach, are exposed and covered by the changing tides. The figures gradually accumulate the seaweed and other encrustations from the sea, as well as humorous additions such as scarves, swimming trunks and hats and various acts of vandalism. The features of casting and welding are still apparent: there is no attempt to imply that these are anything but sculptures. These figures are each available to interact with, but the mass of the figures reduces the overall ability to empathise. This work, amongst others, makes evident the difficulty in empathising with more than one being at a time. Stein’s thesis explains this, as empathy requires a singular and directed focus on the being of an other, it is not something that can be engaged with a mass or crowd of individuals.

This discussion of Gormley’s work demonstrates some key issues for this research. To engage empathic encounters Gormley voids the sculptural body of realism and specificity. Wholeness is considered a pre-condition for the empathic encounter, and the contingency of wholeness is demonstrated. Gormley’s later works move closer to a realistic formation of the body, and thus begin to develop the opportunity for intersubjective encounters. However when confronted with bodies on mass, the fact that empathy is a directed engagement with one object at time becomes clearly apparent. The development of postures and bodies that are essentially still: denying movement and gesture, suggests that stillness might also engage the empathic encounter when the body is “given to me as a living body”.149

1.12 Kiki Smith

[Fig.10-13] Kiki Smith states that she initially worked sculpturally with anatomy and body parts in order to defend herself from the criticisms of working with the body.150

149 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 63 150 Siri Engberg, Kiki Smith, and Linda Nochlin. Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005, (Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Contemporary Arts Museum, 2005) 67

When she starts to work with the ‘whole’ body she considers this, like Gormley, to be a process of re-building of the body. She refers to this practice as a ‘Frankenstein fantasy’ and: “likened herself to the mad scientist who builds composite bodies out of dismembered parts in a morbid, yet idealistic, attempt to heal and reanimate the dead. She is the sculptor as monster maker, taking damaged bodies and making them whole.”151 Smith considers this an act of repairing the body: “our bodies have been broken apart bit by bit and need a lot of healing; our whole society is very fragmented. […] Everything is split, and presented as dichotomies – male/female, body/mind – and those splits need mending”.152

Like Gormley, Smith constructs a new repertoire of poses for the sculptural body. In Pee Body, 1993 [Fig.10] a female figure is crouched on the floor, strands of golden beads emerge from her body, and wind their way out along the gallery floor. In Train, 1993 [Fig.11] a whole female nude is presented: standing naked, white, features and body distinguishable yet muted. The figure looks back over her shoulder, and from between her legs, running behind her a ‘train’ of red glass bead strands are laid out across the floor. These poses are natural poses, although poses not often considered worthy of sculptural attention.

Smith describes her sculptural bodies as: “physical bodies that spirits enter or occupy or that have their own souls, presence and physical space”153. Although she does not use the terminology of empathy, Elizabeth Brown’s critical appraisal recognises that Smith’s sculptures offer an embodied experience and empathic opportunities. Brown credits this to Smith’s generalisation of the body, which creates the opportunity to consider the bodies as subjects as “an agent, an empathetic equivalent”.154 Untitled III (Upside-Down Body with Beads) 1993 [Fig.13] creates a range of embodied affects: there is the initial feeling of performing yoga or an exercise pose in reaching down to the feet, but also a protective feeling of tucking the head into the shins and the torso pressed into the thighs. The pose is also extremely vulnerable, with the naked backside exposed to the room. Brown states:

151 Helaine Posner, Kiki Smith, and Christopher Lyon, Kiki Smith (New York, N.Y.: Monacelli Press, 2005). 13 152 Posner, Smith, and Lyon, Kiki Smith. 14 153 Engberg, Smith, and Nochlin. Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005 67 154 Elizabeth Brown. Kiki Smith: Sjourn in Santa Barbara, (University Art Museum, 1995) 15

Smith anchors her expression in felt experience – viscerally felt, through the workings of the gestures or nerves or involuntary musculature of the body. In focusing on the body as both springing point for and recipient of emotion she recuperates the immediacy and accessibility associated with figuration and finds expression for a host of sensations, desires, and needs that could not be accommodated more abstractly.155

Thus Brown supports the concept that the body in sculpture offers an empathic opportunity that is distinct from other sculptural objects. However critical interpretation of Smith’s practice mostly focuses on the fluids represented by the glass beads: the abject transgressive fluids of urine and blood. The alignment of Smith’s work with the abject was cemented by her inclusion in the 1993 exhibition Abject Art: repulsion and desire in American Art. Abject Art came to prominence in the early 1990s, in response to the translation of Julia Kristeva’s influential text Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection156. The supporting catalogue essay claims that abjection is one of the “central theoretical impulses of 1990s art.”157 The abject is the heterogeneous matter that threatens the idea of the individual or the social body, for example bodily substances or waste products. These transgressive substances threaten the boundaries of homogeneity, and this transgression is called ‘the abject’. The abject is what the system (individual or social) has to reject in order to have a socially acceptable and stable identity. The abject is triggered when identity, meaning and categories are broken down. Thus the abject must be removed, kept away from the system, as it threatens to reveal the illusion of stability. Kristeva drew on the anthropologist Mary Douglas’ influential text Purity and Danger, 1969,158 for Douglas: “Matter issuing from them [the orifices of the body] is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. Spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body”.159 Body substances are constantly crossing the imaginary boundaries of the body. These substances are not only considered anti-social and transgressive, they affect the fundamental stability of subjectivity. Transgressive substances/objects also threaten the distinction between the inside and outside (the body). The abject is what the subject has to reject in order to have a socially acceptable and stable self-hood:

155 Brown. Kiki Smith: Sjourn in Santa Barbara 12 156 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (NY: Columbia University Press, 1982). 157 Jack Ben-Levi et al. Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993) 7 158 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, NY: Routledge, 1984). 159 Douglas, Purity and Danger, in Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 69

“refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live”.160 The theory of the abject was utilised by curators to ‘explain’ artworks that dealt with the interior of the body, bodily substances, transgressive substances and bodies in parts.

The concentration on the transgressive substances meant that the issue of the ‘whole’ body was often displaced, avoided, or just unseen. As Linda Nochlin’s account first seeing Smith’s Tale demonstrates [Fig.12]:

I don’t remember the head or the detail of the front of the figure at all … for good reason. All attention is focused on the looming rear end, the filthy buttocks and the rectum from which emerges a literal “tail” of shit – or perhaps a long, long intestine, or both.161

Smith’s works are produced 20 years after Red Flag,162 and these bodily fluids are not represented in an explicit or particularly visceral way, but are represented by beautiful glass beads, in a wandering line drawing across the floor. They speak, not only of a sculptural concern of Smith’s (to work with the solid and the contingent), but also of transformation, and a concern to sculpturally attend to all facets of embodied experience. I suggest that these sculptures are not abject, but rather incorporative: the fluids represent a negotiation of the ideas surrounding the ‘whole’ body and point to an essential but under represented aspect of our leaky bodies. In fact the fluids are not represented as repulsive, but rather as beautiful delicate glass beads trailing it out and forming patterns. Thus Smith also demonstrates that the whole body does not have to be the ideal body.

In fact in relation to the use of abjection in art practices, Hal Foster critically questions;

Can the abject be represented at all? If it is opposed to culture, can it be exposed in culture? If it is unconscious, can it be made conscious and remain abject? […] Can abject art ever escape an instrumental, indeed moralistic, use of the abject?163

Smith’s sculptures are successful in offering possibilities for intersubjective empathic encounters if one focuses on the sculptural body. Yet in trying to describe the process of what one feels, it is easy to get lost in a territory where language fails to meet the

160 Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 3 161 Linda Nochlin, ‘Unholy Postures’ in Engberg, Smith, and Nochlin. Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980- 2005 31. Admittedly, in Tale the stuff emanating from the figure is lumpy unformed matter, not beads. 162 Judy Chicago Red Flag, 1971, Cropped image of a woman pulling a tampon from her vagina 163 Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: The Avant-garde at the End of the Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). 156

experiences of the body. As already suggested empathic encounters are not readily translatable into language, they are first and foremost subjective, embodied and contingent experiences. This can explain empathy’s limitations for critical analysis.

I examined the practices of Gormley and Smith to test some of the assumptions I developed to engage with the sculptural body to convey a lived and embodied experience. I have shown how both artists negotiated the wholeness of their figures, by refiguring an overlooked aspect of the ‘whole’; that is, it is always contingent and never an ideal ‘whole’.

1.13 Berlinde de Bruyckere

[Fig.14-19] Finally I consider the work of Berlinde de Bruyckere, whose bodies appear to contest the ‘whole’ or lived experiences I have been discussing. In 2006, I encountered de Bruyckere’s work at Hauser & Wirth, London, where she exhibited three figures entitled Schmerzensmann164, translated as man of sorrows165 [Fig.14-17]. These arresting wax bodies hung on iron posts, initially appeared to be partial boneless fleshy forms. The figures were impossible creations, missing arms and heads, and the skin was rendered simultaneously a living and deathly pallor, yet they seemed neither macabre nor horrific. Realistic cast details of the body were visible in the forms and detail of the feet, and some remaining features of the skin like the nipples, but the bodies had been distorted, squashed, twisted, compressed.

An empathic encounter with the bodies, rather than providing a feeling of a death and dismemberment, created a feeling of compression, of the arms and head being held tightly within the body, rather than removed. The feeling was of the body being self- contained, within, closed off from the world. The figures had a sense of weight and gravity. The iron poles felt like a support, a prop: one of the torsos literally enveloped the pole, and another body clung half way up. The bodies had been ripped and restructured, skins of wax folded and re-welded onto themselves, the legs were formed and ‘solid’. The ambiguity of the body was compelling, these sculptures provided an

164 See Hauser & Wirth http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/34/berlinde-de-bruyckere- schmerzensmann/view/ 165 The title is taken from a painting of Christ flagellated by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Berlinde de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann (Steidl: Hauser & Wirth, 2007).

ambiguous empathic response, an impossible yet possible subject. What became clear through examining her work and my response to it in light of empathy theory was that the ‘wholeness’ of the body was not as central as I had expected. Rather the perception of the lived body was more important, and this could be conveyed through a combination of different forms such as active gestures and fully embodied limbs.

De Bruyckere’s work appears fragmented, and the heads or faces are always absent, however, for de Bruyckere wholeness is important, she states: “the figure as a whole is a mental state. The presence or absence of a head is irrelevant”.166 De Bruyckere notes her strategies and decisions in relation to working with the human body sculpturally, to negotiate the hovering spectre of the ideal:

My decision not to work with an ideal image of a man, as envisaged by the Greeks, is rooted in my view of humanity, which is not an ideal image at all, but a ratbag image, a hotchpotch of elements, limbs, trunks. I put them together to form a new figure.167

For her the fragmentation or removal of body parts does not need a story or narrative, it is the exclusion what is unnecessary for us to read a human body in sculpture. She states: “My aim is to present an image of man that enables the spectator to identify with it, through identifying with one of [sic] more of the figures, in spite of their relatively abstract appearance”.168

This facilitation of an embodied encounter leads De Bruyckere to avoid the head or face: initially covering them with blankets and hair, eventually removing the head without wanting to give the appearance of a figure that is decapitated. De Bruyckere voids the heads and faces purposely to create an encounter with the viewer: “for their completeness, not for their face. It seems to me that faces make sculptures too accessible”.169 Thus removing the head is part of her strategy to assist the sculptures to communicate with: “their whole body. If they had eyes, eye contact would be possible, and therefore a direct relationship between figure and spectator.”170 Further, she claims that by avoiding the face she allows a viewer to be a voyeur, to experience the bodies,

166 de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann. Unpaginated 167 de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann. 168 de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann. 169 Hans Theys, "About Scoles for the Night and about Soothing Circumstances," in Schmerzensmann V (Kindly provided by Hans Theys: Tornado Editions, March 2008). 79 170 de Bruyckere, Schmerzensmann.

without a sense of being looked back at. However, the critic Stefan Hertmans contends that even without a face, a sculpture stares back, referring to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Neue Gedichte, or Archaic Torso of Apollo171: which articulates a gaze emanating from the fragment of an antique sculpture: “There is no spot that does not see you”.172 The face is normally considered the centre point of human-to-human interaction, and as Freedberg’s studies suggest our attention is drawn to the face if it is present.173 The attention on the face is problematic for a sculptor wishing to draw attention to the body or embodiment. De Bruyckere aims to include the head without the face, but states: “I haven’t yet found a plastic solution for a human head without a face. But I’ll have to come up with one at some stage; I can’t go on postponing it”174.

Trained as a painter, de Bruyckere works from drawings, then gets a model to pose for a mould. The cast is made in separate parts. She then works these casts in multiple iterations, the waxes are removed from the mould while still warm and malleable and are manipulated and reshaped [Fig.19]. The wax colour palette is laid in layers, and then the forms are sewn together before being finalised. Her wax technique is painterly, achieving subtle renditions of the skin [Fig.18]. Hertmans draws attention to how de Bruyckere’s rendering of the skin is translated into a material form of suffering:

the skin becomes a palimpsest on which, like a subtle painter, pain has left its inscriptions: grazes, contusions, scratches, tears, incisions, holes, clotted blood, bruises, swellings, depressions. The landscape of the body that shows its suffering opens up to man the finite nature of life as a tormenting, […] inner endlessness in which the body has been imprisoned.175

De Bruyckere’s work, and the critical accounts it generates provide stimulation for my research. We share many similarities: in our technical working methods; the aim to develop material possibilities to convey the suffering body; a concern with wholeness, and generating an embodied communication with an audience. There are also significant sculptural differences; de Bruyckere works on a generalised suffering rather than a direct and political suffering. De Bruyckere’s surfaces remain bound with skin,

171 Rainer Maria Rilke, Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 1995). 172 Translation by Stefan Hertmans, "Anamorphosis of Suffering: On Berlinde de Bruyckere's Schmerzensmann V," in Schmerzensmann V (kindly provided by Hans Theys: Tornado Editions, March 2008). 173 Freedberg’s research was discussed in section 1.7 174 Theys, "About Scoles for the Night." 83 175 Hertmans, "Anamorphosis of Suffering."

whereas the surfaces I produce are flesh, below the skin. She creates her sculptures from casts of pre-existing bodies and this removes a number of decisions that need to be made when sculpting a body. Further, a cast body can readily generate a lived experience, through the small surface details or the fullness and realistic proportions of the original body. Creating a body from scratch, so to speak, creates a different negotiation of the issues of wholeness discussed in the next section.

1.14 studio encounters

The main aims of the practice were to draw attention to the embodied presence of the object, and to create opportunities for an empathic encounter with another. To do this, firstly I considered how to draw attention to the physicality of the sculptural body, through the use of ambiguous poses and gestures. Secondly, to negotiate intellectual readings of the body, I avoided sculptural tropes such as abjection and fragmentation, although fragmentation emerges later in the practice. Finally, like de Bruyckere and Gormley, I aimed to draw attention away from the face to the body.

Sculpturally, I considered that the pose or posture of the body, and the gestures of the body needed to provide some form of ambiguity to engage the viewer, to avoid a simple ‘body language’ or ‘sign’. The challenge was to use the gestures and postures of the body, without creating a body that could be ‘read’: to expand my sculptural language of the body into the embodied possibilities of ambiguity. The study of gesture preoccupied much of this early research and beyond art historical references; I also investigated the languages of gesture and contemporary theories of gesture.176 This aspect of the research became less critical as the practice shifted. Gesture theory

176 David McNeill, Language and Gesture, Language, culture and cognition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). McNeill, Language and Gesture. David F. Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, and Sherman Wilcox, Gesture and the Nature of Language (Cambridge; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1976). John Bulwar, Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand: composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof; Whereunto is added Chironomia, or, The art of manuall rhetoricke : Consisting of the naturall expressions, digested by art in the hand, as the chiefest instrument of eloquence, by historical manifesto's, exemplified out of the authentique registers of common life, and civill conversation: with types, or chyrograms : a long-wish'd for illustration of this argument (London: Printed by Tho. Harper, and are to be sold by R. Whitaker, 1644). Betty J. Bäuml and Franz H. Bäuml, Dictionary of Worldwide Gestures, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1997). Jürgen Streeck, "Depicting by gesture," Gesture 8:3(2008). Herman Roodenburg and Jan Bremmer, A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 1991). Monica Rector et al., Gestures: Meaning and Use (Porto: Universidade Fernando Pessoa, 2003).

positions gesture as the body’s language, and also as a component of language itself. Gesture is cultural and like language is able to ‘speak’ to those who dwell in the same context. 177 To avoid the intellectual response that gestures can engender, and to focus attention on the body, I aimed for an ambiguity of posture and gesture. This idea found support in Carrie Noland’s analysis of the affect of slow motion gesture in Bill Viola’s video works. Noland argues that the ambiguity of the body’s posture and gesture is critical to engage the somatic embodied responses of a responsive viewer.178

The practice avoids pre-conceiving the end result while modelling the clay, although some preparatory work is required [Fig.22]. Pragmatically, because life-sized clay bodies require an armature for support, some decisions were made on the general pose [Fig.21]. Although seeking to mark out the differences between contemporary sculptural bodies and historical figurative sculpture, I also wished to negotiate this wonderfully complex and rich historical terrain. As such I initially decided on some sculptural tropes as starting points: the standing figure, the fallen figure (dead or sleeping) and an inverse figure, which assisted in creating the necessary armatures. Each night I would wrap these clay figures in wet paper and cling wrap and shroud them with a plastic sheet. Tied down, these shrouded figures both pleased and plagued me. [Fig.20]

Untitled [Fig.125-128] the only ‘whole’ body in the final exhibition, continues to negotiate some of the ideas developed in relation to gesture. The body is ambiguously posed. It is hanging, yet it is not a dead body. The simple postures of the body, such as the head lifted off the chest and the arms extended out to the sides suggest this. The fingers are slightly bent, not relaxed. Veins bulge on the hands and arms attesting to a pulse. This figure demonstrates the practice’s commitment to Stein’s demand that a body needs to be perceived or interpreted as a living body for an empathic encounter. However, it negotiates this encounter subtly, responding to my increasing awareness of the contingency of empathy. The empathic encounter with this body is discomforting, it is a difficult position to imagine oneself into, and the steel structure jams directly into the back. The face is downcast resisting face-to-face contact. Modifications to the

177 McNeill, Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought. 100 178 Carrie Noland, Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture (Harvard University Press, 2009).

body such as extended limbs and thickened thumbs and fingers distort the body, troubling a simple empathic identification.

At this point in my practice the focus on empathy intersected with my ethical concerns about animals. This intersection occurred in an intuitive and exploratory manner. I provide here an overview of this process and explain my research into critical animal studies in the following chapters.

1.14 empathy with fellow creatures

Before the research into empathy established that the face distracted from embodied encounters, I considered the face a sculptural interference. Initially to find a plastic solution I worked with the idea of masking the figures with animal heads [Fig.23, 24]. To create the masks I used taxidermy formwork, which I then modified before moulding and casting.179 Like the aforementioned artists, materiality is a critical aspect of my sculpture. These masks were made from latex and various combinations of material support or none. The parchment and vellum like qualities of the latex was something I worked with, developing techniques of stretching and reinforcing the material to give a quality resembling internal membrane, tissue structure and veins [Fig.25-27]. Latex disintegrates readily, and much of the early work gradually wore away, tearing, rupturing and dis-assembling. Managing the necessity for a work to hold its form, without developing its strength to a point where it was no longer fragile was a balance I sought to retain.

The fragility of materiality was connected not only to the subject matter of the body; it is also a rejection of many of the chemical processes used in contemporary sculpture. I have worked previously as a project manager fabricating sculptures for artists, where the concern is for the durability and strength of the final product. There was also the necessity to match the artist’s preconceived end idea: material experimentation was performed as a mastery over materials in which deviations and failures were rejected. This type of work drew me back to a studio practice that is hands-on, manual, low tech

179 I had worked with taxidermy forms as a Project Manager for Sculpture at MDM, a company that makes artwork for artists. Their unskinned form created a particular impression, like the Head of a Horse, from the Parthenon frieze, Marble, 442-38BC

and fraught with failure. As a studio methodology I consider failure a necessary component in the engagement with ideas and materials.

Taxidermy forms are used as supports for the skin of a dead animal: for specimens, trophies and display, and I found it difficult to work with a form that evoked hunted animals and trophies. They were also not the right ‘type’ of animal. I commenced sculpting heads from a combination of farmed animals – the calf, the horse and the sheep [Fig.28, 31] which I entitled the creatures. Farmed animals are rarely used in taxidermy: they are killed on mass, and consumed.180 There is perhaps understandably little appetite for realistic objects that remind people of this process. The forms I create are visibly similar to the taxidermy form, they are flayed but still have structure and some surface details, like veins and muscle. They are missing basic elements like the eyes, ears and fatty folds. They are in some way similar to the heads of animals found in slaughterhouses during processing.

Masking the sculptural body with an animal head led to readings of hybridity, shape shifting, and post human concerns of becoming-animal. Primarily the problem was the anthropocentric readings that the masks generated: that is to say, hybridity commonly speaks about the human and not the animal condition. This was not the intention of the practice, so I abandoned the idea of masking the bodies and decided to confront the plastic problem of the face in the sculptural body. I experimented with situating the face out of direct contact with the viewer. This is in direct contrast to the way in which I position the face of the creatures to engage directly with a viewer to create an empathic encounter.

Despite abandoning the masks I continued to make the creatures, and started to cast them into wax, as sculptural forms in their own right. The material qualities of the wax started to exert more demands visually than the form [Fig.29, 30]. Wax, like latex, is essentially a fragile and vulnerable material.181 Neither survives without great care and

180 I note the horse is the exception here, often considered a pet, or a form of entertainment, however it has become increasingly common in Europe to eat horsemeat. Felicity Lawrence, "Horsemeat scandal: probe failure by authorities dates back to 1998," The Guardian, 22 January 2014. 181 Wax has many evocative, sensual and material properties. Didi-Huberman describes the uneasiness of wax, historically and physically, as well as describing it as a ‘living’ material in his exceptional essay on wax in Georges Didi-Huberman, "Viscosities and Survivals," in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. Roberta Panzanelli (California: Getty Research Institute, 2008).

wax slumps in summer temperatures. As I continued to make these forms, my process became more precise, becoming thinner and thinner, the works bordering on collapse. The fragility of the object, an object requiring care is became a more overt component of the practice. The fleshy tones evoked in the waxes are not the surface of skin, but rather the fleshy mass under the skin, after skinning, with remains of fatty tissue, membrane, muscle and bone exposed.

I made the creatures on sculptural supports intended for creating sculptural busts: heads, heads and shoulders - often portraits of a human being [Fig.31, 32]. The sculptural connotations of the portrait stand provided incentive to ensure that each cast allowed individuality. This was also motivated by the concern to represent the particularity of the creature: its individual subjective existence. This was created through subtle individualisations in the process [Fig.28, 33]. These creatures were in essence portraits, busts: a fragment that usually stands in for the whole. Yet, they were also reminders that when we see animal heads like this it is usually in a dis-assembly line in an abattoir. Tim Pachirat describes the effect of this:

The visual confrontation with the head line is shocking: taking in head after head gliding above the kill floor in what seems an endless succession, on is able to grasp, with a vividness that exceeds even what one sees on the dirty side, the sheer, staggering volume of the killing. The disembodied massing of that one small portion of the animal, which of all the body parts continues to refer most unambiguously to life – the face – offers a haunting image of vast destruction. Yet in the efficient homogenizing of the slaughterhouse, even this most individualised of body parts will soon be reduced to the common, saleable categories of head, cheek, and lip meat, the gleaming, stripped skulls and broken jaws sold to a rendering company.

It is different with the lines of tails, weasands, hearts and livers. Unlike the line of faces on the head line, these body parts are anonymous and interchangeable. Although the muscles in the tails may still twitch reflexively and the livers give off a visible heat, it takes a concentrated act of the imagination to reconstruct the whole animal from these bits and pieces.182

As Pachirat explains, the face of an animal even partially flayed, has the ability to conjure the whole of the being, thus the creatures became an attempt to demonstrate the individuality of the massed animal and simultaneously they draw attention to the condition of the farmed animal, the slaughterhouse, the fragmentation of their bodies.

182 Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialised Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (Yale University Press, 2011). 72

The creatures look at us, they ‘face’ us, yet they are also eyeless so they cannot see. Do we recognise in this face the face of an other? Do we have the ability to respond to the face, to the mouth that makes no language? For Emmanuel Levinas it is the face of the other that compels us into an ethical situation. The face of the other is never merely an object among other objects, for Levinas the face belongs to L’Autre: the absolute other, a unique other which we can never truly know.

For Levinas, who spent time in Camp 1492 during the Second World War, it is significant that the life in the concentration camps was never out of sight of normal life. Potential witnesses in the surrounding town avoided the plight of the prisoners, they averted their heads, and they did not make eye contact.183 Thus they refused the prisoners a face and refused recognition of their shared humanity. For Levinas the face is the “real concrete presence of another person”, it moves us out of ourselves into a realm of “mutual respectful non-dominating recognition”.184 In The Name of the Dog, or Natural Rights, Levinas recounts that the only being who recognised that the prisoners were human was a stray dog called Bobby.185 It is this event, the being looked at, and recognised as a human that seems to inspire Levinas’ understanding of the operation of the face. In Levinas’ work the face of another is never completely knowable or quantifiable, and what comprises a face is never clearly articulated or identified. This has caused significant philosophical controversy about whether animals can be given a ‘face’.186 Yet in his account the possibilities of the face can also emerge from the recognition of a partial fragment of the body depicted in sculpture:

It must also be said that in my way of expressing the word face must not be understood in a narrow way. This possibility for the human of signifying in its uniqueness, in the humility of its nakedness and mortality, the Lordship of its recall – word of God – of my responsibility for it, and of my

183 I return to this failure to witness in chapter 3 184 Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology. 347 185 Emmanuel Levinas, "The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights," in Animal Philosophy: Ethics and Identity, ed. Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco (New York: Continuum, 2008). 186 See: Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am., Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)., Clark, "On Being "The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany".", Peter H. Steeves, "Lost Dog," in The Things Themselves: Phenomenology and the Return to the Everyday, ed. Dennis J. Schmidt (2006). Levinas apparently allows the animal has a face, but it is less of a face than the human. Levinas: “One cannot entirely refuse the face of an animal”, quoted in David Clark, "On Being "The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany": Dwelling with Animals after Levinas," in Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History, ed. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior (New York & London: Routledge, 1997). 55

chosenness qua unique to the responsibility, can come from a bare arm sculpted by Rodin.187

This creates allusions to Rilke’s poem mentioned earlier in relation to de Bruyckere’s sculpture. The poem suggests that the fragmentary torso contains a gaze “now turned to low”.188 Suggesting the potency of the sculptural object to create an ethical encounter with another.

The final and exclamatory line in Rilke’s poem is: “You must change your life”. While the literary interpretations of this line are multiple, I like to think of it as the affect of ethically responding to the other. The account of seeing the face of the other, and feeling ethically obliged towards the other, is often part of what is called the ‘conversion experience’, or to put it another way, coming to see the animal as fellow creature. J.M. Coeztee states that: “our conversion experience as often as not centred on some other mute appeal of the kind that Levinas called the Look, in which the existential autonomy of the Other became irrefutable”.189 If we respond to the face in the other, the being of the other, there is the possibility that we can also respond to the “appeal for pity” that Diamond suggests is fundamental in our consideration of animals.190 If we relent to this appeal, the encounter can change us, and force us to change our lives.

Thus the creatures were presented in such a way as to engage with, and trouble an empathic reaction, by presenting the face of the other. This realisation led to a reframing of the project and a necessity to consider whether accounts of intersubjective empathy allowed for human-to-animal encounters.

At this point I return to Stein in order to consider whether intersubjective empathy can be considered in relation to animals. Stein argues that we empathically encounter another body with a fairly broad concept of bodily type. For example, hands: we can recognise and respond to the hands of others in all shapes and sizes. Additionally she states, we can also respond empathically if the other being is sufficiently of a type, that

187 Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other (London: Athlone Press, 1998). 231-2 188 Rilke, Ahead of All Parting. 189 Paola Cavalieri et al., The Death of an Animal: A Dialogue (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 90 190 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 478

is, she argues, we can recognise a paw as a hand.191 Recent studies have supported Stein’s articulation of empathy related a similarity of type, demonstrating that the closer the phylogenetic similarities between animals and humans, that is, the closer an animal becomes to us, the more our empathic engagement increases.192 Philosopher Corinne Painter supports the idea that empathy gives us access to the recognition of animal as other subject. Drawing on Husserl and Stein’s theories she argues that empathy: “characterises one of the most fundamental intersubjective relations not only between humans but also between human and non-human animals.”193

Thus empathy can bring into presence the animal as another being, a unity of mind and body, who we can respond to as a subject, and recognise as our fellow creature. Empathic acts are contingent, and the strength of the encounter is based on the intentionality of the viewer, in relation to this a recent study has found that ethical vegetarians and vegans have very different empathic responses to carnists, when looking at images of suffering in human and animal subjects, and that: “vegetarians and vegans have constantly an higher engagement of empathy related areas while observing negative scenes, independently of the species of the individuals involved.”194. This might add further contingency to the endeavour to engage empathy with fellow creatures.

Stein’s embodied intersubjective empathic recognition of the other, expanded to include animals, and Levinas’s ethical demands of the other were forces at work in the practice. In the creatures the aim is to create a face that looks, and despite the flayed appearance and lack of eyes, a face that confronts us with an other and an ethical responsibility. The creatures are presented in a mass, but attentiveness is paid to differentiating each one: I allude to the problems of empathy and the multitude. In representing the animal partially flayed, these works suggest the reality of the lives and deaths of animals in

191 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy. 59 192 Rae H. Westbury and Neumann DL, "Empathy-related responses to moving film stimuli depicting human and non-human animal targets in negative circumstances," Biological Psychology 78, no. 1 (2008). 193 Corinne M. Painter, "Appropriating the Philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein: Animal Psyche, Empathy and Moral Subjectivity," in Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal, ed. Corinne M. Painter and Christian Lotz (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007). 97 194 M Filippi and et al, "The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Humans and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans," PLoS ONE 5(5): e10847(2010), http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010847.

contemporary farming. An engagement with the animal and their condition became through these sculptures the underlying motivator for the practice.

1.15 conclusion

This chapter considered whether phenomenological concepts of empathy could be used to encounter contemporary sculptural bodies, in response to my research question — how might the sculptural body engage an empathic encounter with another being. In selecting Stein’s account of inter-subjective empathy, I drew attention to the way the empathic encounter creates an awareness of the other as a living being, and how empathy recognises the alterity of the other. Simultaneously empathic encounters bring awareness to the self through one’s own psychophysical responses. I argued that Stein’s account of intersubjective empathy could be applied to sculptural objects, and further that it could be used to explain empathic encounters with fellow creatures.

I explored the strategies I employed to develop empathic opportunities. These included: creating ‘whole’ bodies that could represent a lived experience; developing solutions to de-emphasis the face; the avoidance of dominant sculptural tropes; and rendering the gestures and postures of the body ambiguous. I traced how the material and formal experimentation with masking the human form developed into a series of animal ‘portraits’, and brought to the fore the issue of empathy with fellow creatures. Through this process the empathic witnessing of the animal subject in the object becomes the central aim of the practice.

2. FLESH AND SKIN

2.1 introduction

The first part of this chapter attends to the significant changes that occurred in my studio practice as a result of the emergence of animals as subjects and subject matter in my practice. Firstly the ‘whole’ human body forms, intended to be produced in wax, were cast out into latex and became skins. This led to the further development of a series of babyforms, sacs and screens entitled slink which I contextualise in more detail. Secondly the creatures, intended to be empathic objects, became violently modified into fleshy lumps. Thirdly, the whole bodies were disassembled, cut into pieces. This chapter charts the shift in practice while arguing that the aim to represent a subject in an object remains central.

The research becomes increasingly directed towards animals’ suffering, and specifically the suffering of farmed animals, yet the visibility of this in my work is mostly absent. I introduce Carol J. Adam’s concept of the absent referent, which explores how the referent (the animal) is absent in the process of consumption. I discuss the materiality of animal bodies, to consider how the sculptural surfaces of flesh and skin engage with the suffering of animals, and further how animals are both absent and present in these sculptural objects.

The materiality of wax and latex evoke flesh and skin, and the semblance to the flesh and skin of animal bodies raises concerns that this chapter explores. I consider the problem of representing and aestheticising suffering, as well as the use of actual animal

body parts in art practice. To do this I examine the work of artists who use animals and animal body parts, to consider an ethical position on representation and materiality. I am unable to bring this topic to conclusion. However the discussion leads to a focus on seeing and attentiveness, reinforcing ideas that are significant in the concepts of empathy. Through focussing upon seeing and attending to animals, I move the research into questions around witnessing animals and bearing witness for animals.

2.2 skins

Why do you tear me from my self, he cries? … Mean-while the skin from off his limbs was flay'd. All bare, and raw, one large continu'd wound, With streams of blood his body bath'd the ground. The blueish veins their trembling pulse disclos'd, The stringy nerves lay naked, and expos'd; His guts appear'd, distinctly each express'd, With ev'ry shining fibre of his breast.195

[Fig.34-42]

During the research a studio accident prevented me from taking moulds of the clay bodies, and instead I created latex casts, painting the latex directly onto the surface. I suffered extensive burns on my hand, and as I worked on these skins, I was observing the skin grow back over the raw red flesh, and frustratingly peel off before commencing to regrow anew over the wounds. This layering of thin paper like skin over the flesh influenced a new technique of incorporating tissue into the latex forms. This allowed for the creation of textures and effects within the latex, developing an interior and surface complexity.

To remove the latex, I cut splits into the skin, and then ‘flayed’ the bodies [Fig.36]. The skinning process was disturbing and reminded me of skinning an animal.196 The skin, the bounding material of the body, was taken from the body and hung around the studio

195 Ovid Metamorphoses, Translated by Sir Samual Garth, John Dryden, et al http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.6.sixth.html 196 A process I was exposed to in Guide/Scout outings.

[Fig.34]. The thick, ridged, pocked latex yellowed and darkened, it aged and changed; like parchment, vellum or leather.

The acts of violence conducted in the process of flaying and disassembling were ‘mitigated’ by acts of labour and care [Fig35, 37]: tending to the bodies, sewing the form back together and nestling the works within folds of tissue. Initially I played with the idea of completely sewing the forms, and re-embodying them with filling, to bring about a full embodied form, but this denied the essential material quality of the skins [Fig.38, 39]. These latexes resembled flayed skin and membrane, and simply filling them did not create an embodied sense of another being, but rather evoked petrified bodies or bog-men. They quite simply were no longer ‘whole’ bodies. I describe these works as ‘emergent’ sculptural objects in that they came into view, or arose quite unexpectedly in the research; the emergent is that which demands attention.

I turned these skins inside out, inverted them, hung them, placed them in piles, and embedded hair and tissue into the latex [Fig.41, 42]. Their material form fascinated me; the way they would hold their shape in some places, and collapse in on themselves in others [Fig.38, 39]. The layers of tissue frayed around the edges and gathered dirt [Fig.113, 114]. I cast multiple latex skins of each figure. Each revealed something new about the material and form. Additionally, I started to amend the original clay sculpture between casts, subtly and gently introducing an extra set of teats on one, a further set of teats in another cast, until the final cast (there is a limit to how many casting processes the clay will withstand) had a full set of eight teats [Fig. 107,108]. These explorations became the foundation for the series slink discussed in the next section.

2.3 slink - traumatic knowledge

This section focuses on the development of the slink series, in order to contextualise its development from traumatic knowledge.197 slink is a series of latexes, comprised of: baby body-forms, sacs and flat panels [Fig.45-53, 105-114]. The babyforms are developed from all-in-one baby-suits that my son had used: these little suits had

197 A phrase used by Carol J. Adams in various texts including Carol J. Adams, "Home Demos and Traumatic Knowledge," SATYA(2004), http://www.satyamag.com/mar04/adams.html. This aspect of the work is discussed in more detail in chapter 4.

protected him and kept him warm. The forms are small and vulnerable. These evocative little garments were stuffed with wadding and wrapped in layers of plaster, then used as forms for casts [Fig.44]. slink came into being after my return from maternity leave, and these works were both a response to motherhood and the re- emergence of troubling knowledge about the treatment of motherhood in the food production industry.

I remember visiting a farming museum in rural Australia and seeing a strange leather collar full of long spikes. I found the small label that revealed that the collar was put on calves to prevent them from feeding from their mothers. I imagined the situation where the calf would try to get milk, only to stab his/her mother repeatedly with this collar, until the mother could no longer allow the calf to suckle. This barbaric instrument of cruelty remains cutting and digging into my flesh. The lives and deaths of dairy cattle was already traumatic knowledge for me, but motherhood made the issues more personal, embedded and embodied.

I created multiple babyforms so that I could produce multiple different latex casts. As with the creatures a concern is to represent individuality within the mass [Fig.48, 49]. The process involves layering on thin layers of latex, and at an appropriate layer rubbing in pieces of tissue. The process of skinning each form creates different results enabling an articulated series to be produced. Different latex sources provide subtle differences in the way that the latex ages and discolours, producing additional variations throughout the series. During the casting and ageing these works hung along a pole in the studio, gathering many comments from studio visitors. Someone found the imagery of the bodies reminiscent of lynchings: strange fruit. Others considered them as memento mori; images designed to remind you of your own mortality. Many found the small baby forms particularly horrific, while I find them to be immensely varied, beautiful and tender little objects that evoke attentiveness and care.

The baby skins became thinner than my previous casts and incorporated an important component of translucency [Fig.45, 49]. This allows for the little bodies to remain open, and for two material experiences to co-exist; the surface of the latex - where one encounters the body form, and the translucent interiority of the form, revealing details resembling sinews, folding fabrics and rippling intestines.

Skinning these forms — tugging, pulling and stretching the skin off the support is a difficult task. Stretching produces tears in the layer of tissue embedded in the latex, creating areas of bulging, rippling [Fig.46]. Choosing when and how to the apply talcum powder [latex adheres to itself without talc] creates other differences in the form. Not all of these processes are in my control, and I enjoyed allowing these material articulations to occur on the work. After the rough and violent task of tearing and pulling the skins off the form, I would gently wash them, in what became part of a ritual of care. After applying further talc, the forms would either be exposed to light to age the latex, or sewn, before housing in dark nest of tissue. Sewing the forms took a number of different approaches; some forms seemed to require more ‘mending’ than others, and some needed barely enough stitching to enable them to be hung. Stitching reflected my mood; sometimes the stitches were neat, tight and regular [Fig.47]. Other times, the resistance of the latex, the breaking thread, the soreness of the bloodied fingers, created uneven patchy stitching. Sometimes the process was a pleasure: contemplative, healing and restorative. Other times, it was futile and impossible. Some forms remained abandoned.

Sitting sewing for long periods of time, hunched over the skins of these little creatures, I was able to make the connection between my concerns with empathy and wholeness and my animals’ advocacy. The issue of animal suffering and death is ever present in my daily life, although until now I had avoided it directly in the practice. Yet, here I was creating beautiful little skins of dead baby human-animal forms. I came to understand that I was suffering from burnout after years of witnessing horrific acts of violence against animals. My dreams, or rather nightmares, during this time were filled with graphic visual moments of abuse towards animals. Slowly sewing these baby skins, I could see clearly how my animals’ advocacy had surfaced into my work, albeit, traumatically. Eventually this guided the research towards trauma to understand how it might have operated in my practice, and this is discussed in chapter four.

At this time the title for the series emerged: slink. Slink is a wonderful word; lurking, prowling, slithering, skittering, skulking around. Slink is also the leather made from the skin of unborn calves and lambs.198 It is highly valued and sold as a luxury leather

198 Lambs are also commonly used for slink leather.

item, most often used in expensive gloves and scrolls. Slink leather is desirable because it is soft, often unblemished.199 Slink means to be born prematurely, although these calves used for slink leather were never born. Calves can survive the death of their mother, but not for long, as Stephanie Ernst recounts, an: “almost-full-term calf struggled inside and against the mother’s body, kicking in desperation, dying a horrible death inside the womb. Later came the image of that young calf’s presumably dead body tossed into a bin”.200 Diary cows are kept pregnant during their useful lives. If they fall sick or become unviable economically for whatever reason, they will go to the slaughterhouse pregnant. A UK survey in the 1990s at one slaughterhouse revealed that 23.5% of dairy cows were pregnant at the time of slaughter with 26.9% in the final trimester.201 More recent studies indicate that the numbers of productive and pregnant cows killed worldwide are much higher.202

Gabriele Meurer MRCVS, a former official veterinary surgeon in UK abattoirs, says:

What is happening right now in British slaughterhouses is quite simply a scandal. Sometimes when these creatures are hanging on the line bleeding to death, you can see the unborn calves kicking inside their mothers’ wombs. I, as a vet, am not supposed to do anything about this. Unborn calves do not exist according to the regulations. I just had to watch, do nothing and keep quiet. It broke my heart. I felt like a criminal. I left the Meat Hygiene Service. […] completely disillusioned and full of disgust.203

As a result of intentional overproduction dairy cows are sent to slaughter just as their bodies are reaching adulthood, already spent. The British Cattle Veterinary Association states that 150,000 pregnant cows are sent to slaughter with approximately 40,000 of these in late stage pregnancy; that is with calves that are capable of living.204 There are

199 Slink leather is sold in three grades, ‘small’ from early stage foetuses, ‘medium’, a mid-term foetuses with short hair, skin is soft and fine often solid black, yet to develop its markings, and ‘large’ which is late state unborn calves with longer hair. http://www.chichesterinc.com/CalfSkinsUnborn.htm 200 Stephanie Ernst provides a textual account of the video of the slaughter of a pregnant cow see: http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-pregnancy.html. AnimalRights.Change.org 201 GH Singleton and et al, "A Survey of the Reasons for Culling Pregnant Cows," Vet Rec 18, no. 136 (1995). 202 These studies make the argument that meat is being potentially wasted. Peter Olutope Fayemi, Voster Muchenje “Maternal Slaughter at abattoirs: history, causes, cases and the meat industry”. Medycyna Wet. 2011, 67 (9) available in English at SpringerPlus 2013 2:125 doi: 10.1186/2193-1801-2-125 203 http://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/pregnant-cow-massacre/briefing-notes 204 Peter Olutope Fayemi, Voster Muchenje “Maternal Slaughter at abattoirs: history, causes, cases and the meat industry”. Singleton and al, "A Survey of the Reasons for Culling Pregnant Cows".

no regulations to guide slaughter of pregnant animals, except for those in the last 10% of pregnancy.205

Despite some discussion of foetuses as waste products, there are at least two key products taken from unborn calves: slink leather and foetal bovine serum. Tim Pachirat, in Every Twelve Seconds, describes the collection of foetal-bovine serum:

Sometimes out of the pipe in the wall an oblong gray mass shoots that is not a lung, kidney, windpipe or liver. … the white-helmeted worker walks over, picks up the object, … cuts into the grey mass. There will be a fetus inside, with smooth, slick skin, and clearly marked hide patterns. Raising the fetus up by the neck and hind legs, the man swivels … and pushes the fetus’s mouth onto one of the protruding hooks … he uses two hands to stick another hook into the fetus’s anus. The fetus now hangs suspended by its mouth and anus, and the worker makes an incision in the neck area, bringing a bottle with a straw … to the incision206

Another way this serum is procured includes inserting a needle directly into the foetal heart, a process that requires the calf to be still alive. In the interests of humane slaughter and the ‘welfare’ of the animal, the following guidelines are given:

Any living fetus removed from the uterus must be prevented from inflating its lungs with air and breathing. This can be done by keeping its head inside the amniotic sac, by clamping its windpipe, or perhaps less satisfactorily, by simulating the amniotic sac by immersing its head in a water-filled plastic bag. These methods would ensure that such fetuses would remain unaware and therefore would not suffer when exposed to noxious stimuli such as insertion of a 12-16 gauge syringe needle between the fourth and fifth ribs into the fetal heart to allow blood to be collected207

As well as the babyforms I had made a larger organ form [Fig.50, 52, 112] resembling possibly a placenta, a caul, or an amniotic sac. Yet in the context of the abovementioned processes, these forms took on another, more horrific reading. I extended the slink series to make screens: flat panels of skin, which could be placed over light or a window [Fig.98, 99]. These were designed not to be looked through, but to be looked at, to be considered and to be witnessed, as my concerns became aligned with ideas of witnessing and bearing witness, which I outline in chapter 3.

205 OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code. Article 7.5.5 available at http://www.oie.int/index.php?id=169&L=0&htmfile=chapitre_1.7.5.htm 206 Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds. 79-80 207 David J. Mellor, "Guidelines for the humane slaughter of the fetuses of pregnant ruminants," Surveillance 30, no. 3 (2003).

2.4 flesh lumps

At the same time during the research I started to disassemble the creatures, through over heating, folding, bending and forcing the wax to distort [Fig.54−70]. The animal ‘portrait’ became an unrecognisable fleshy lump [Fig.54]. A critical aspect of the flesh lumps, is that they start from a ‘whole’ human or animal portrait. That is to say, they are generated from the violent process of disassembling and fragmenting an empathic ‘whole’. They undergo a process of butchering, in becoming flesh they become objects of violence. This is in distinction to the aesthetics of fragmentation discussed earlier, while these fragments allude to the whole, they also bring attention to the violence that makes them a fragment. Further, they bring attention to the violence committed on the animal body, violence which is often invisible:

Institutionalized violence toward animals refers to the “regular” forms of violence towards animals that are part and parcel of the biomedical industry, the agricultural industry, the entertainment industry, and the pet industry. The agricultural industry which inflicts violence on billions of animals per year and the biomedical industry (which inflicts violence on hundreds of thousands of reported animals, and millions more nonreported animals) are the best examples of settings in which wide-scale violence occurs. This violence is not seen or thought about by most people208

The waxy flesh suffered, it was twisted and compressed. Torsos became small unidentifiable lumps of wax [Fig.56-8]. The creatures retained some elements of their features, a nostril here, eye socket there, but many were crushed to a point of non- recognition [Fig.63, 64]. Unlike de Bruyckere’s work, which maintained a sense of wholeness and the feeling of a body contained within its skin, these flesh lumps have a semblance to fragmented and flayed flesh. Although I call them flesh or fleshy lumps, their resemblance is to the surfaces of joints and cuts of meat. I generalise here to distinguish between flesh and meat: flesh is the term most often used for the human body, and therefore inedible matter. Meat is the term used to discuss animal flesh made edible.

Ambiguity played an important role in the early focus on the ‘whole’ body, now it offered a new role: the idea of ambiguity in the reception of the object - flesh or meat, and further a subject or meat. ‘Ambiguous figure’ is a term used in the cognitive

208 DeMello, Animals and Society. 222

sciences to delineate the problems that occur when looking at images such as duck/rabbit, or square/diamond. It describes an image that can be two things, but neither can be seen at the same time.209 What for some people appears to be a representation of flesh or meat, to others is the dead bodies of beings:

When vegans eat with meat eaters, many of us don’t see “meat.” We see the remains of a morally abandoned being, at the center of the table, being buried into the stomachs of those around us. We are not just supposed to be quiet, we are supposed to be polite.210

These sculptures pointed to a conceptual problem; whether when one sees the flesh lumps one sees the animal: the subject, or whether one saw the object: meat.

To consider how ambiguity operates in the perception of animal products Carol J Adam’s concept of the absent referent provides a contextual framework. 211 The absent referent is a term politicised by Adams to point out the detachment between the human and the animal other that occurs when people consume meat: the animal is absented, and replaced by meat. This happens literally: by butchering the animal, the dead body parts replace the live animal body, and the animal body becomes food.212 It also happens linguistically, Adams argues, when the animal is absented through language. Language allows one to forget that the animal who died for meat once had their own subjective and independent existence; animals become: veal, pork, ham, that is to say meat. Animal bodies are fragmented, dismembered and consumed: they are dis- assembled into meat products and renamed. Meat refers to food, not animals. The fragmentation of the animal into meat occurs mostly out of sight and renders an animal ready for consumption.213 Animals are objectified through the languages of meat processing: they are food units, bio-machines and bodies consisting of edible and inedible components. For example, the American Department of Agriculture uses the term “grain–consuming animal units”.214

209 Nicoletta Orlandi, "Ambiguous figures and representationalism," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 3 (2011). Bence Nanay, "Ambiguous figures, attention, and perceptual content: reply to Jagnow," Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 4 (2011). Nanay, "Ambiguous figures, attention, and perceptual content: reply to Jagnow." 210 Carol J. Adams “A vegan-feminist lament”, Friday October 30, 2009 available at http://caroljadams.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/absent%20referent 211 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 212 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 40 213 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 47 214 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 68

The individual animal is masked, or absented in the concept of meat. The subject - the animal is turned into the object - food:

Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the nonhuman animal whose place the meat takes. The absent referent is that which separates the meat eater from the other animal and that animal from the end product. Humans do not regard meat eating as contact with another animal because it has been renamed as contact with food. Who is suffering? No one.215

Adams continues:

the ‘absent referent’ is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product. The function of the absent referent is to keep our ‘meat’ separated from any idea that she or he was once an animal, to keep something from being seen as having been someone.216

Adams states: “With the word ‘meat’ the truth about this death is absent”.217 When one is exposed to the suffering and death of the animal in food production it can mean that one is no longer able to look at meat or dairy products in a ‘neutral’ or ‘natural’ way again: the animal is never absent again. Meat is no longer just food but: “Corpses. Fragments of corpses”,218 and in the dead bodies of once living fellow creatures - meat, the animal becomes present.

This tension between presence and absence features strongly in my practice. The flesh lumps subtly reveal the animal; a nostril here, an eye socket there. This is partly declamatory testimony: here look, please attend, and see the animal (the subject) in the meat. Adams states that to show the animal in meat is a ‘reality violator’ just as calling meat: “‘partly cremated portions of dead animals’ does not cause a problem because it is false, but rather that is too true”.219 Violating reality by bringing the animal being into presence also offers the possibility of stimulating in the viewer contingent and fragile opportunities for empathic encounters. Whether one sees meat (the object) or the animal (the subject) can fluctuate. This extends the possibilities of sculpture to represent the subject within the object in my practice.

215 Carol J Adams ‘The War on Compassion’ in Donovan and Adams, The Feminist Care Tradition. 23 216 Carol J. Adams “Interconnected Oppressions”, available at http://www.caroljadams.com/interconnectedoppressions.html 217 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 63 218 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 219 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 69

2.5 fragmented bodies

Despite this ‘turn’ in the practice, I continued to produce the sculptural ‘whole’ body, one of which I cast into a number of editions in wax. The first cast was violently dismembered. The body was taken apart piece-by-piece and the fragmentation was violent and destructive: I separated the body using a long sharp knife and it felt like butchery. I broke parts of the body and reassembled them, for example, the legs were broken at the knees and ‘repaired’ [Fig.68, 69].

The practice revealed that my reticence towards the tropes of fragmentation, discussed earlier, was not about the ideas but was about the violence committed to a body. I felt a resemblance to the antiquarian, vegetarian and animals advocate Joseph Ritson (1761- 1830) who, Adams suggests, spent his life re-membering texts. Ritson considered editors as violators and injurers of texts, and thought that an editor should permit the wholeness of the text rather than dismembering them.220 My concern with the integrity of the whole body was clearly hinged around an empathic concern for the subject, or rather being of the body.

The process of dis-assembling and fragmentation of the animal is a brutal transition of subject to object. The sculptural process suggests the slaughterhouse process:

It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse… the cattle were supposed to be dead … but too often they weren’t. “They blink. They make noises”…“The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around”.” Still the cutter has to cut: “on bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller …“They die,” he said, “piece by piece”.221

There were also other art historical references at play in the work. In flesh lumps (legs) [Fig.68] the legs rest, one atop another, one supports the other. They are damaged flesh, flesh that reveals its layers and discolouration. The legs are clearly sculptural; there is no hiding the fabrication of form. They rest like the legs of the Pieta, or the Lamentation; the Christ taken down from the cross. These legs also conjure visual

220 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 140 221 Joby Warrick, "Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest: They Die Piece by Piece," Washington Post, 11 April 2001.

references to Rogier Van der Weyden’s Decent from the Cross c1435, in which Christ is bought down from the cross and is surrounded by witnesses lamenting his death.

The Pieta has other significances: At the age of seven, on a trip to Rome, with my non- practicing but firmly indoctrinated Catholic parents, we went to the Vatican, St. Peters. In the cool and dark interior of the church we came upon Michelangelo’s Pieta. Standing in front of this work, I was overwhelmed by the soft gentle sagging body of Christ, the cold but soft flesh portrayed through the marble, the drooping lower arm and the veins on the hands that seemed to gently pulse. The whiteness of the marble evoked the bloodless body, suggesting a translucency of skin. Mary however, was almost like a chair, or a plinth, a support or armature for the Christ figure, who was suspended in that moment before gravity took his body to the floor. Christ’s body was a dead body: sagging and heavy, but it was also a body on the precipice between life and death, evidenced by the pulsing veins. This pieta was foundational to my becoming a sculptor interested in the human form, but it wasn’t until I made my own ‘pieta’ legs that this moment resurfaced into my thoughts. Clearly it had been lurking around, as a model for suffering, a model of a sculptural language of the suffering body. Despite my aim to firmly entrench my practice in contemporary concerns, the historical lineage of sculpture was seeping through.

Most importantly the Pieta is a further reference to the underlying motivation for my work: it can be read as a model for a mother’s loss of her child. Pieta means pity or sorrow in Italian. In the introduction I raised the idea of pity through Diamond’s contention that pity and compassion are overlooked and undervalued in our relations with animals: it is pity that gives rise to relenting. Pity is also an issue raised by Jacques Derrida in relation to pathos that can be generated by the imagery of what ‘everybody knows’ about contemporary farming:

let me simply say a word about this ‘pathos.’ If these images are ‘pathetic,’ if they evoke sympathy, it is also because they ‘pathetically’ open the immense question of pathos, and the pathological, precisely, that is, of suffering, pity, and compassion: and the place that has to be accorded to the interpretation of this compassion, to the sharing of this suffering among the living, to the law, ethics, and politics that must be brought to bear upon this experience of compassion.222

222 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26

Over the last two centuries a war has been waged, Derrida states, an unequal struggle:

between, on the one hand, those who violate not only animal life but even and also this sentiment of compassion, and, on the other hand, those who appeal for an irrefutable testimony to this pity. War is waged over the matter of pity.223

Who appeals for the testimony to pity? Derrida states, these are the “minority, weak and marginal voices” of animals’ advocates, who are: “little assured of their discourse, of their right to discourse […] in order to awaken us to our responsibilities and our obligations vis-à-vis the living in general”.224 Pity, the experience of pathos, sadness, sorrow and compassion has been eroded in relation to animals. Derrida, like Diamond, brings attention to it, and in doing so he focuses attention on the change that sentiments and emotions could engender. If taken seriously, Derrida suggests, pathos and compassion would cause a transformation of our fundamental relations with other animals in areas as broad as the law, ethics and responsibility.

Derrida states that Bentham’s question “Can they suffer?” changes everything.225 There is no question of doubt: “No one can deny the suffering, fear of panic, the terror or fright that can seize certain animals and that we humans can witness”.226 Derrida’s approach to suffering as the undeniable question in relation to animals, focuses my concerns on suffering, as did his use of the terms ‘witnessing’ and ‘testimony to pity’ in relation to suffering animals.

2.6 flesh and skin

The practice focuses attention on the surfaces of wax and latex. I spent hours rendering the wax and latex surfaces, attentive to small details and effects [Fig.57, 58, 60, 70, 113, 114]. The treatment of the surfaces, the layers of pigmented wax; the cracks, pocks, marks and creases, became focal.

Raymond Giata suggests that it is on the surface of the animal body that we experience the world of suffering, drawing on Coetzee’s work The Lives of Animals:

223 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 28-29 224 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26-27. I note that Derrida is talking about the Animal Rights movement, but I take a broader reading of animals’ advocates. 225 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 27 226 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 28

Everything is on the surface, provided of course that one has an imaginatively rich sense of the surface. Recall the words of Coetzee’s character in The Lives of Animals: ‘It is not the mode of being of animals to have an intellectual horror: their whole being is in the living flesh. If I do not convince you, that is because my words, here, lack the power to bring home to you the wholeness, the unabstracted, unintellectual nature, of that animal’s being.’ The power that she wishes her words possessed is not the power to take one, speculatively, into what is hidden below the animal’s skin. It is the power to show that everything that matters is there, that nothing is hidden, that the capacity to see depends on having a rich conception of the surface, a rich conception of what it is to be a living thing and therefore how to describe what it does and what it suffers.227

I use Giata’s provocative sense of surface with caution. J.M. Coetzee’s character Elizabeth Costello, to whom Giata refers, advocates for a type of empathic awareness of animals in order to consider other beings as embodied and “being alive to the world”228. Costello’s account of an imaginative projection is similar to Stein’s empathic theory, in that one can encounter the other, in their full embodied being, through this process, but also one fundamentally recognises their alterity. Costello extends this encounter to an act of the imagination; one does not need to be in front of, or directly perceiving the animal to conduct this empathic projection. Stein did not deny the possibility of empathy with presupposed or imaginative entities, but she stated that she was unclear of how it operates.229 Herder also cautions that: “nothing must be merely observed and treated as if it were a surface; it must be touched by the gentle fingers of our inner sense”230, this parallels the aesthetic empathic encounter, which responds both to the exteriority and interiority of the form. Nothing is merely ‘seen’ as a surface.

Meat is the surface that comes into presence when the animal being becomes lifeless, when the animal becomes consumable. Broglio suggests that the surface replaces the depth of being:

Meat is the moment when what remained hidden to us is opened up. The animal’s insides become outsides. Its depth of form becomes a surface, and its depth of being becomes the thin lifelessness of an object exposed. Meat makes the animal insides visible, and through sight the animal body becomes knowable. And while meat serves as a means for us to take in the

227 Raymond Giata, The Philospher's Dog (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2002). 126-127 228 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 33 229 Stein, On The Problem of Empathy 117-118 230 Herder, Sculpture. 81

animal visually and intellectually, it also marks the moment when the animal becomes physically consumable.231

A phenomenological approach to sculptural objects unpins my practice. In the first chapter I traced how aesthetic empathy underlies and informs a phenomenological account of empathy. The phenomenological approach to an object attempts to bracket existing intellectual knowledges, involves an intentionality, directedness and attention towards an object, and an understanding of knowledge gained through the senses.232 Aesthetic empathy takes the viewer beyond the exteriority of form, or surface, to an encounter with the form and space of the object. Thus my attention to surfaces seems somewhat ambiguously placed. The practice attends to the surfaces with the attentiveness towards the visceral affects that flesh and membranes can cause. Simultaneously the approach is distinct from realism or the hyperreal: the materiality of wax and latex assert themselves. Surface details draw a deeper focus to looking at the form, drawing us close to the object, within reach of the object, creating an intimate space of viewing. The eye is activated as it travels across the planes, into the fragile recesses, and around the form. The imaginative sense of touch is evoked by this attention. Attention to the surfaces brings awareness to the materiality of the sculpture. Such as the ragged, frayed and torn edges of the tissue emerging from the edges of the latex. The folds and layers of wax pressed in upon each other, developing deep crevices and interiority in the form. The transparencies of the latexes attest to the thin delicate and provisional nature of the objects. Surfaces also add to the phenomenological experiences of viewing objects in the round: bringing the visual perception and the body into negotiation, as one has to bend and lean over objects to see their details as well as their form. One has to step back to see the sculptural forms in relation to space and each other, and step towards the objects to see the surfaces. Surfaces are implicated in the phenomenological response to the object.

I recognised that this shift in my material practices from whole bodies to skins and flesh lumps raises concerns as to whether these fragile little objects maintain a connection

231 Ron Broglio, Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art, posthumanities 17 (Minneapolis. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 1 232 Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Husserl and Welton, The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology. Moran, "Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on Embodied Experience." Horia Bratu and Ileana Marculescu, "Aesthetics and Phenomenology," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 37, no. 3 (1979).

with empathy. Stein’s articulation of intersubjective empathy requires the perception of a lived body, or something given to me as a lived body. The flesh lumps have a semblance with flesh / meat, yet they simultaneously violate the object-ness of meat, through the inclusion of provisional details of the animal body. Thus they can bring the animal being back into presence in the object, literally and imaginatively.

The practice raises ethical concerns in relation to the use of, and the aestheticising of, animal body parts and the representation of animals suffering. I do not use actual body parts in my practice, however I am aware that the aesthetic is not entirely dissimilar to these products. In this section I examine these concerns, framing the discussion with Griselda Pollock’s caution about complicity and aestheticising suffering. Further I continue to examine some specific examples of the use of actual animal flesh and skin in art, in order to examine what they do in relation to the animal body, and to consider the broader critical discourse that engages with the use of animals in artworks.

In Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing in the Era of Trauma,233 Pollock examines the problems of using documentary images of violence, in particular photographs taken by perpetrators. Pollock discusses a well-used photograph taken by a German soldier on 14 October, 1942, at Mizocz, Rovno.234 The photograph shows a group of naked women and children standing, among clothed soldiers, in the open, before being shot. It is one of a group of images, in which the victims; women and children, were made to strip and parade before being killed. This photograph, used in Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, 1955, Pollock argues, demonstrates the difficulty of working with and using archival footage as evidence.

Pollock cites Theodore Adorno’s caution that there is a possibility that an audience might enjoy artistic representations of suffering: “The so-called artistic representations of the sheer physical pain of people beaten to the ground by rifle butts contains, however remotely, the power to elicit enjoyment out of it”.235 She states that this potential pleasure is one reason to avoid the re-use, representation or re-staging of such

233 Griselda Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing in the Era of Trauma," EurAmerica 40, no. 4 (2010). 234 Image title: Women and Children before an execution by German Soliders, Mizocz, Rovno, Ukraine 14 October 1942, USHMM photograph no. W/S 17877 Public Domain. Used in Alain Resnais Night and Fog, 1955, and Bracha Ettinger’s series Eurydices. 235 Theodor Adorno, "Commitment," in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum, 1982). 312

events. Pollock also contends that because it was the perpetrators who took these photographs, the viewing position is inherently one of ‘sadistic predatoriness’, gendered and racialised.236 Pollock suggests that in looking at these pictures, we are aligned, even momentarily with the position and the gaze of the perpetrator. Thus to re-use these images, Pollock suggests, is to re-enact ‘relations between violence and eroticism’, in a way that deflects our encounter with the death of the individual.

Pollock questions whether there is any possible way that we can use these images without this gaze of the perpetrator, and later in the article she suggests that the artist Bracha Ettinger’s practice is able to do this through a concept of wit(h)nessing, which is considered in the following chapter. Pollock’s argument also attends to the possible violence these images can do to the subjects (who are dead) and traumatised survivors. I use Pollock’s account in order to locate my concerns with the problems of using actual animal flesh and skin in art. The flesh and skin of animals is available mostly as the product of consumption, that is to say, it is provided by a system that perpetrates violence against animals. Thus, like the photographs Pollock refers to, I suggest there is the possibility of complicity and alignment with systems of ideological domination in using these products. Where does this leave my practice, which aestheticizes flesh and skin and the suffering body?

This dilemma is traced through a consideration of two exhibitions that use actual animal flesh and skin. Firstly, the exhibition Meat after Meat Joy237, 2008, curated by artist Heide Hatry featuring the work of artists using and representing meat, which I list here: Sheffy Bleier’s photographs of animal testicles and organs; Lauren Blockow’s photographs of lumps raw meat in strange built environments; Adam Bradejs’ animated flesh shoe; Tarnia Bruguera’s performance work involving body parts of animals; Nezaekt Ekici’s photographic documentation of performance works involving writing on the surface of meat slices; Betty Hirst’s238 painting and sculptures created from meat and lard, taken out of a freezer and exhibited on opening night; Zhang Huan’s

236 Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing." 850 237 Heide Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy (NY: Cambridge: Daneyal Mahmood Gallery and Pierre Menard Gallery, 2007). 238 Betty Hirst is revealed as an alter ego of Hatry in the Hatry’s discussion of the project SKIN - Heide Hatry, Projects, SKIN, available at http://www.heidehatry.com/ accessed February 2014, whether any other artists Hatry has worked with or exhibited in previous exhibitions are also alter egos is beyond the scope of this research.

performance My New York, 2002, in which he walks through the streets of New York, in a suit made of beef, resembling a flayed body builder; Dieter Roth’s meat as art material - ephemeral and decaying; Footage of Carolee Schneeman’s ecstatic performance Meat Joy, 1964; Stephen Shanabrook’s sculpture of a boat using a split carcass of a goat, using the conflict between what is described as ‘dark animal power’ and ‘human moral invasion’239; Jana Sterbak’s Vanitas, photographic documentation of a dress made from salted meat gradually ageing during the course of an exhibition; Pinar Yolacan’s photographs of women wearing clothing made from placenta and animal parts, and Heide Hatry’s video Slaughterhouse revealing the mechanised slaughter and butchery of pigs.

As well as the artists who worked directly with actual animal bodies there were a number of artworks representing flesh or meat: Anthony Fisher’s paintings of meat; Tamara Kostianovsky’s animal carcasses made from recycled discarded clothing, using the metaphor of the slaughterhouse to talk of murder and violation of the body240; Simone Racheli’s household biomorphic objects - often domestic items such as chairs and hairdryers - using paper and wax to achieve the realistic affects of flesh, muscle and sinews which he calls ‘meat-objects’241; David Raymond’s ‘doubtful’ paintings - still- lives of meat cuts floating above household objects such as ladders; and finally Jenny Walton’s watercolours examining the trauma of the body, the relationship of the outside to inside.242

These artists articulate their use of animal flesh as a material or medium by which they can consider human issues and the human body. In the introduction to the catalogue, John Wronoski states that the exhibition makes meat visible, and gives it a voice, or voices.243 The question is then, what does this meat say? The catalogue essay entitled Meat is the No Body,244 by Thyrza Nicols Goodeve defends the artistic use of meat, and commences quoting a letter from People for Ethical Treatment (PETA) requesting that the show be taken down. Goodeve protests that no artist killed an animal to make the

239 Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 71 240 Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 51 241 Zoe Peled, "The Biomechanics of Objects," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 15 (2010). 41. Racheli describes these objects to be about the relationship between humans and objects, rather than any animal content. 242 Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 243 Wronoski Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 7 244 Goodeve, Thyrza Nichols, ‘Meat is the No Body’ in Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 10-17

art, that meat is ‘already dead’.245 In fact Hatry is at pains to point out that the animal body parts are: ‘waste products’ which she got for free.246 Goodeve’s argument situates meat eating as natural or normal: like tigers eating their prey. Her assumption is therefore, that the use of meat in artworks is no different than that of the issue of eating meat. Goodeve contends that the exhibition actually brings meat into visibility to us, into awareness: that a product that is consumed unmindfully is re-positioned in our attention. It is an argument that at first glance seems to have similarities to the position of an animals’ advocate, but is it marked with a clearly speciesist intentionality. These works do not bring meat into presence to consider meat; rather they operate metaphorically for human concerns and human flesh. When Goodeve suggests, for example, that human bodies can become meat, she situates this as a reduction from what is proper to the human: that is ‘flesh’. That is to say, she articulates a fundamental and hierarchal distinction between the flesh of the human and the ‘meat’ of the animal.

Adams argues that using animals bodies in art reminds her of: “all the ways animals are treated as the literal, available as raw material for the consumption and use of humans”.247 Specifically referring to Goodeve’s essay, she argues that Goodeve appears to be experiencing a: “slight anxiety about the entire venture” indicated by commencing with the statement that no animals were killed.248 Adams contends that the rationale that the animal is already dead is: “an embarrassing and superficial way of exploring the legitimacy of using meat”.249 Using meat to question human existence and violation is a blunt and unimaginative instrument, and further it is not necessary, Adams argues, to continue to violate the body of an animal in order to attend to these concerns.

Adams points out that criticisms of these artistic practices are often dismissed as ignorant, unknowing, and ignorant of the privileged zone of art.250 She responds to this stating that:

245 Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy. 10 246 Ron Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Autumn, no. 14 (2010). 61 247 Annie Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams: interview with Carol J. Adams," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Autumn, no. 14 (2010). 17 248 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams 17 249 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams" 17 250 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams" 18-9

A species-specific privilege creates the space in which art that uses the abject bodies of dead animals exists and can be protected. When something — something specific like killing — has an ethics that stops at the species line, I want to know why, and the arguments ‘because they are animals’ and ‘because they are artists’ are insufficient as answers.251

Hatry’s description of her relationship to pigs, the animals whose body parts she uses, is revealing. She describes how her experience of growing up on a pig farm influences her thinking on the material she uses. She is simultaneously aware of the plight of the pigs who “lived a terrible life in a small stall together”,252 and distanced towards them as beings:

Having experienced that during my entire childhood, it is very difficult for me to see the animal, the living creature in a pig. I observed them a lot and today I am sure that the reason for my non-feelings towards them was the way they were treated. … I found pigs not only uninteresting, I actually found them disgusting.253

She goes on to describe the intense smell of factory farming, and the behaviour of captive pigs: who due to the boredom of their confined lives cannibalise each other, first catching the tails of other pigs, then eating them, sometimes eating through the whole backside of another till flesh and bone was showing.254 For Hatry the affects of factory farming, and the resultant behaviour of pigs, have not generated empathy, but rather a disassociation with the animals. Hatry states: “I saw the pigs as products and that somehow never changed for me. I already found it fascinating back then to cut up a whole pig and divide the pieces for us to eat from the pieces for the other animals, the ‘real’ animals, the animals I loved”.255 Hatry’s chilling self-awareness and lack of compassion towards these living creatures, I would argue, is translated into her use of the skin, flesh, entrails and bodies of dead pigs.

Hatry also curated and published the project called Skin,256 in which seven artists are presented as working with this ‘unusual material’ - the skin of a pig. 257 This project is a construct; each artist is actually a facet of Hatry’s diverse practice. Included in the project are the following ‘artists’: ‘Paula Ebanista’s’ photographs of women’s bodies

251 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams" 19 252 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 59 253 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 59 254 This is a reason that farmers routinely remove the tails of pigs. 255 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 60-1 256 Heide Hatry, Skin (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2005). 257 Hans Gercke in Hatry, Skin. 8

made from skin, submerged in water, ‘Paula’ is fascinated with human skin which she reads as evoking emotion, individuality and life.258 ‘Lena Scherer’ who roughly staples the skin into forms as diverse as architectural shapes, footballs, and human body parts, dolls that she exhibits as photographs. For ‘Scherer’ skin represents a point between life and death, something “fragile, vulnerable and strangely beautiful, which even beyond that, marks the delicate boundary between the body and the external world”,259 and is related to her understanding of her body’s vulnerability to wounding and trauma. ‘Christine Bofinger’ who uses skin as vellum, a support for her paintings of women from the history of art. ‘Emilia Burgos’ who like ‘Scherer’ covers doll forms with pigskin that she calls ‘angelitos’, as well as making female body forms. ‘Betty Hirst’ who produces strange photos of body landscapes, which play on the skin being recognised as pigskin: “revealing that which is typically sensuous to be that which is often disgusting”.260 ‘Hermine Roth’ who creates installations using dead foetal pigs. Hatry’s experiences growing up on a pig farm are part of ‘Roth’s’ biography. The foetal pigs are bloodless and pale, hairless little creatures, set in different installations; such as in piles on pavements, all glossy and smooth. She exhibits them in plastic sealed bags, with small blankets. These foetal pig bodies can raise the visibility of the by-products of the meat industry and the resultant packaging of animal bodies. However, the foetal pigs are also displayed in overt sexual positions, using the animal body as a material that can be mastered and treated with disrespect.

Hatry argues that these artworks deconstruct issues of power and the body in a strongly feministic practice261: the pigskin is used to stand in for, materially, human skin.262 Hatry describes her interest in pigskin as a material: “in it I see expressed concretely the subjects that are important to me: life, pleasure, sex, pain, injury, ageing, death and any number of more abstract matters, like identity, gender, power relations, vulnerability, and the whole sphere of perception itself.”263 Yet her practice is clearly not

258 Hatry, Skin. 44 259 Hatry, Skin. 54 260 Hatry, Skin. 127 261 For an insightful account of skin in feminist practices see Kathleen Just The Texture of Her Skin: A Studio Project Excavating and Reweaving Visions of Female Subjectivity, PhD, Monash University, 2013 available at http://www.katejust.com/2013/07/phd-project.html accessed January 2014 262 Pigskin has visual and actual resemblances to human flesh, it is so similar that it is used in plastic surgery. Pigskin has also been used by artists as diverse as Duchamp, who covered the figure in Étant donnés with pigskin, and Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs which are killed and preserved. 263 Heide Hatry, Projects, SKIN, available at http://www.heidehatry.com/ accessed February 2014

intersectional, as the catalogue essay states: “the subjects the work engages are human”.264

Again, as with the previously cited exhibition, the meat or skin metaphors for the human body, yet animal flesh always troubles human flesh. The catalogue for Skin considers that removing skin from the human body is to expose the flesh and: “we would reduce it to something we would barely recognise. That part would become a piece of meat, something we find repulsive. We breed pigs for their meat”.265 That is to say, human flesh would be repulsive as meat: animals are made for meat. Although these artists use animal flesh and skin to metaphor for human issues, human flesh is conceptually distinct from animal meat.

This is further exposed in Hatry’s defence of skin in her artworks. She points out, quite appropriately, that often those who protest are in fact wearing leather, which is the same product. Similarly, she argues that it is hypocritical to argue against her use of flesh as a material if one eats meat. Her work with skin has been compared to the Nazi’s use of human skin. In response she argues that the Nazi’s use of human skin was a demonstration of their “power over life and death”266 and that she works with a material that is a: ‘waste product’,267 ‘worthless’, “I actually get them free at a slaughterhouse”, and that she uses a: “negligible quantity”268. However, I contend that there is an implicit demonstration of power over life and death at play in using animal bodies as materials.

Hatry continues to defend her practice, arguing that using the animal body in art is meaningful, and goes further to argue that (if it were possible to do so) animals would applaud her use of their bodies, as making their death “meaningful.”269 Hatry states that even if she killed an animal, she would consider it a sacrificial lamb: “whose purpose

264 Hatry, Skin. 27. Intersectionality has emerged from feminist theory, and is the examination of intersections between systems and forms of oppression; it is the founding principle of Critical Animal Studies. 265 Hatry, Skin. 98 266 Hatry, Skin. 98 267 Hatry, Skin. 98 268 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 61. Pig skin is not actually a ‘waste product’, it has uses in clothing, shoes, medical uses, it is also dried for animal treats, and pork crackling. It is also worth noting that Hatry’s performances use whole bodies of pigs, clearly not ‘waste’ products for the industry. 269 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 61

was the ending of slaughter”.270 However, when confronted as to whether the death of the animal or the identity of the animal is a consideration in her art, she dismisses this as not relevant.271

The issue of the animal body as material in art is contentious amongst critics and writers even within Human-Animal Studies.272 John Simons proposes that art that includes the dead body of an animal continues: “the speciesist assumption that the pig’s body is there for us to use”.273 Baker contends that Simons’ approach is “uncompromising”,274 and considers that the dead animal body can open up questions about the subject of killing animals. Meat, Baker argues: “is a knowingly staged effect in […] art”.275 It is used to create ‘attraction and repulsion’.276 Baker suggests that using the dead animal can’t be regarded as cruel, but it can be considered degrading277.

In relation to whether artworks using meat is able to do or say anything about the condition of the animal, Baker considers that the way animal flesh is used in artwork rarely tells us anything about the animal, but is rather used as “undifferentiated meat”.278 This was acknowledged in Hatry’s two exhibitions, in which animal body parts are used to metaphor for mostly human concerns, such as: gender, pleasure, sex, ageing and death. Further Baker argues, in relation to artists whose work is positioned as working with the animal, an:

animal reduced to meat is in an important sense no longer an animal — it is mere material, virtually interchangeable with human meat — and it therefore explains rather little about postmodern art’s fascination with the animal. For that fascination to operate, the distinct form of the animal has to still be recognizable. This recognizability of form, no matter how provisional, has both aesthetic and ethical dimensions of some importance.279

270 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 65 271 Broglio, "Heide Hatry on Skin and Meat." 61 272 I note here that I am dealing specifically with artworks that include the death or suffering of an animal, and I am excluding artworks that develop ethical works to engage with, and collaborate with the animal subject. 273 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 71 274 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 70 275 Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2000). 87 276 Baker, The Postmodern Animal. 89 277 Steve Baker, "Animal rights and wrongs (Haunted by the Animal)," Tate: The Art Magazine, no. 26 (2001), http://www.ekac.org/haunted.html. 278 Baker, The Postmodern Animal. 96 279 Baker, The Postmodern Animal. 95

For my practice, Baker’s suggestion that a provisional recognisability of form provides an ethical and aesthetic purpose was encouraging. Although one could argue, returning to Adam’s concept of the absent referent, that an animal is always provisionally present in meat. This suggests that meat is anything but undifferentiated or ‘mere’ material. Clearly the use of human flesh in art would evoke a different response– thus demonstrating that while we are all flesh, flesh is distinguished as either human or animal. The use of human flesh would be extraordinary, whereas the use of ‘meat’ is considered by many to be ordinary.

The question then is how to attend to use of animal bodies in art ethically and critically. Charles Gaines argues that art is a critical practice that can create new knowledges about the world, but to do that, it must remain in the world, not in an autonomous ethical and political realm. Gaines advocates for a metonymic critical approach to art practices, to reveal what they do politically. Metaphor is more widely used in art practices, for example: skin standing in for death, or life. It is the substitution of one term for another, based on an analogy between two things, and it can be unrestrained by existing ideas about those things. Gaines states however that metaphoric thinking does not require thinking deeply and critically about the original objects.280 He states: “Metaphor is a special category of thinking where sequences of analogies are freely formed and constrained only by the structure of the metaphor itself (that all relationships are analogical)”, thus it generates a “free play of meanings”.281 However, this free play does not test these new meanings or interrogate their ethics and political consequences.282 Nor does it provide critical thinking on the original material used to generate the metaphors. To do this, Gaines suggests a metonymic reading is also required. Metonymy is the substitution of one thing for another that presupposes actual relations between them. It develops deeper meanings for the original objects: that is to say, it focuses attention on the original referent by developing it’s meaning.

Gaines uses this approach to critique Santiago Sierra’s work 250cm Line Tattooed On 6 Paid People. The work had been discussed as raising awareness of a dire economic situation in which people will perform almost any task or job. Gaines questions

280 Charles Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy: Art and the Suppression of Though," Art Lies 64, Winter (2009). 281 Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy." 49 282 Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy." 50

whether Sierra was actually any different than the exploiting powers of an employer? For Gaines, Sierra’s work is based in allegory. Allegories can use representations that are metonymical and metaphorical, they can be literal and poetic: “Hence, Sierra’s installations are allegorical narratives of events that happen in ordinary life that fall under the categories of exploitation, class, exclusion, immigration and capitalism”,283 they reveal forces, often unseen. This work, Gaines argues, is an: “allegorical narrative that reveals the forces of capitalism at work”.284 Further, Gaines argues, if we read it literally, metonymically, there is:

no difference between what he does and what happens in cases of labor exploitation in business. The metonym affirms that his installation is indeed an instance of economic exploitation and thus becomes part of the very ‘real’ from which he wants to distance himself.285

Gaines metonymical analysis repositions art production as a political act that occurs in the world, and asks: what does it do, and to what? A metonymical analysis of the material use of a dead animal from a slaughterhouse would question the use of the material itself. Rather than see meat as an object that metaphors, a metonymical analysis would focus on the fact it is meat. Meat could not simply stand in for human flesh, without an inquiry into how it can do so. Meat would not simply be an undifferentiated lump of material, but a specific piece of flesh derived from an animal being. If meat is used to bring ideas of violence to the fore, then questions about how it does this while being complicit in acts of domination and violence against animals could be raised.

Much of the critical inquiry into the use of animal bodies in art has focused on artworks that present the killing or death of animals in the gallery space.286 I will briefly mention a few: Marco Evaristti’s Helena, 2000 is an installation of blenders containing a live fish, connected to the mains, so that anyone could press the on button and liquidize the fish. Damien Hirst places dead animal bodies in formaldehyde in vitrines, his installations have also featured live flies; A Thousand Years, 1990, and live butterflies;

283 Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy." 55 284 Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy." 55 285 Gaines, "Reconsidering Metaphor /Metonymy." 55 286 See Antennae: The Journal of Visual Nature, Steve Baker, Artist | Animal (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Baker, The Postmodern Animal. Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." Broglio, Surface Encounters. Giovanni Aloi, Art and Animals (London: I.B. Taurus, 2012). Carol Gigliotti, "Heartburn: Indigestion, Contention and Animals in Contemporary Art," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Autumn, no. 14 (2010).

In and Out of Love, 1991. Guillermo Vargas Jiménez exhibition Exposición No.1, 2007 included a starving stray dog tied up in the exhibition space, and Huang Yong Ping’s Theatre of the World, 2007 featured different animal species contained together in a tank with little warmth, water or food. Here Steve Baker’s question about whether contemporary art can productively address the killing of animals, could be reversed to ask what does the killing of animals tell us about contemporary art?287

These artworks court controversy, and raise the issue of artistic freedom to use animals, which is often pitted against prioritising the welfare of animals. Ping states that the criticisms of his artwork: “completely ignored the concept and the ideology behind this particular art work, citing instead the doctrines of so-called ‘animal rights’ that violently interfere with the rights of an art work to be freely exhibited in an art museum.”288 A concern over the welfare of animals is considered by Ping to be a constraining and censoring instrument against not only the artist’s rights but also the artworks’ rights to be exhibited. Ping clearly positions the artworld as a separate and privileged zone, unlike Gaines who calls for art to be part of the ‘real’ world. None of these aforementioned works focus attentively towards the animal subjects themselves, but like Hatry’s work, speak to broader metaphorical issues.

Giovanni Aloi raises questions whether killing animals in art is ever truly about the animal, and subtly suggests that an ethical line could be drawn.289 Aloi argues that artists can only productively address the killing of animals when the animal is the central component of the artist’s concern: “The art which desperately seeks to capture attention, despite the hollow quality of its intent, fails to provide new knowledge”.290 In fact, Aloi argues that: “when relatively more traditional media are at play that at least the death of the animal can be more productively explored”.291 Aloi’s ‘traditional’ refers to artworks that represent rather than use the body of the animal, that is to say, when the death of an animal is represented rather than reproduced.

287 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 70 288 Ping quoted in Gigliotti, "Heartburn: Indigestion, Contention and Animals in Contemporary Art." 28 Gigliotti argued convincingly that the protesters were insiders to the world of art. 289 Giovanni Aloi, "The Death of the Animal," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Spring, no. 5 (2008). 290 Aloi, Art and Animals. 137 291 Aloi, Art and Animals. 136

Yvette Watt also indicates that resurgence of animals in contemporary art is rarely about animals, even though the animal appears to be the main subject.292 Watt is more direct in her position, stating that artists have a responsibility to treat animals ethically, and should reposition animals as subjects not subject matter or material for art. Watt points out that artworks involving the body of an animal, such as Damien Hirst’s or Wim Delvoye’s work, involves the commissioning of the death of an animal. She argues that: “From an animal right’s point of view, causing an animal to suffer or die in the name of art is always unjustifiable, regardless of the artist’s intentions.”293 The art critic Robin Laurence, who defends art’s ability to question, provoke, witness and advocate, supports this position. She states: “there is no act of animal cruelty that can be justified in the name of art”.294

Like Hatry, the philosopher Peter Singer points out the contradictions inherent in the outrage over the death of animals in art, stating that it perplexes him, given the daily numbers of animals killed for consumption. However, he continues to argue that instead of meat eating justifying the use of animal bodies in art: “people who are disturbed by the idea of liquidizing the goldfish should really question their own eating practices.”295 Further he argues, in opposition to Hatry, the quantities of animals killed for consumption cannot be used as a justification for harming animals. Artworks using the animal body, he argues, have the potential to reinforce existing prejudices towards animals and the objectification of the animal.

These arguments have revealed a critical concern as to establish whether the artist is attentive to the animal, and whether the animal is the actual subject in the artwork. Adams and Donovan support this idea, and also point out that attention should go beyond the animal, to those systems that condition our thinking the animal, and continue to abuse the animal:

attentiveness – to the individual animal, to the differences between animals and ourselves, and to controlling systems – requires effort, courage and discipline. It is not easy to go against dominant systems, to break through

292 Yvette Watt, "Artists, Animals and Ethics," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 19 (2011). 62 293 Watt, "Artists, Animals and Ethics." 66 294 Zoe Peled, "Discussing Animal Rights and the Arts," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 19 (2011). 55 295 Referring to the work Helena Giovanni Aloi, "Beyond Animal Liberation: Interview with Peter Singer," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 19 (2011). 13

ideological obfuscation, and to see and hear the suffering that is in reality endemic, extensive, and ubiquitous. But if animal abuse is to be seriously reduced and eliminated, such attentiveness is required of all who care about animals”.296

For animals’ advocates the questions is - is there any difference between the use of the animal body in art or consumption? Treating the flesh and skin of animals as waste products, or mere materials for art, it can be argued, is a complicit reduction of the animal body to product or material for our use. This raises the question of whether current critical approaches to the use of the animal body in art are actually hypocritical. As Stephanie Jenkins states: “A vegan ethics of nonviolence acknowledges the making- killable of animal others as a violent act, and it necessitates the symbolic and practical rejection of such violence.”297

2.7 attending to animals

This section considers a couple of artists whose practice uses dead animal bodies, yet they focus attention on the animal as subject. Angela Singer’s recycled taxidermy uses “old, donated and/or discarded” animal bodies and trophies, in a process she calls de- taxidermy298. Singer often reworks these bodies to demonstrate the violent death of the animal. For example; Sore I, 2002-3 [Fig.71] presents a bloodied raw animal form denuded of their fur and antlers, the eyes pronounced. Working directly with the taxidermy support this animal appears alive and flayed, wild eyed, it faces us, and calls on us to respond. It appears that no actual animal body is used in this work, however Singer has in fact removed the skin from a trophy head. Singer signals her intentionality behind this work: “I wasn’t going to make its pointless death easy on the viewer.”299

Singer’s de-taxidermy is framed by Baker’s definition of ‘botched taxidermy’. Botched taxidermy is a loosely knit group of contemporary artworks,300 featuring thematically:

296 Donovan and Adams, The Feminist Care Tradition. 4 297 Stephanie Jenkins, "Returning the Ethical and Political to Animal Studies," Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 27, no. 3 (2012). 298 Giovanni Aloi and Angela Singer, "Angela Singer: Animal Rights and Wrongs," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 7 (2008). 13 299 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 93-94 300 See: Baker, The Postmodern Animal. and Special Issue: ‘Botched Taxidermy’, Antennae: Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Issue 7, Autumn, 2008

mixed materials; stuffed animals; wrong materials; hybrid forms; messy confrontations; reworked taxidermy forms, and tatty forms.301 The word botched, refers to the creative process of experimentation, and rejection of expertise, Baker positions botched taxidermies as ‘questioning entities’.302 Despite the beautiful bejewelling often featured in Singer’s work [Fig.72], the animal bodies are awkward, overly stiff, and focus is drawn to the discomfort of the bodies. Singer considers her work as a way of honouring the life of the animal,303 and of forcing an audience to engage with animal subject and their death: “I think of my art as inserting dead bodies into art galleries and forcing audiences to engage with unnecessary death”.304 Singer’s practice aims to subvert the trophy objects, although she is aware that she cannot control the reception of these sculptures.305

Baker suggests that a “mode of attention” to the animal can in fact turn the meaning of the dead animal body.306 The mode of attention, he states, may be focused on the making and form rather than on meaning.307 Baker argues that: “The dead animal of botched taxidermy is not the dead animal of the hunting trophy, though each might be said to haunt the other”.308 Adams suggests that Singer’s practice: “demonstrates how to engage with the issue of human-animal relations, and animality, without requiring any more deaths”. 309 That is, Singer doesn’t engage directly with the industry that treats the lives and deaths of animals as a cycle of production. Singer engages directly with the death of the animal, Adams argues, “without motivating the death” and in doing so: “She shows us a transpecies ethics — in which we encounter animals subject to subject”310. In this aspect Singer’s practice differs significantly from the previously mentioned artists.

Attentiveness to the body of the animal is also present in Baker’s photographs of roadkill. These photographs reveal the macabre beauty and horror of dead animal

301 Baker, The Postmodern Animal. 56-60 302 Baker, The Postmodern Animal. 73 303 Aloi and Singer, "Angela Singer: Animal Rights and Wrongs." 304 Aloi and Singer, "Angela Singer: Animal Rights and Wrongs." 13 305 Aloi and Singer, "Angela Singer: Animal Rights and Wrongs." 17 306 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 87 and Steve Baker, "Something's Gone Wrong Again," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Winter, no. 7 (2008). 9 307 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 87 308 Baker, "You Kill Things to Look at Them." 91-2 309 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams" 22 310 Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams" 22

bodies. They are depictions of the “dissembling [of] previously complete bodies”311. Paired with the road kill photographs are ‘unrelated’ juxtaposed images (these other images are also taken on Baker’s cycling trips around Norfolk). Unrelated yet related images, as Baker states, they create: “assemblages that reflect on disassembling, these pieces picture both the magnificence and the waste of what remains; the animal as more than meat and as less than meat”.312 Attention to surfaces is enhanced often by the complete flattening of the animal bodies, the loss of resolution of the animal body, yet the animal remains present in the blood, hair, or small details like a flattened ear. In Untitled [Fig.73] the mess of body gradually separates from the pebbled ground, to form the whole body of a rabbit, or rather a whole outline, the ears, one still raised, the paws. The body integrates into the colour of the road surface. This image is juxtaposed with image of seaweeds: fleshy firm seaweed and thin strands, again separating into distinctly different surfaces. Sometimes a nearly whole animal is present in Baker’s works, other-times just a stain and a feather. What is apparent in these works is that someone has attended to these often-unseen bodies of animals and someone has captured their fleeting presence and witnessed their deaths. In these earlier works Baker used the site and date he encountered the body as the caption313, so there was a type of memorialising at play: the animal body becomes it’s own memorial, because there is no burial site.314

In a recent series of images titled Scapeland Baker removes the sharp division between the dead animal and the juxtaposed image. For example, in Scapeland VI [Fig.74] the details of the feather, the glistening entrails and viscera emerge from the body of an unidentifiable (to an amateur) bird. Juxtaposed is a detail of architecture that is also seemingly visceral, whose content is elusive, but whose all over texture provides a surface for sustained attention. In Scapeland VIII [Fig.75] a recently killed rabbit, is almost fully present, yet partially flattened. This is juxtaposed with a surface of a wall, possibly lime-washed, which has lost parts of its own surface, not unlike the body of the

311 Steve Baker, "Steve Baker - Norfolk Roadkill, Mainly," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Autumn, no. 14 (2010). 40. 312 Baker, "Steve Baker - Norfolk Roadkill, Mainly." 40 313 The work was initially captioned ‘"Great Hautbois Road, 2/8/09". Baker revised this method of captioning in 2011. Email correspondence with the artist. 314 Baker here refers to Angela Singer’s comment that “The animal, having no grave site, no bodily burial, becomes its own memorial’ in Susan McHugh, "Stains, Drains, and Automobiles: A Conversation with Steve Baker about Norfolk Roadkill, Mainly," Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods 4, no. 1 (2011). 7

rabbit. Baker’s work is clearly concerned with acts of looking at the bodies of animals, and while he does not frame his work in relation to empathy or witnessing, Baker’s work raises parallel concerns about who can look, the responsibility and agency of looking, and the effect of looking.

2.8 representing flesh and skin

There are of course many artists who, like myself, work with representations of flesh and skin, John Isaacs is an example of an artist who uses almost hyper-real representations of meat repeatedly in his wide ranging art practice. In Further uses of the dead to the living, 2008 [Fig.76] flesh is presented as a ‘minimalist’ rectangular object leaning against the wall. The hard sharp edges and the leant angle against the wall are incompatible with the fleshy matter. His hyper-real fleshy effects are often set in troubling contexts: The Lie, 2013 [Fig.77] places a large wedge of fleshy material on a tiled plinth. The tiled surface evokes butchers shops and morgues. A drain is set in the flesh, and a tap is on the side of the plinth, any fluid that hypothetically drains through this apparatus would go through the lump into the plinth, thus connecting the two objects. Isaacs discusses the tap, grate, flesh and tiled plinth as disparate objects like Dali’s lobster telephone; an imaginable yet also a shocking juxtaposition.315 Isaacs’ flesh or meat works are both visceral and beautiful, reminding us of the fascination that flesh exerts on artists throughout art history, specifically the works of painters such as; Rembrandt, Chaim Soutine and Francis Bacon.

Isaacs’ work Other People’s Lives (scapegoat), 2003 [Fig.78] is often shown as studio photographs. In the final work the goat was placed within a painterly landscape [Fig.79, 80] making a direct reference to pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt’s work The Scapegoat, 1856. However unlike Hunt’s long haired goat, Isaacs’ goat is naked before us, he bears visible wounds on his flesh, which Aloi states: “become even more

315 Polina Bachlakova, "John Isaacs," The Lab magazine (2014), http://thelabmagazine.com/2014/06/05/john-isaacs/.

unsettling if the viewer realises that the disfigurement and fragmentation inflicted to the animal body bears the unmistaken signature of human action”.316

Isaacs' work plays with the way the animal is figured as symbol or emblem, but also considers the literal animal itself. In effect, he works in both a metaphorical and metonymical practice. Everyone’s talking about Jesus, 2005 [Fig.78] is a representation of a shark fin, cut off from the body, with a large fleshy mass of the body below the skin. Sharks evoke terror, the deep, but this work also refers to the human treatment of sharks: shark fin soup, and shark hunting. For Isaacs this work echoes his concern with the scientific fragmentation of the animal body through language and dissection, which is a destruction of the whole, and the “integral beauty”317 of the animal.

Isaacs’ concern with wholeness and fragmentation in the discourse of science aligns with my concerns about the linguistic and literal fragmenting of the animal body for consumption. Work such as Isaacs’ can use the aesthetic pleasure of the flesh to turn meaning in relation to the animal. While not an animals’ advocate, Isaacs’ works are more attentive to the condition of animals than many artworks that feature real animals. As Aloi suggests it is not necessary to use the actual body of the animal to focus on the death of an animal: more ‘traditional’ methods such as representative art practices might be appropriate. This is, I suggest, where my work is situated. This does not exclude my work from the troubles of aestheticising suffering, or the potential that it might perpetuate ideological systems through representing the animal body through the materiality of flesh and skin. My sculptures are still, in effect, representations of dismemberment, death and fragmentation; they are still representations of the animals’ body as skin and flesh. However, by leaving some of the traces, albeit provisional, of the animal, I hope that my little objects can through empathy attempt to turn meaning, to turn the attentiveness to the surface, the flesh, into a deeper empathic engagement with the (mostly) absented subject in the object.

316 Giovanni Aloi, "John Isaacs: Wounded Animals and Icon-making," Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture Spring, no. 5 (2008). 12 317 Aloi, "John Isaacs: Wounded Animals and Icon-making." 14

2.9 conclusion

This chapter explored the material developments in the practice; firstly the development of a direct casting method for the latex skins, which was followed by the series slink. Secondly charting the violent dismemberment of the ‘whole’ bodies and the creatures, which produced the fleshy lumps. This chapter outlined how the material developments refocused attention on the absence and presence of the animal, and the material surfaces of the form. I situated this presence and absence in relation to the ambiguous figure, and drew on Adams’ concept of the absent referent to distinguish this in terms of the animal.

The tension between violence and care in the practice was articulated, and fragmentation of the whole sculptural bodies was considered in relation to violence, suffering and pity. I drew upon Derrida’s contention that there is a war against pity, and animals’ advocates are making an appeal for a testimony to pity. Attentiveness to the animal and the situations that continue to exploit animals is a basic proposition in relation to a respectful and ethical representation of the animal. I situate this attentiveness within the context of empathy and witnessing, and I explore this in the next chapter.

3. WITNESSING, BEARING WITNESS AND TESTIMONY

3.1 introduction

I begin with memorial duties toward human victims not because I regard humans as more important than nonhuman animals, but because there is an insightful tradition of moral thought about the duties of witness and memory with regard to human victims. … [that] can be extended naturally to nonhuman victims of injustice318

The previous chapter articulated how an attentiveness to the material existence of the animal could distinguish practices that merely used the animal as material from those which bring the animal into being, as a subject with its own concerns. This attentiveness, focus, respect and memorialising led me to question the role of witnessing and bearing witness in relation to animal suffering and death in art. Kathie Jenni’s recent conference paper, ‘Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering’,319 considers whether we can ethically bear witness to the animals who are already ‘brutalised and killed’, and whether we have obligations to do so. What should we remember and what should we forget? Jenni’s examination of moral thought in relation to memory and witnessing is insightful. However, before I address the question of whether art can bear witness to animal suffering I examine the key ideas of witness and trauma theory. I examine how these theories of witnessing trouble the common approach to witnessing as simply seeing, and bearing witness as simply reporting. In particular I consider the discussion

318 Kathie Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering" (paper presented at the World Congress of Philosophy, 2013). 2 319 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." Kindly provided by the author prepublication.

of who witnesses for the other? Is it possible, or even ethical to bear witness for another? Further how might one do so? I explore some of the ‘prohibitions’ on the visual representation of atrocities and suffering in order to indicate an underlying issue between witnessing, trauma and representation. I also consider the role of empathy in witnessing, and consider how empathy is implicated in the act of witnessing and responding to testimony. Witness theory is drawn predominantly from Holocaust Studies, and it is important to clearly situate the approach of this research to the material: firstly, this is a study of the witness discourse and not the Holocaust itself, and secondly, this research aims to avoid comparisons between the Holocaust and animal suffering.320 I critically explore the way the comparison between the Holocaust and animal suffering is used in chapter four.

I start by considering witnessing as Shoshana Felman sets it out in her account of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah321. Then through a discussion focusing on two key texts by Derrida and Giorgio Agamben, I examine the complexities of witnessing and bearing witness, and the affect of trauma on witnessing. Further, I consider how sculpture bears witness to suffering, death and absence through a discussion of the work of artist Doris Salcedo. Finally, I consider whether the ideas developed in witness discourse are translatable to bearing witnessing to animal suffering. Jenni’s research provokes the question, who can bear witness? This final section explores the potential of art to bear witness to animal suffering. Witnessing is a powerful tool in exposing the suffering and death of animals, and it is a term often used by advocates to describe their practices. Bearing witnessing presupposes some neutrality, or ability to reach objective facts, however the aim of this research is to expand this concept of witnessing; from that which is factual, direct and representational to that which is less representational, yet brings attention animal suffering.

3.2 definitions: witness, bearing witness and testimony

Firstly I outline the definitions of these key terms, in order to indicate some of the concerns that emerge in this chapter. Webster’s dictionary states that witnessing derives

320 I note that I examine the use of this analogy in chapter four. 321 Chapter 7: “Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah” in Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York & London: Routledge, 1992).

from the Anglo-Saxon; witan; to know, and witnes; testimony.322 The definition of witness is; ‘testimony; attesting to a fact or event; evidence’, ‘a person who saw, or can give a first hand account of something’, a ‘person who testifies in court’, a person called upon to observe something and sign for it. To bear witness is; ‘to be or give evidence; to testify’. The verb is to; ‘be present at; to see personally, to be at the scene or setting of’, to bear testimony; to give evidence; to give evidence or testimony in a court of law. To witness is to attest, demonstrate, depose, evidence, show, prove, testify, testify to, confirm, corroborate or inform.

Bearing witness is “To endure, to carry or sustain a heavy burden”. It is a task, burden and an act, deriving from the Anglo Saxon beran, and Goth bairan. Meaning to carry: “to carry with one or on it; to show; to wear”, “to carry and bring forth; to give birth to”, “to sustain the burden of; to undergo”, “to move or push as if carrying”, and “to give, offer, or supply; as, he will bear witness”. To bear witness to something is to prove that it is true. It can also mean bearing the scars or marks of something, that is to have features or qualities that show that something has happened.

Testimony is to give formal written or spoken statements in a court of law, under oath, to provide evidence or proof, a public recounting of experience. Testimony is not only written or spoken, it can also be a physical proof, such as; the bruises were evidence of her injury. It can also be a protest or declaration. Additionally, testimony can be inscribed on an object, exist through an object, such as the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.

3.3 witnessing witnessing

Shoshana Felman’s analysis of Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah323 is a poignant starting point for this chapter. Shoah is constructed without a traditional or unified narrative

322 The definitions below derive from:"Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary," in Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, ed. Jean L. McKechnie (Cleveland: New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957)., http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bear+witness, http://thesaurus.com/browse/bear%20witness, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/bear#bear_19, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/bear-witness-to-sth, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/testimony, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/testimony 323 Claude Lanzmann, "Shoah," (France: New Yorker Films, 1985).

thread, or chronology, and at 9 hours and 23 minutes it is a durational film. Lanzmann made the film as testimony, and there is no archival footage used. He structures the film using the testimony of three types of witness: survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators of the Holocaust. It was filmed in Poland around the sites of Chelmo where gas vans were used, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. Lanzmann himself appears in the film as interviewer (alongside an translator), and the narrator of textual accounts, and the historian Raul Hilberg accompanies Lanzmann at various points.

Felman describes how bearing witness is commonly considered a responsibility to tell the truth, in a legal situation. Bounded by an oath, a witness is involved in both a narrative of what happened, and an appeal to another, there is a commitment and a responsibility to the truth, in a legal situation. A witness’s testimony is individual, personal, and it is used in courts to establish an objective truth. Testimony is also personal and irreplaceable; one cannot take the place of another, or bear witness for the other, in that one has not had the same first hand experiences as the other. In legal, philosophical and epistemological traditions in western thought witnessing is considered to be eye witnessing: it is what you have seen, not what you have heard from another - not hearsay.324 She states that to testify is more than just reporting an event, or telling people what one remembers, it is memory being used to “address another, to impress upon a listener, to appeal to a community”.325

Of key relevance is her the demonstration of how the film reveals what witnesses have failed to see: that is to say, the film witnesses a failure or impossibility of witnessing. Felman argues that the Holocaust was an event that was unwitnessed and this is demonstrated through the testimony of witnesses: the failure of bystanders to look and witness events surrounding them; the Jews who were unable to see and understand what was happening to them; and the Nazi’s who ensured that the concentration camps and activities were invisible, unable to be witnessed. She argues that the film exposes how

324 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 207 325 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 204

the: “Holocaust was an historical assault on seeing and how, even today, the perpetrators are still by and large invisible”.326

Further, she indicates that Shoah discloses how the Nazi method was to make the Jews invisible, not only by killing them, but by removing all physical evidence of their bodies: “reducing, furthermore, the radical opacity of the sight of the dead bodies, as well as the linguistic referentiality and literality of the word ‘corpse’”.327 The word corpse was replaced with the word ‘figuren’, the dead body was replaced with a word that stands for puppets, dolls, something inanimate, that never lived: “The Germans even forebode us to use the words ‘corpse’ or ‘victim.’ The dead were blocks of wood, shit. The Germans made us refer to the bodies as figuren, that is, as puppets, as dolls, or as Schmattes, which means ‘rags’.”328 The dead bodies of victims were destroyed, to remove evidence, to leave no physical witnesses to testify to what happened. Felman states: “corpses still continue to materially witness their own murders”.329

For Felman Shoah demonstrates the capacity for art to “take the witness stand”,330 it both witnesses the testimony of others, and is able to bear witness, to take the stand in it’s own right in revealing the failure of witnessing. As such, Shoah reveals the capacity for art and witnessing to be a “critical activity.”331

3.4 who witnesses for the other?

In this section I consider two key texts by Derrida and Agamben in order to trouble the idea of who can bear witness, specifically in relation to an event that no longer has any direct witnesses. I do this with an eye on the question of how does one bear witness to the animal. Both writers consider whether it is actually possible to witness for another, and whether language has any possibility of bearing witness. In selecting these texts I consider them only in relation to what they state about witnessing. 332

326 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 209 327 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 210 328 Text from the film cited in Felman and Laub, Testimony. 210 329 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 226 330 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 206 331 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 206 332 Agamben published his text in Italian in 1998, Derrida’s essay was published in 2000. Both arguments should be considered in reflection of the discussion of historical revisionism.

One of Derrida’s concerns in “A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text”: Poetics and Politics of Witnessing,333 is the possibility or impossibility of bearing witness for another. His discussion circulates around a consideration of Paul Celan’s poem ‘Aschenglorie’ and its translations, in particular the troubling, and oft used quote: No one bears witness for the witness334

Derrida considers that Celan’s phrase “No one bear witness for the witness”335 suggests that no one can bear witness, and that is to say it is a simple truth. It is an ethical imperative not to stand in the place of the witness, so it can be read as a caution.336 Derrida’s assessment of this poem brings to attention the ethics of bearing witness - the necessity to bear witness to the witness who does not survive, alongside the inability to do so, and prohibition on situating one’s own testimony for the other.

Derrida’s thorough etymological consideration of the terms of witnessing situates different types of witness. Witness (testis) in Latin, is someone who is a third person (terstis) to a situation, a ‘third’ or third-party as is referred to in English. A ‘superstes’, can also mean witness, however it means a witness survivor, someone who witnesses something that they have been part of.337 A witness is one who is present: whether as a third party (terstis) or survivor (superstes) or both.338 Latin is not the only route or origin of meaning of witness, Derrida explains that in German (important in the context of Celan’s poems written in the German language), the terms witness, bearing witness and testimony derive from a different framework, where the distinction between a third party or survivor witness is not distinguished. Also in Greek, there is no reference to this distinction; the martus or marturos is the witness, the martyr, and a witness of faith.

333 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 334 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." Paul Celan extract from Aschenglorie, 181 335 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 198 336 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 198 337 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 186 338 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 187 Agamben, like Derrida, similarly traces the meaning of the words testimony and witness, defining the ‘superstes’ as the person who experienced; ‘an event from beginning to end and can therefore bear witness to it’. In the case of the camps, there can be no beginning to end experienced, only the subjective and individual beginning to end. Differently from Derrida, Agamben situates the testis as a neutral third party, an objective observer in the case of the law, and is therefore, in his account the writer Primo Levi is neither a testis or superstes, and thus a new category of witness is necessary. Whereas in Derrida’s account, as a testis is someone who is present to an event, as a third party terstis, no further category is required. Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books, 1999). 17

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In English the Latin root of ‘testimony’, means to testify, which: “articulates the two themes of survival and of witnessing”,339 but witnessing and bearing witness are different. Derrida notes that the question and distinction of witnessing, bearing witness and testifying is complex, and made more so by the fact the crossing the conceptual limits between these ideas is both “forbidden and constantly practiced”.340

Particularly important is Derrida’s argument that proof has contaminated the usage of bearing witness. He suggests that bearing witness is not a proof,341 as it is always done in the personal “I bear witness” and it means that one has been present, one has heard or experienced something, it is an act of faith, good faith, it means: ‘I affirm (rightly or wrongly, but in all good faith, sincerely) that that was or is present to me, in space and time (thus, perceptible), and although you do not have access to it, not the same access you, my addressees, you have to believe me, because I am committed to telling you the truth, I am already committed to it, I tell you that I am telling you the truth. Believe me. You have to believe me.342’

Therefore it means that: I claim in bearing witness that I have been in the presence of something or present to something. It is an appeal for another to believe. Thus this text draws attention to the fact that the act of bearing witness is always an address to the other. In fact Derrida suggests that the act of witnessing and testimony is implicated in all forms of communication.343

The appeal of ‘you must believe me’ expressed here is profoundly present in testimony. In Holocaust literature the relationship between testimony and proof has been tested. A particularly well-known case is the debate between the psychoanalyst and Holocaust writer Dori Laub and the ‘Historians’.344 This case reveals the difference between what counts as historically meaningful and subjectively meaningful. The debate was provoked a videotaped testimony of an Auschwitz survivor shown at a conference on Holocaust and Education. The witness, Serena N. attested to an uprising at Auschwitz, in which she saw four chimneys go up in smoke. To the historians, this was a factual

339 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 188 340 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 191 my contextualisation in brackets 341 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 188 342 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 189 343 In turn Derrida argues that: “Logically, it makes it obligatory to take any address to another for a testimony” Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 197 344 In Dori Laub “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening” in Felman and Laub, Testimony. 59- 63

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error, as only one chimney had in fact been blown up in the uprising. Therefore the witness’ testimony was no longer relevant, or useful to them. Whether or not her memory was accurate, Laub argues that her testimony was and is relevant. He contends that the witness was testifying to something greater than just factual truth, she was testifying to something that broke a framework of understanding: until that point an uprising was not possible or even conceivable.345 This debate continues to be cited as demonstrating the importance of testimony as fragmented, partial, traumatised and distinct from operating as proof.

The urge expressed in Derrida’s statement “you, my addresses, you”, evokes S.T. Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The Ancient Mariner is one who has been present in an event, as a survivor witness. He has a necessity, or rather compulsion, to bear witness. The Mariner expresses this compulsion as: Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach.346

This urge and necessity to bear witness347 and to seek an address with another is also found in the Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi:

You remember the scene: the Ancient Mariner accosts the wedding guests, who are thinking of the wedding and not paying attention to him, and he forces them to listen to his tale. Well, when I first returned from the concentration camp I did just that. I felt an unrestrainable need to tell my story to anyone and everyone! […] Every situation was an occasion to tell

345 For a re-reading of this debate, and a reconsideration of Laub’s use of archival material see Frances Guerin & Roger Hallas, ed. The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture (London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2007). 346 S.T. Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253. The idea of testimony as ‘teaching’ is echoed in Rothberg’s articulation of traumatic realism. Michael Rothberg, Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 347 “Witnessing (in this sense) is like treading water, it must keep on keeping on; if one stops one sinks out of sight into oblivion” Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Vogler, eds., Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). 44

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my story to anyone and everyone: to tell it to the factory director as well as to the worker, even if they had other things to do. I was reduced to the state of the Ancient Mariner.348

Felman also recounts this urge to bear witness and to testify through the experiences of a course she conducted on ‘Literature and Testimony’.349 After considerable investigation of key texts on testimony, the course concluded by watching video testimony from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale. 350 Felman describes how the students were traumatised by the testimony, and went through an experience of needing to talk about it, yet simultaneously being unable to formulate their experiences into language. Felman describes this as a traumatic ‘disconnection’ between experience and language.

The compulsion to witness is articulated by Laub as an affliction:

This imperative to tell and to be heard can become itself an all-consuming life task. Yet no amount of telling seems ever to do justice to this inner compulsion. There are never enough words or the right words, there is never enough time or the right time, and never enough listening or the right listening to articulate the story that cannot be fully captured in thought, memory, and speech.351

For Laub testimony does not conclude the process of bearing witness, and the compulsion to speak of an event one has witnessed, especially when the witnessing is traumatic, can be like the Mariner’s agony that returns.

Coleridge’s poem also demonstrates the affect of listening to witness testimony. The listener becomes the witness of the witness, and he is altered by the interaction:

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.352

348 Levi in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 16 349 Shoshana Felman “Education and Crisis” in Felman and Laub, Testimony. 350 Felman’s course covered interdisciplinary ideas in relation to testimony, including the work of Camus, Dostoevsky, Freud, Celan and Holocaust survivor testimony. 351 Dori Laub “Truth and Testimony” in Cathy Caruth, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995). 63 352 In relation to animal advocacy, an interesting component of the testimony is the Mariner’s conviction that: “He prayeth well, who loveth well

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Coleridge’s listener, initially hostile to the testimony of the Mariner, succumbs to the Mariner’s story, becomes an attentive witness to the tale and is subsequently affected by what he hears. The listener/viewer is situated in the role of secondary or retrospective witnessing.353

Witnessing is a “radically unique, noninterchangeable, and solitary burden”,354 and bearing witnessing is an “address to an other”,355 a discursive act, it is performative and produces impact. For Derrida, testimony is a performative action involving at least two people. He describes the response to testimony as another performative act, the act of believing, faith: “This act of faith is involved everywhere there is participation in what are called scenes of witnessing”.356 Bearing witness transgresses the isolation of the witness through a communication or an address to others. Bearing witness is done before another, to another, a listener, or viewer, who witnesses the original testimony.

The performative act situates the testimony as coming into being in the space between the witness and the listener. Traumatic experiences are brought into consciousness and language through testimony. Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas state that:

the act of bearing witness is not the communication of a truth that is already known, but its actual production through this performative act. In this process, the listener becomes a witness to the witness, not only facilitating the very possibility of testimony, but also subsequently, sharing its burden. That is to say, the listener assumes responsibility to perpetuate the imperative to bear witness to the historical trauma for the sake of collective memory.357

The potential of performative witnessing through art making is demonstrated in Bracha Ettinger’s practice. Ettinger expands the concept of witnessing, to include a being with - wit[h]nessing.358 Ettinger reworks archival photographs of the Holocaust. She avoids mastery over her imagery and engages with a type of working-through in creating her work: interrupting the photocopying before the image is fixed, reworking the black

Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small;” 353 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 12 354 Shoshana Felman “Education and Crisis” in Caruth, Trauma. 15 355 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 10 356 Derrida, "A Self-Unsealing Poetic Text." 195 357 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 11 358 Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing."

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dusty surfaces, and introducing washes of colour. It is a practice that Pollock describes as “negative capability”,359 a withdrawal of mastery and intention, and what Ettinger herself calls ‘artworking’ - in relation to Freud’s concept of dreamwork, or working- through: “which takes times [sic] and needs the regular, open space of encounter to occur, unpredictably, even while transformation is always anticipated, hoped for, and welcomed”.360

Ettinger considers that artwork can generate an encounter: an event, a space where subjects meet and affect each other. They open an encounter onto what she calls a ‘response-ability’,361 an ethical response to the ‘humanness of the other’. This is the capacity to have an ethical responsibility to the being of the other. Kelly Oliver also develops the term ‘response-ability’ to discuss the responsibility of the listener.362 To encounter testimony is to have a ‘response-ability’ to the witness. A witness cannot bear witness without an addressee, the addressee is essential to the act of witnessing: “Subjectivity requires the possibility of a witness, and the witnessing at the heart of the subjectivity brings with it responsibility, response-ability, and ethical responsibility”.363 For Ettinger this encounter involves a rendering of one’s own borders of subjectivity fragile, fragile enough to be able to recognise another being, without any form of mastery. I suggest this encounter resembles the intersubjective empathic encounter, with its directedness and attentiveness to recognise the other, bringing the subject into presence, and recognising the absolute alterity of the other.364

The ethics of bearing witness for one who does not survive is also a focus of Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive365 a text that generates more questions than answers. Agamben draws attention away from the gas chambers as

359 Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing." 865 360 Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing." 865 361 Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing." 838. Note Ettinger’s earliest use of the term is 1995, as ‘co- response-ability’ 362 Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 363 Oliver, Witnessing. 91 364 I note that Pollock categorically states that this is “not sympathy; this is not empathy”. This is primarily a terminological problem of empathy. However, Ettinger’s practice is drawn firmly from a psychoanalytical framework, and not phenomenology. Pollock, "Aesthetic Wit(h)nessing." 838 365 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz.

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a marker of the horrors of ‘Auschwitz’, and onto the subject of the Muselmann.366 The term Muselmann emerges from within the concentration camps to describe the people who were suffering from starvation and exhaustion, who either died from mistreatment or were selected for death. The Muselmann is the witness who does not survive to bear witness, and is witnessed and testified for by those who survived the camps. Agamben argues that the Muselmann expands the discourse of the Holocaust beyond an event distinguished by the death camps and mechanised and technological killing, to include the treatment of subjects in the concentration camps.

Agamben argues that the Muselmann also bears witness to something else that happened in the camps: a process of de-humanisation, of becoming non-human or inhuman. It is the survivors that are able to bear witness to the horrors of the concentration camp, but they are not the ones who reached the bottom, who faced the Gorgon.367 The survivors are the third party witnesses to the Muselmänner, yet simultaneously they are the survivor witnesses to their own experiences.

To bear witness is profoundly linked with the ability and inability to remember what one has witnessed. Primo Levi tells the story of a young child, Hurbinek, who comes to the camp unable to speak, and only babbles. Levi tries to discern something from this babble, some word, to hold onto something of this person through this act of remembering, but: “nothing remains of him: he bears witness through these words of mine”.368 His knowledge and memory of the boy is partial and fragmentary, however, Levi tries to remember and bear witness for him, so that he can speak for the boy “by proxy”.369 On the ability to speak by proxy, Agamben states:

The survivors speak in their stead, by proxy, as pseudo-witnesses; they bear witness to a missing testimony. And yet to speak here of a proxy makes no sense, the drowned have nothing to say, nor do they have instructions or memories to be transmitted. They have no “story”, no “face”, and even less do they have “thought”. Whoever assumes the charge of bearing witness in

366 Agamben will not use the term Holocaust due to its origins in Jewish persecution of the Christians, and pogroms against the Jews. Agamben uses Auschwitz to refer to the ‘concentrationary universe’. Agamben does not take this line with Muselmann, which most likely derives from Muslim. 367 A term Primo Levi uses. Paradoxically Agamben includes testimony from some surviving Muselmänner at the end of his book without comment. 368 Levi quoted in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 36 369 Levi quoted in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 34

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their name knows that he or she must bear witness in the name of the impossibility of bearing witness370

When we speak for the other who does not survive, we cannot and must not speak for the other. Levi’s story attests to the boy’s existence, that he lived. He cannot speak for him or his experiences. His testimony also witnesses to the inability to bear witness for Hurbinek.

For Agamben, what is at stake is whether something can be said about Auschwitz. A key trope in Holocaust studies is that the Holocaust is a limit event: that it is an essentially unknowable and indescribable event. To try to understand the Holocaust as a whole, or to try to historicise the event is considered, by many, to be a desecration, Lanzmann argues: “There is an absolute obscenity in the very project of understanding”.371 For Agamben the idea that Auschwitz is unknowable confers the mystical onto extermination, and avoids facing something we should face. It avoids doing the work required to rethink ethics and politics in the face of what has happened. Agamben suggests that apart from testimonial literature, there is a failure of witnessing in the historical accounts of the camps. The Muselmann has barely received historical attention, he argues, yet they were the ‘backbone of the camps’ referred to in nearly all witness testimony. Early footage of the liberated camps revealed the piles of bodies, but barely glanced at the Muselmänner. Agamben suggests this is because the Muselmann was “an absolutely new phenomenon, unbearable to human eyes”.372

Agamben speculates that this missing subject in the history of the Holocaust might be the result of how little we still understand of what the Muselmann means, and how to frame a discussion about what occurred. Bruno Bettelheim, a camp survivor, published a study Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations in 1943. In this study Bettelheim articulates the Muselmann an: “improbable and monstrous biological machine, lacking not only all moral conscious, but even sensibility and nervous stimuli”.373 Bettelheim argued that the Muselmann exceeds the limits of the human. Agamben is extremely critical of this approach: “The Muselmann is not only or not so much a limit between life and death; rather, he marks the threshold between the human

370 Levi quoted in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 34 371 Lanzmann quoted in Caruth, Trauma. 154 372 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 54 373 Bettelheim quoted in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 57

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and the inhuman”.374 That is to say, the Muselmann does not exceed the limits of being human but expands the limits. Agamben further argues that to consider that there are limits to what is human is to continue the work of the Nazis, that is to say, to dehumanise the victims.

The Muselmann is a subject reduced to living in a space between life and death, so close to death that “One hesitates to call their death death”.375 This is not because their life is no longer life, but because death no longer has the significance and importance of death: “But this means – and this is why Levi’s phrase is terrible – that the SS were right to call the corpses Figuren. Where death cannot be called death, corpses cannot be called corpses.”376 This, for Agamben, is the particular horror, and the specific offence of the camps. The removal of proper distinctions regarding the killing or death of humans, and the removal of all social practices associated with the correct treatment of the bodies of humans. Survivor testimony demonstrates that it is possible for all qualities of human life to be removed, and for people to still survive in degradation. His argument is that this raises questions for the existing fields of morality and ethics, and creates a new ‘terra ethica’, in the land of ‘Muselmännland’.377

To return to testimony, Agamben suggests that bearing witness for those that cannot bear witness creates a problem of language: language collapses “giving way to a different impossibility of bearing witness – which does not have a language”.378 Holocaust Studies have relied heavily on psychoanalytic concepts of trauma in relation to problems of language and witnessing, and these are discussed in the following section. Agamben however points to the alienating property of language in the fuller sense, the ‘fracture’ between the embodied experiencing body and the operation of language.379 For Agamben, it is the poets that can bear witness, finding in language what remains, or survives the impossibility of speaking.380 He prioritises the poets in a relation to creating, within the limits of language, a way of bearing witness to the remnants, the fragments of what can be said.

374 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 55 375 Levi quoted in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 70 376 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 70 377 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 69 378 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 39 379 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 134 380 Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 161

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3.5 trauma and testimony

Trauma theory develops Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of trauma: a traumatic event is so shocking that it bypasses the process in which our systems convert external experiences and events into mental representations.381 As the event/experience has not been processed into a mental representation it is considered essentially unknowable to the conscious mind. The victim subsequently re-experiences the event through nightmares and flashbacks, which occur as a re-triggering or repetition of the initial trauma. Cathy Caruth explains that: “images of traumatic reenactment remain absolutely accurate and precise, [but] they are largely inaccessible to conscious recall and control”382. She argues that while the victim of an event is unable to access the experience consciously, the event reoccurs in flashbacks and nightmares (traumatic memories) that are vivid and detailed. It is Caruth’s contention that the images of trauma are ‘engraved’ on the mind, and this is supported by Levi’s comment that: “I still have a visual and acoustic memory of the experiences there that I cannot explain […] Sentences in languages I do not know have remained etched in my memory, like on magnetic tape”.383 Further, as trauma cannot be situated or processed within the current systems of knowledge, these experiences remain outside of ‘intelligence’, and this leads to their re-emergence as traumatic memories.384

Caruth describes trauma as an experience of horror or unexpectedness, something that overwhelms the individual, bypassing normal processes of assimilation. However, another perspective situates trauma as an experience that either: does not fit into our current understanding, or we have no current knowledge to assimilate it. Bessel van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart contend that we can only remember experiences if we have existing forms or categories with which to compare the event or situation to, or if it is a repeated situation. Our memories are malleable and are constantly reworked and re- categorised. However post-traumatic memories are not, they are experienced the same and repeatedly: “Traumatic memories are the unassimilated scraps of overwhelming

381 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1996). Also see Caruth, Trauma. 382 Caruth, Trauma. 151. This position has come under critical re-examination in Thomas Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 383 Primo Levi in Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 26-27 384 Caruth, Trauma. 153

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experiences, which need to be integrated with existing mental schemes, and be transformed into narrative language.”385 They also argue that traumatic memory is a memory that sits outside of the narrative memory we construct: it is a non-memory that has no place. Translating traumatic memories into narrative memory (social memory)386 is to translate experience, through bearing witness and testimony in a performative address to another. This working through of traumatic memory, or integrating it into narrative memory, does not necessarily imply a ‘recovery’ from trauma. Rather the authors suggest it is a way of being able to live with the trauma. In fact, they demonstrate, many survivors talk of constantly living between two worlds, “the realm of trauma and the realm of their current, ordinary life”.387 This was certainly the case with the writer Charlotte Delbo.

Delbo acknowledges that writing about the Holocaust in common language is essential for bearing witnessing to the atrocities, to provide testimony of what happened. Delbo uses the notion of common memory to describe social discourse, not her own experiential ‘deep’ sense memory; she explains: “when I talk to you about Auschwitz, it is not from deep memory my words issue”.388 Her words and language come from an intellectual memory, whereas: “Deep memory preserves sensations, physical imprints. It is the memory of the senses”.389 Bringing the traumatic and the ordinary together provides a challenge for language, and it is the challenge for testimony. For example, Delbo articulates the impossibility of describing the experience of thirst, as there are such different experiences of the word: there is experience of thirst of one who has been thirsty for months, the sheer physical torment and overwhelming obsession which Delbo describes in Auschwitz and after,390 and the thirst that leads one to get up and make a cup of tea.

385 Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, "The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma," in Trauma: explorations in memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995). 176 386 later these terms are supplemented with common language and common memory. 387 van der Kolk and van der Hart, "The Intrusive Past." 176. For a discussion on the integration of trauma see: 176-9 388 Charlotte Delbo, Days and Memory (Marlboro, Vt: Marlboro Press, 1990). 3 389 Delbo, Days and Memory. 3 390 Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

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Aspects of trauma theory have recently come into question by Thomas Trezise.391 Trezise argues that while it is common to discuss traumatic events as outside of conscious experience, and while many people with trauma experience disassociation, it does not mean that this occurs in all traumatic cases. What is important in Trezise’s critical approach is that he highlights that different traumas and different levels of preparedness to trauma create different responses, whereas Caruth’s theory tends to submit all traumas to the same subjective outcomes. Trezise also questions whether the difficulty of speaking and witnessing the Holocaust lies specifically in the symptoms of trauma, or whether it is symptomatic of a: “difficulty of finding a language common to victims and non-victims alike? Does it have to do with the very ability or inability, the willingness or refusal of non-victims to listen?”.392 The dominance of Holocaust studies in the areas of witness and trauma theory has been contested, Thomas Vogler suggests that this dominance means that other types of traumatic affect have been little considered. He argues: “I am simply pointing to the absence of a vast body of literature, or discourse, on other instances of atrocities that should have an equally compelling moral and human interest”.393

3.6 bearing witness - testimonial objects

These accounts have focused mostly on the conversational or textual acts of bearing witness and testimony. However testimony can be offered in a broader manner than words. As Derrida notes witnessing might be conducted through silence, or on the body, as a trace. The definitions of the terms (section 3.2) demonstrate that marks and scars on the body can bear witness, and testimony can be inscribed on an object or exist through an object. How then does testimony operate in visual practice? Unlike direct communication between two people, the production of artwork is like the process of writing poetry or literature, that is to say it is a two-stage process. Firstly there is the production of testimony, which brings experiences into (visual) language. In the case of visual arts, this is a performative act between the artist and their material. It requires a negotiation between experience, sense memory and visual language. Secondly, the testimonial object engages an audience, who may or may not empathically receive the

391 See Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing. 41-60 392 Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing. 41 393 Douglass and Vogler, Witness and Memory. 204

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testimony. Marianne Hirsche and Leo Spitzer have used the term ‘testimonial objects’ to discuss historical objects that survive from the past, as: “points of memory - points of intersection between past and present, memory and post memory, personal and cultural recollection”. I use the term testimonial object in this research to discuss an art object produced through testimony that operates to bear witness to many possible audiences.394

To explore the concepts of witnessing in relation to sculpture, I consider the work of Doris Salcedo. Salcedo’s practice is motivated by the violence experienced within her society: the political disappearances of people and the affect of absence and loss within the community. Her practice deals with a situation that is current, and continuous. Salcedo’s practice is based on gathering individual testimonies and objects from families affected by the disappearances. She does not try to represent the event, or the violence, but rather the absence and loss.395

Salcedo’s practice negotiates the territory of empathy as an essential component of witnessing. Initially she considered her encounter with the survivors to be an empathic process, where: “the distance between them and me disappears, allowing their pain to take over me, to take over my centre”.396 This is a process of empathy that is discussed critically as creating an over-identification with the witness, or a “vicarious victimhood”,397 that is to say, it does not recognise the difference between the experiences of the survivor and oneself. Empathic over identification is fraught with the possibility of confusing whom bears witnessing for whom, and who is the primary witness. However, empathy is also essential in the act of receiving or listening to testimony. Dominick LaCapra, states that as:

a counterforce to numbing, empathy may be understood in terms of attending to, even trying, in limited ways, to recapture the possibly split-off, affective dimension of the experience of others. Empathy may also be seen as counteracting victimization, including self-victimization. It involves

394 Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, "Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission," Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2006). 353 395 Charles Merewether, "To Bear Witness," in Doris Salcedo, ed. Dan Cameron (New Mexico: New Museum of Contemporary Art, SITE Santa Fe, 1998). 17 396 Salcedo,1997 quoted in Merewether, "To Bear Witness." 20 397 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore, Md: John Hopkins University Press, 2001). 47

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affectivity as a crucial aspect of understanding in the historian or other observer or analyst.398

Thus empathy in receiving testimony creates an affective understanding, an attentiveness to the other, a way of allowing the experiences of the other to affect you, but recognising the alterity of their experiences. LaCapra brings attention to the terminological problems associated with the term empathy, in particular empathy as a conflation of self and other. To manage this terminological distinction he develops the term ‘Empathic Unsettlement’, to describe a process of empathy that, while not phenomenological, shares many features with Stein’s thesis on intersubjective empathy. More recently Salcedo has shifted her position on empathy, articulating her process as allowing the other’s experience to remain separate.399 That is to say, articulating an account of empathy that is intersubjective, an empathy that recognises the alterity of the various witnesses encountered.

Salcedo is in effect a secondary witness, who forms an empathic relationship with those who have suffered loss, in order to bear witness. Salcedo’s empathic encounters are not with the primary witnesses who are absent, but those who remain, the survivor witnesses. They bear witness by proxy for their absent loved ones. She marks the absence of those who have disappeared, the primary witnesses, with the absent body, through the traces of clothing and objects that they have left behind. Salcedo uses these fragments as actual historical testimonial objects; they bear memory and trace of the individual body that has disappeared. They function to bring the absent body into presence, but do not try to represent the individual. They are provisional and fragmentary: we do not know who the absent person is; nor do we know what happened, and nor is the violence graphically represented.

One such work is Atrabiliarios (Defiant) [Fig.81, 82]: a line of rectangular niches/cavities set into a wall, each niche contains a single shoe or pair of shoes. 400 The

398 LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma. 40 399 Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2005). 66, also suggested by Wong in Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 177 400 This work is the subject of critical analysis in terms of witnessing through the following works; Edlie L. Wong “Haunting Absences: Witnessing Loss in Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios and Beyond” in Hallas, The Image and the Witness., Merewether, "To Bear Witness." Mieke Bal, of what one cannot speak: Doris Salcedo's Political Art (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010). Bennett, Empathic Vision.

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shoes were once owned and worn by individuals who have subsequently become victims of violence, who have ‘disappeared’. The niches are covered by an animal skin, which is tied off to holes in the edge of the wall with black surgical thread, in multiple individual knots. These everyday objects (the shoes) are rendered unfamiliar and estranged through their placement.

In 1991, I was an installation assistant for the Sydney Biennale, and was assigned to assist Doris Salcedo install Atrabiliarios. I assisted in finishing the niches, drilling small holes through the corners, covering the niches with animal skins and individually knotting through the skin to each hole in the wall. Despite having spent much of my life as an animals’ advocate, I was not concerned to be working with skins at the time, as simultaneously I was collecting animal bones, and human hair for other installations: the animal skin was another material. As argued in chapter two, I no longer consider skin a mere material: it contains the trace of violence to a once living fellow creature.

Charles Merewether situates Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios as an act of bearing witness; giving a visual form to traumatic memory.401 Merewether argues that Salcedo’s visual forms of memory replace the monuments and memorials that were once used to remember the dead. He suggests that rather than memorialising an event, contemporary sculpture engages with experience in “a form that bears witness to that which cannot be accounted for”.402 He positions Atrabiliarios as a counter-monument that demonstrates the inability to represent or communicate the fullness of an event. They are works that incorporate silence, an absence or fragments of knowledge, memories, objects and events.

The Atrabiliarios individualises the violence: the shoes are specific, a real person wore them, there is a direct connection with the violence. For Salcedo these shoes are traces of the individual who is absent, extending what can witness beyond the body through to the objects owned by the person. For her, the task is the transformation of the traces into relics, relics that enable an audience to come to know another’s experiences.403 For Merewether the intimacy of the shoes and the visceral nature of the animal skin function

401 Merewether, "To Bear Witness." 19 402 Merewether, "To Bear Witness." 17 403 Salcedo in Merewether, "To Bear Witness." 19

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to bring the viewer into an affective experience of loss: “The experience becomes one of living in the presence of the absent body”.404

Jill Bennett argues that works such as Salcedo’s, which deal with historical (event) trauma, engage with the political. Traumatic artworks, Bennett suggests, are not specifically representational, nor do they represent the event through graphic or shocking images.405 She argues that often witnessing is conducted through the representation of graphic images of the dead, or images that directly confront us with violence. Bennett suggests that avoiding imagery that creates a ‘traumatic confrontation’ creates a “more enduring experience of traumatic memory and grief”.406 Works such as Atrabiliarios generate an affective response and feeling. Feeling, however, is not the end point for the encounter, but rather she contends the starting point for deep thought.407 To explain this she draws on Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the ‘encountered sign’, something that is felt rather than recognised through cognition. However, the encounter does not remain as feeling, but rather becomes the trigger for thought and inquiry because of “the way in which it grasps us, forcing us to engage involuntarily”.408 Rather than just engage with the intellect the encountered sign engages on multiple levels with the individual.

Using her earlier research on medieval devotional imagery, Bennett describes how images act as triggers for affective responses. Devotional imagery operates to translate the “meaning of suffering, by promoting and facilitating an empathetic imitation of Christ.”409 Bennett suggests that these images do not work through narrative, but rather by revealing the wound. The depiction of the wounds creates somatic affective responses, which are transactive, and not communicative.410 This encounter generates feelings, which can engender thought. This is essentially the empathic encounter as described by Lipps and Stein, an embodied encounter. This operates not by narrative,

404 Merewether, "To Bear Witness." 18 Bal addresses the post-modern issue with the referent by stating “With a metaphor quite suitable for Salcedo’s work, the semiotic discussion can be resolved by saying that the referent is external to the sign but clings to it as its shadow”. Bal, of what one cannot speak. Note 6, 37 405 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 62 406 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 65 407 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 7 408 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 7 409 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 36 410 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 7

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or intellect, but is encountered, bodily. In fact Bennett uses LaCapra’s idea of empathic unsettlement in her account, to counter the accusations of empathic contagion and over identification that plague the term empathy.

In light of the previous discussion about the problems of the animal body in art, I divert attention towards Mieke Bal’s critical discussion of the animal skin in Atrabiliarios. The skins are a metaphor for human suffering, creating the suggestion of violence: “the yellowed animal skins also suggest that violence produces unhealable emotional abscesses for survivors.”411 The skin ‘signifies’ touch, closeness and yet simultaneously “distorts and discolours” the particularity of the shoes.412 The skins provide both a protective shield, something which you can look through but also hampers the reading of the work,413 they turn the three dimensional objects into images: “These skins also turn the shoes into images rather than objects”.414 The skins also mitigate from identification or vicarious suffering with a victim, by balancing contact and distance. 415 Bal continues observing that the: “sheet of skin is a metaphor of metaphor: translucent, impermeable, imprisoning the eye caught in distortion in a negative space where indifference is not possible.”416

The skin in Salcedo’s work operates to produce meanings that are not directly related to its own specificity. Yet, it can draw attention to the absence of the body of the animal. Bal in fact attends to specificity of the material by suggesting that the animal skin prohibits the audience having any sense of cleanliness from the atrocities of life: “the animal skins that make vision difficult, and thereby compel viewers’ activity in Atrabiliarios, simultaneously compel a self-aware voyeurism as well as a sliver of cruelty once we realize this skin is predicated upon the slaughter of the animal.”417 Thus the violence that Salcedo’s work refers to includes another violence, the violence against animals. This is a violence that Bal argues we are complicit in, the violence towards animals. For Bal this complicity is necessary, as it means that we cannot position the violence in this work as occurring elsewhere or not affecting us directly.

411 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 71 412 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 67 413 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 68 414 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 71, 73 415 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 66 416 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 68 417 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 246 Despite this, the work does not reflect on the politics and ethics of the animal, or lead to these readings for Bal. Rather the skin operates as a sign of complicity.

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The skin operates as a sculptural material and literal trace of the animal body: that is both metaphorically and metonymically. The skin is used in this work as something to be seen through and not to be looked at. This in turn influenced the development of my slink screens, which are placed over the windows, not to be looked through, but to be looked at and to be witnessed.

3.7 troubling representation

Bal and writers such as Michael Rothberg418 suggest that it is worth revisiting Adorno’s influence in relation to artworks. Bal’s analysis of Salcedo’s work establishes a negotiation of Theodor Adorno’s (apparent) prohibitions on the representation of violence. 419 Adorno’s (mis)used quote: “to write poetry after Auschwitz, is barbaric”420 has often been used to render representational art redundant. 421 Adorno associates aesthetics with beauty, and beauty with collusion and the possibility of making violence not only palatable, but also even worse pleasurable. Rothberg argues that Adorno’s assertion is not a prohibition on art, but a caution that art must avoid cynicism and remember the “horrors of the age” and “remain true to suffering”.422 Adorno in fact states: “The abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting […] Yet this suffering […] also demands the continued existence of art while it prohibits it; it is now virtually in art alone that suffering can still find its own voice, consolation, without immediately being betrayed by it”.423 Further, while Adorno cautions about the problems of representation, Bal draws our attention to his redress, he argues: “Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems.”424

For Bal, the issue of how violence is represented is critical. She considers that Salcedo is successful because, in agreement with Bennett, Salcedo’s work avoids the types of representation associated with media depictions of violence. Additionally, Salcedo’s

418 Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 419 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 63 420 Theodor Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge. Mass: MIT Press, 1981). 34 421 “Adorno’s phrase (not even a full sentence in the original German) has been quoted, and just as often misquoted, by writers working in a variety of contexts and disciplines, including photography, theology, aesthetics, and literary criticism” Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 25 422 Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 40 423 Adorno, "Commitment." 312 424 Adorno quoted in Bal, of what one cannot speak. 65

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focus on the individual keeps the focus on what suffering is.425 Additionally Bal argues, in contradiction to Pollock’s argument, the issue of our complicity is key to understanding Salcedo’s work. Living amongst violence, Bal contends, requires a certain level of indifference to survive: “In that indifference, indispensable for survival, complicity emerges”.426 There is a necessity to balance the possibilities of vicarious suffering caused by an awareness of pain, and indifference to it, which produces a vicarious complicity.427 It is the acknowledgement of our role in the violence, in seeing violence, and also in aesthetically enjoying violence, that allows us to engage with its affects: “only then does resistance beyond defensive negativity become possible”.428 However, she does not consider this as a complicity we can do anything about, it functions to avoid clear conscious or moralising, rather than create reflection and change.

Representation can stylise violence, Bal states, but she contends that representation does not “stylize violence away”.429 Thus she argues, echoing Adorno, violence should remain visible, otherwise there is only forgetting: art can know and it can remember. 430 Violence is represented in Salcedo’s work, it is recognisable, but it is not mimetic, or realistic. Bal conceptualises Salcedo’s practice as “constructing a space of violence” for us to deal with:431 a space in which the artworks are neither figurative nor abstract, neither painterly nor sculptural, with elements that are neither singular nor installation. Bal argues that the work operates on our anthropomorphic imagination, we see the work, we notice the features that indicate or refer to a human, we project onto the work stories of violence, we narrativise it. Bal makes no bones about prioritising of a type of representational artwork that engages the anthropomorphic imagination: “without falling into the traps of the traditional, figurative, aesthetically stylized representation that Adorno’s paradoxical indictment called barbaric”.432 She avoids representational art because, she argues it is reductive, provides instant recognition and facile

425 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 83 - Bal acknowledges her debt to Bennett. 89 426 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 177 427 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 177 428 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 96 429 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 62 430 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 222-3 431 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 98 432 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 90

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emotion.433 Unfortunately, once again, the figurative is positioned alongside the ‘traditional’ and the ‘aesthetically stylised’ and aligned with an act of barbarism.434

The relationship between bearing witness to atrocities and the perception of a ‘prohibition’ on representation, means that visual representations have, until fairly recently been under represented in witness studies. Images have been considered either: too shocking, not representational enough, or potentially aestheticising. Prohibition has led to a focus on testimony conducted orally and textually. Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas suggest that it goes further: “The privilege given to both textual and oral testimony as witness to traumatic historical events can ultimately be traced back to the iconoclasm that pervades the history of Western philosophy”.435 Thus the avoidance of representation and the distrust of images in visual studies and trauma studies is evidence to some critics of a representational iconoclasm. They state: “This iconoclasm that pervades the production, dissemination and philosophy of the image in the twenty first century is nowhere more pronounced than it is in the relation to images of traumatic historical events”.436 To counter this, they suggest recognition of the performative act of bearing witness is necessary for understanding that images do not depict the world but rather participate in a transformation of it.437

The act of representing traumatic memories is commonly articulated as an act that forces a break in existing modes of representation, creating the emergence of a new language. However, some literary critics, such as Ana Douglass and Thomas Vogler, point out that breaking form is not necessarily an ‘authentic’ act of trauma, but rather an act of conscious control over the material of language, a production of effect. They argue that the majority of survivor writings are actually fairly normative accounts.438 Writers who create new languages, they argue, are those writers already involved in the

433 Bal, of what one cannot speak. 81 434 Bal’s book is the first of a trilogy on Political Art. The second will focus on figurative, but via video work, figurative in that it represents the human. http://www.miekebal.org/research/book-projects/ “Nothing is easier than resorting to figurative art to depict political causes, and many have done so, sometimes to great effect. One only needs to recall Goya and his horror-impregnated Los desastres de la guerra (1810–15) to realize the possibilities. In the contemporary world, however, too many images of horror make horror invisible; too frequent depictions of it make us impermeable to empathy with the experience of horror, or other politics-driven affects. Excess “naturalizes” horror and obscures the mechanisms of that process. And as Adorno famously wrote after the Second World War, art “after” horror risks turning horror into pleasurable experience.” 435 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 7 436 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 2 437 Hallas, The Image and the Witness. 4 438 Douglass and Vogler, Witness and Memory. 184

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endeavour of creative writing. They state that while the Holocaust is a “useful paradigm for issues of representation” they caution against the dominant prohibitions on imagery or regulation on representation.439 The idea that: “An event that defies all representation will best be represented by a failure of representation” they argue: “is in fact one of the oldest tropes of Western writing, what Kant called the negative or non- presentation of the idea of horror in the sublime”.440

Rothberg redresses the idea of trauma and representation in Traumatic Realism.441 Like Guerin and Hallas, Rothberg contends that images do not represent, or reflect an event, but rather produce meaning. Rothberg states: “It is, in fact, this confusion between historical events and their representations […] that leads to absolutist positions on “representation”.442 For Rothberg, like Agamben, what is at stake is to avoid the mystification of the experience of the Holocaust. He argues that the idea that understanding of the Holocaust is obscene removes the Holocaust from history. He questions criticisms of visual representations of the Holocaust, asking: “Why would the Holocaust represent a particularly unrepresentable event? And why should visual representation in particular be singled out as problematic?”443

Rothberg argues that extreme events are always combinations of both the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary is a realist position, the idea that something can be understood, studied with existing models of knowledge, and this might be exemplified by Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil, or by, what Rothberg crudely groups together as the ‘historians’. The anti-realist stance is the idea that the Holocaust is unknowable, it breaks all existing forms of knowledge, and this stance is exemplified by Lanzmann and trauma theory. Rothberg’s Traumatic Realism aims to bring these two different views together, into conversation with one another. Rothberg demonstrates the ordinary coexisting within the extraordinary through a close reading of Holocaust memoirs. He refers to the concentrationary universe: that is a world outside of our world, yet, it was still a world that shared features with the other ‘normal’ world. For Rothberg, Charlotte Delbo’s writings are exemplary of Traumatic Realism, because

439 Douglass and Vogler, Witness and Memory. 31 440 Douglass and Vogler, Witness and Memory. 32 441 Rothberg distinguishes the use of his term Traumatic Realism from Hal Foster’s use of the term, which has a poststructuralist and psychoanalytic approach to trauma. Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 442 Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 234 443 Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 233

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they situate writing history, representation and traumatic experiences together. 444 Not to create a singular narrative or account of an event, but rather to create a fragmentary view, one that is, in fact, partially useless.445 Delbo’s work is an account that accepts its own failure to account for: it is a representation that accepts its own inability to represent. Rather than represent events, Rothberg argues, it generates meaning.

3.8 summary

Before considering whether these ideas can be utilised in understanding witnessing in relation to animals, I summarise the key points, emphasising the aspects particularly relevant to an artistic practice. Witnessing has been described as a solitary task. Bearing witness is described as an urge and a compulsion, a never-ending task. The idea of bearing witness for another has been troubled yet not prohibited. Bearing witness for another by proxy is provisional, requiring an acknowledgment of the limitations and the inability to do so. Bearing witness is constructed as an act that requires both a witness and a listener; it is a performative act, an encounter. Knowledge is formed in this transactive encounter both for the one who testifies and the one who witnesses the testimony. Empathy is implicated in witnessing testimony: to allow oneself to be affected by what one hears/sees. As a listener/viewer it is necessary to avoid empathic over identification with the one who testifies, and remain aware of their distinct position in relation to the experience and the testimony. The ‘other directed attitude’ of intersubjective empathy can mediate this engagement. The listener can be affected by the testimony they experience and become secondary witnesses to the witness. Witness theory considers not only the role of the witness but also the ethical responsibility of the listener.

I have articulated how testimony has been separated from a necessity to provide legal proof. Testimony is an act of good faith, a claim of being present to something, that I need you, the audience, to believe. Testimony is the process of bringing the experiences one has witnessed into language, or communication. Language and trauma trouble testimony; the traumatic has been articulated as rendering experience unavailable to

444 Delbo, Days and Memory. and Delbo, Auschwitz and After. 445 Rothberg uses Delbo’s phrase ‘useless knowledge’ - the title of one of the sections in Delbo, Auschwitz and After.

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language. In contrast, more recent discourse has suggested that the traumatic might be symptomatic of experiences that do not fit into current systems of knowledge or language.

Testimony is not only verbal (spoken or written) but can be developed through materials. The testimonial object subsequently bears witness to an audience. Art’s role to bear witness has been supported by Derrida, Agamben, and Felman. Indeed, Felman argues that art’s ability to demonstrate failures of witnessing, revealing what others cannot see, is a critical activity. Salcedo’s artwork demonstrates one approach to bearing witness that bypasses the criticisms of representation by referring to violence without representing violence (albeit by deferring the violence onto the animal - the skin).

3.9 bearing witness to animal suffering and death

An important question in this research is whether these ideas, developed in the context of human witnessing and testimony, can be brought into consideration of bearing witness to animal suffering. A starting point might be asking the question ‘why do we even need to bear witness to animal suffering and death?’ Surely, as Derrida states: “No one can deny this event any more, no one can deny the unprecedented proportions of the subjection of the animal. […] Everybody knows what terrifying and intolerable pictures a realist painting would give to the industrial, mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and genetic violence to which man has been submitting animal life for the past two centuries”.446 In answer Donna Haraway responds, “Everyone may know, but there is not nearly enough ‘indigestion’.”447

The philosopher Kathie Jenni has explicitly related some of the ideas from witness theory to the concept of bearing witness to the suffering and death of animals. Many of her ideas echo those that I have already outlined in witness theory, although I hope to contribute to her ideas. For example in Jenni’s work bearing witness is primarily situated as an act of proof, or a revealing of a fact; she concentrates on visual material directly drawn from witnessing animal suffering; graphic footage etc. Whereas, I have

446 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 25-6 447 Haraway, When Species Meet. 78

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shown in the previous chapter testimony can be separated from its legal function and operate more subjectively, as an appeal. Further I have shown how art can bear witness through revealing failure to witness and absence.

Jenni articulates the witness as one who observes, witnessing and bearing witness are positioned as an act of agency and as performative acts: an undertaking and an act of communication.448 This is important: as I see it the human is the witness to animal suffering, the human has to firstly witness the ‘testimony’ of the animal (I discuss this later). As discussed to receive testimony requires an act of empathic agency. The human then becomes the secondary witness for the animal, and in effect bears witness to animal suffering by proxy.

Bearing witness to animal suffering is a task, a “‘labor’ in that it is often painful to bear witness to atrocities; and the act is sometimes, in its address to a community, not received as a gift but as “unwelcome […] a source of shame, guilt or remorse.’”.449 One of the features of attempting to bear witness for animal suffering is that it is an act that is often performed without a receptive audience. Jenni states that it is an act that is performed in hope of an audience.

A problem of witnessing for animal suffering and death is who do we bear witness for? As Jenni states animals are rendered anonymous by the process that produces their death, they remain:

unnamed and unseen […] They are killed in assembly lines with no regard to individual identities, feelings or welfare, then reduced to pieces of flesh mingled promiscuously with remains of other bodies to make food that is mystified as ‘meat’ and rarely registered or ‘realised’ as corpses. No recognition is accorded their individual fates; even their individual bodies retain no integrity in death.450

This means that we cannot mourn in the way we would mourn the death of one we know, because we have little access to the individuals within the mass, and the numbers

448 Jenni cites a different lineage for her research into witnessing; Avishai Margalit, Jeffrey Blustein and W. James Booth. 449 W. J. Booth quoted in Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 4 450 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 18

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of animals killed each year are staggering.451 However she argues that to fail to mourn is to neglect our responsibility to the dead. Therefore we can only mourn that we cannot mourn. Witnessing for animal death requires an acknowledgement of the inability to mourn for the individual, and recognition of this loss.452 However, this impossibility should not be an obstacle to stand as witnesses, she argues:

How profoundly, then, the animal dead need persons with voice, compassion, and an audience to bear witness to their terrible fates, and to their moral value as individuals that made what happened to them a catastrophic and irreparable injustice. Humans who care must serve as witnesses for animals who have perished, as they do for humans rendered silent by mass murder. If we do not bear witness for them, we betray the uncounted victims of speciesist violence, completing the slaughterers’ work of rendering the animals themselves invisible in the products into which they were converted.453

Taimie L. Bryant agrees that the ethical burden to bear witness is increased by the general lack of visibility of the method of production of flesh products. Animals are unable to put their suffering before us, as in it is not within their control to ensure we see their suffering: “Nor can they put their suffering into a language that commands to be heard, whether the listener is willing or not”.454 For Bryant it is the increasing separation between people, society and the methods in which animals are produced for food that is responsible. The ‘invisibility’ of food production is a reason for the focus on bearing witness, bringing into awareness the way in which the animal is treated to produce food. This is often an area where animals’ advocates and the law become intertwined, as institutions have no legal obligation to reveal how they work. Revealing what goes on in these institutions, on a normal basis is often an illegal activity that involves trespass onto private property. This activity is being made more difficult by the introduction of what are called the Ag Gag laws. In America these laws have wide

451 Jenni estimates 10 billion animals killed in food production in the USA, and 40 million animals killed for fur world wide, although she notes that it is impossible to access accurate numbers. Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 18, 19 452 I note that many animals’ advocacy campaigns focus on attempting to draw attention to the individual lives of animals. An important example is the campaign 269, an Israeli calf that was destined for slaughter in June 2013. A world wide campaign was started when three advocates publicly branded themselves with the number 269 in Tel-Aviv on October 2nd 2013. http://www.269life.com Original video of the branding, intercut with footage from factory farms and slaughterhouses available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEAJgM-LVjc. Warning this video contains violence to human and non-human animals. 453 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 19 454 Taimie L. Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals," Journal of Animal Law and Ethics 1, no. 63 (2006). 109

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ranging powers to prosecute activists under Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) passed in 2006.455 This law protects animal enterprises, commercial or academic, that:

uses or sells animals or animal products for profit, food or fiber production, agriculture, education, research, or testing; . . . a zoo, aquarium, animal shelter, pet store, breeder, furrier, circus, or rodeo, or other lawful competitive animal event; or . . . any fair or similar event intended to advance agricultural arts and sciences456.

This protects industries not only from activities that damage the property of the enterprise, but also any activities that cause economic damage to that business. This means that if a business is affected by the release of video footage, for example of an abusive treatment of animals, they can prosecute the advocates responsible as terrorists.457

Agribusiness around the world is now working hard to prevent people witnessing the reality of farming; while everyone might know; they are not allowed to see. There are very few obligations on agribusinesses to reveal or disclose their methods of practice. There is also a commonly held assumption that animals can’t be mistreated, that there are government agencies that oversee these industries to ensure this. Unfortunately, as Tim Pachirat demonstrates in his undercover research in Every Twelve Seconds, in the American context the US Department of Agriculture is more concerned with human welfare (for the consumer) than any mistreatment of the animal or the worker.458 In the Australian context the Victorian Farmer’s Federation are now calling for laws similar to the American AETA, which include lengthy jail terms of up to 20 years.459

Bryant argues that because the public is often unwilling to find out how ‘flesh foods’ are produced, and are also ‘wilfully ignorant’ about the practices that occur in normal production, they are susceptible to commercial assurances that ‘flesh foods’ are produced without cruelty.460 One can consider the anecdotal discussions with concerned consumers who protest that the eggs they have eaten are cruelty free, despite

455 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s3880/text 456 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s3880/text 457 For more on this issue and Ag Gags see Will Potter http://willpotter.com/ and Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, City Lights, 2011 as well as Voiceless for an Australian context https://www.voiceless.org.au/the-issues/ag-gag 458 Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds. 459 http://www.news.com.au/national-news/victoria/farmers-push-for-jail-for-animal-activists/story- fnii5sms-1226736971873 460 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 84

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the daily destruction of male chickens.461 Milk drinkers protest that cows ‘produce milk anyway’, ignoring the use of artificial insemination, the removal of calves at birth, and the subsequent use of the animal bodies in the leather, meat or dairy industry.462

Bryant tries to address some of the perplexing causes of wilful ignorance: “the most mundane explanation is inertia, mere clinging to convenience. It seems that many people who do learn of societal violence also learn how to accommodate or reject that knowledge in order to avoid change.”463 LaCapra argues that the ignorance about the treatment of animals is a significant ethicopolitical issue, and an ethical minimum would require an obligation to find out how animals are treated, and especially when that animal is destined for “one’s dinner plate”.464 LaCapra uses the term ‘open secret’, to define when one knows enough to know one doesn’t want to know more. For LaCapra, it is more than just wilful ignorance, it is also an: “active or performative process whereby compassion or empathy with the other is blocked or rendered ineffective, and one does not seek, or turns away from, available information”.465 He supports his argument using Carolyn J. Dean’s work The Fragility of Empathy After The Holocaust,466 which I consider in order to draw attention to the role of empathy in witnessing.

Empathy has already been discussed as contingent and precarious, for Dean a lack of empathy is implicated in the idea of wilful ignorance. Dean questions why people become numb to exposure to atrocities, or able to incorporate difficult knowledge into their normal life. The common answer is that people are indifferent to the fate of others. For Dean this is not a necessary ‘self protective’ mechanism, not a simple retreating from, and avoiding contact with knowing what is happening. She speculates that it is something more than a tacit consent.467 She proposes that the nature of

461 http://www.makeitpossible.com/guides/egg-labels.php 462 http://www.animalsaustralia.org/factsheets/dairy_cows.php 463 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 111 464 Dominick LaCapra, History and it's Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press, 2009). 178 465 LaCapra, History and it's Limits. 176-77 466 Carolyn J. Dean, The Fragility of Empathy After The Holocaust (Ithaca; London: Cornell University, 2004). 467 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 85-86

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indifference,468 and lack of empathy need to be examined further; she raises the questions:

How does a conscious decision to repress what disturbs you go together with a dulled sensitivity, which implies you are no longer disturbed? Is complicity a form of numbness or is it numbness that finally accounts for complicity? Is the lack of empathy for others’ suffering a condition of tacit consent or does tacit consent generate, as others have argued, a lack of empathy?469

She continues, empathic indifference is not just numbness but rather it is an act of cruelty. Not being thought about is, Dean states, is actually a “violent erasure”:470

Indifference is thus a symbolic erasure whose brutality is palpable to those who disappear, whether or not bystanders feel good or guilty, whether they are ignorant or knowledgeable or concerned to help but regret they cannot. To delineate indifference as an active form of complicity that is a form of symbolic rather than literal murder restores the particular responsibility and agency of the bystander rather than attributing to him an ‘understandable’ and predictable because all-too-human response.471

Therefore, for Dean when people avoid looking at, knowing or responding to suffering this is not simply a passive act - it is an active complicity. A lack of empathy for another, or empathic indifference is different from numbness. Empathic indifference is an active approach to erase thought or knowledge about suffering, to erase the being of the other. Not responding, through the lens of Dean’s argument is not a neutral activity. Dean argues this lack of empathy, or decision not to empathically respond is what allows people to continue to live their life, even when it is based on things one would find morally reprehensible. By avoiding empathy therefore, one is avoiding the experiential knowledge that may lead to moral thought.

Jenni also establishes indifference, or avoidance of looking as a critical aspect in relation to witnessing animal suffering. In a footnote to her text she draws attention to the discussion between Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco.472 Derrida asks Roudinesco:

468 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 92. Dean notes that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners puts the idea of indifference aside and calls the indifferent response pitilessness. 469 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 87 470 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 104 471 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 104 472 Jacques Derrida and Elisabeth Roudinesco, For What Tomorrow . . . A Dialogue, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004).

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‘If you were actually placed every day before the spectacle of … industrial slaughter, what would you do?’ Roudinesco replies, ‘I wouldn’t eat meat anymore [sic], or I would live somewhere else. But I prefer not to see it, even though I know that this intolerable thing exists. I don’t think that the visibility of a situation allows one to know it better. Knowing is not the same as looking.” […] When pushed by Derrida, Roudinesco states she would move away from the situation, because it needs distance, because it is best ‘not to be an eyewitness to it’.473

Jenni argues that Roudinesco’s commentary implies that distance is in fact required to continue living as before, without moral consequences of what one has seen. Distance is necessary to ignore the situation. Roudinesco’s response implies that to be close enough to look, to be an eyewitness, would result in a change to one’s life. In this situation Jenni argues, like Dean, that the indifference is not a necessity, nor even a tacit form of complicity, but is a form of ‘moral bankruptcy’.474

For Dean, how and why people become empathically indifferent to others remains an undone task of Holocaust research, and she does not attempt to answer this, but rather to point out where it has occurred. Holocaust historian Saul Freidländer considers that indifference is not an avoidance of knowledge, but rather an indication of the way in which situations become normalised in society and culture. For example, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany became banal and ordinary, not just because people become used to it, but also because it became the “way things should be”.475 Dean uses Freidänder’s idea to consider how people normalise indifference to others so that: “persecution, discrimination, and finally murder become invisible to those who are not its targets, even when they take place right in front of them”. 476 Through a close examination of memoirs that detail Jewish-gentile interactions and experiences during and after the Holocaust, Dean demonstrates how ‘indifference’ reveals a ‘quieter cruelty’ in the relationships. Further, Dean demonstrates how anti-Semitism is only seen as obvious and unusual to those directly affected by it. For others it is the normalised position:

473 Kathie Jenni, "The Power of the Visual," Journal of Critical Animal Studies 3, no. 1 (2005). Footnote 9, 17 474 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." Footnote 9, 17 475 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 92-105 476 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 95

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“society assimilated it, learned it, performed it, believed it, and thus came to conceive it and live it as normal”.477

Dean’s argument that empathy is not a given, that it is precarious and fragile is important, although this aspect of empathy has already been considered. A limitation of Dean’s text for this research is that she focuses on the affect of the absence of empathy, rather than the operation of empathy. However her text allows me to bring together another aspect of empathy and witnessing. In empathy theory, the decision to respond to another is not obligatory. To this point the decision not to respond has been positioned somewhat neutrally. What Dean’s text indicates is that this decision is not neutral but is in fact an act of indifference that can lead to the violent erasure of the other.

This argument can be positioned in the context of carnism, in which the normalised and dominant ideological situation is to ignore or be indifferent to the treatment of animals for consumption. This situation makes the treatment towards animals banal and ordinary and even invisible. While everyone might know, they also might avoid looking at, and witnessing the suffering of animals. Why we respond with different levels of empathy towards different animals was alluded to in the introduction through Diamond’s articulation of the fellow creature, and Jane Legge’s poem, which revealed how we learn and assimilate this. Certain animals are given our empathy, such as companion animals, and others are not, and this is normalised and performed.

Actually seeing and empathically witnessing animal suffering can indeed change one’s life. pattrice jones describes the effect of a visit to a factory farm:

I spent more than an hour slogging through ankle-deep litter with tears streaming down my face from the accumulated ammonia of the trapped urine, slipping and tripping over dead birds in various stages of decomposition, as I chased the handful of chickens who had been left behind when their peers were captured and trucked to slaughter […] Back at home, I left my ruined shoes at the doorstep and announced, “I’ll never be the same person”. […] You’ll never again be a person who has not lived through or witnessed that thing. […] We’ve all seen sights that no one

477 Dean, The Fragility of Empathy. 101

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ought to see because such suffering ought not to exist. […] We’re all traumatised by our own inability to halt the violence.478

She goes on to say that:

[One] cannot wish away the effects of witnessing. Knowing things changes you. When you take in the reality of horrors you previously only imagined or perhaps never even contemplated […] no matter how hard you try to forget, you will never again be a person who doesn’t know those things.479

Through these observations, jones demonstrates how witnessing changed her, how knowing and seeing what happened to animals in factory farms has, whether she tries to forget or not, created a fundamental shift in her thinking.

Theories of witnessing have troubled the ability to bear witness for those that do not survive: the absent witnesses, who cannot speak. Here I return to Levi whose attempts to try and capture something of the speechless Hurbinek, to demonstrate that Levi was able to bear witness by proxy through memory of the boy. It also demonstrates Levi’s focus on speech in the process of witnessing, rather than attentiveness to the body and the physicality of the boy. I suggest that both Bryant and Jenni’s accounts overlook the possibility that animals bear witness to their own suffering. They do not speak but they witness through their bodies; their movements, sounds, eyes and traces on their bodies. As Derrida suggests, witnessing can be marked on the body as a trace. As Felman suggests, corpses can also witness their deaths, in the case of animals, these corpses are present in the animal products around us. These corpses, like the corpses of the victims in the camps, are also subject to a linguistic, visual and actual erasure. 480

Witness theory assists in clearly distinguishing the roles of witnessing the context of animal suffering. Witness theory would identify the primary witness as the animal subject, and the human as the secondary witness; a third party witness, and also an ‘eye witness’. Attending to the being of another, recognising their alterity, through intersubjective empathy, is an important component of attentive secondary witnessing. It allows us to experience the other empathically but without over-identification with

478 pattrice jones, Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a Guide for Activists and Their Allies (Lantern Books, 2007). 58-9 479 jones, Aftershock. 59 480 See earlier discussions of the erasure of the Holocaust victims, the ‘figuren’ by Agamben. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz. 70 and Felman and Laub, Testimony. 210

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their suffering. We can bear witness for animals by proxy, but this must acknowledge the provisional and impossible nature of bearing witness for another.

The process of empathy also implicitly draws attention to our own experiences, that is to say we can also witnesses for our own experiences of the affect of witnessing. I distinguish this from vicarious suffering or trauma, or over-identification: rather it is attentiveness to the affect of witnessing that is implicitly part of an empathic act. It is what draws to attention the different experiences of the primary and secondary witness. The affect of witnessing on the secondary witness is discussed in greater depth in the following chapter.

I suggest that empathy is immanently entwined in witnessing. Empathy theory delineates a process of attentiveness to the other that can be aligned with the act of witnessing the other. It is an act of attentively responding and engaging with another, recognising the alterity of their experience. Thus it is implicated in the process of witnessing animal suffering and death. Additionally, Dean has proposed that cultural conditioning impacts on empathy, and an absence of empathy, or empathic indifference, leads to a failure to witness. Further, LaCapra has drawn attention to the necessity of empathy in the act of responding to testimony. This empathic engagement with another attends to the experiences of the other, and counteracts victimisation, by distinguishing who is experiencing primordially (first hand) and non-primordially (second hand). Therefore empathy is entwined in the act witnessing and receiving testimony.

As a result of this research I could clearly identify how empathy had shifted and directed the practice. The research had commenced with a sculptural concern for embodied and intersubjective empathy with sculptural bodies. As the animal emerged in this practice, the empathic object of my attentions was exposed as the animal subject. The sculptural objects that emerged were an affect of what I had empathically witnessed. Further in drawing visible attention to the invisibility of the animal, I was responding to a perceived lack of empathy or wilful ignorance in the broader community. I was witnessing a failure to witness. The potency of the sculptural form is the ability to draw attention to the physical form of the animal that people encounter daily: the flesh and skin of the animal, the animal as product and object.

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3.10 the problems of bearing witness to animal suffering

The question of who can and should bear witness to animal death, and how, is provocatively raised by Jenni. Bearing witness is an obligation for animals’ advocates, she argues: “For it is only (or primarily) they who can fulfil obligations of respect by providing the focused, empathic attention to animals’ fates that both justice and compassion require”.481 In responding to how advocates should bear witness, Jenni’s paper focuses on the use of animals’ advocacy footage, in particular graphic and shocking documentary sources, and the issues this material raises. Jenni’s focus is on testimony that is direct and factual. In this section firstly I set out her arguments in relation to documentary sources, and secondly I explore some different methodologies artists employ to bear witness to animal suffering using documentary materials and methodologies.

Animals’ advocates use images such as audio visual or photographic media, to increase awareness about animal suffering, and also with the aim to extend a viewer’s compassion. It is testimony in that it bears witness, and also this testimony allows one to be a type of eyewitness: further it can be witnessed again and again, and it can be shared. Through this material one can be present to the event, although not present in the event. When one bears witness to what one has seen in this type of footage, one bears witness to seeing something another can also see.

Jenni has concerns with the use of this footage, for two key reasons. Firstly, she positions the risk of the misperception or misuse of this ‘testimony’. Echoing Adorno’s hesitations about representing suffering, Jenni states that this footage may find its way into being used by people with less compassionate aims, people who might use footage of animal abuse or death for pleasure.482 Secondly, she raises the problem of respect for the dead. Arguing that respect for the animal dead is often overridden by the obligation to cause change. The use of graphic footage relies on the consequentialist aim of changing people’s minds about animals. She acknowledges her ambivalence on this

481 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 27 482 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 15

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issue, however she cautions: “Respect for the animal dead would counsel us not to display animal degradation before flatly unreceptive audiences”.483

Jenni’s earlier paper; The Power of the Visual484 situates her concerns with the use of graphic imagery. This article examines the impact of showing graphic visual material of animal suffering to her students. Jenni explains how the material shocked her students, whereas they had not been shocked by the same information provided textually. This reflects Felman’s analysis on the use of video testimony in her class. Whereas Felman focuses on the traumatic affect, Jenni considers why the visual functions differently. Jenni suggests that the visual functions to block an escape from an: “emotionally painful awareness of the problem. Because it is difficult to overlook or misinterpret facts that are right before our eyes, those errors no longer shield us from outrage, sorrow, shame, and empathy”.485 Visual images can produce a strong initial affect on viewers, however, Jenni notes that unfortunately: “rationalization, self- deception, and denial can follow such shocks of realization with disheartening speed”.486

However, it is not always the case that the affect of visual images is so easily discarded. Susan Sontag describes witnessing the photographs of the liberated concentration camps as a life splitting event: “Nothing I have ever seen – in photographs or in real life – ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously. Indeed it seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts, before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several years before I understood fully what they were about”.487 However, she argues that we become habituated to such shocking images; the first time that one sees imagery of such an event, it can be made more real. Repeated exposure to the images makes it less real. In her later work, however, she redresses this position. Is there evidence, she asks, that photographs have a diminishing impact?488 Rather, she claims, it is compassion that is unstable, if it is not transformed into action it fades.489 If we feel like we can’t do anything about the issue, we become frustrated, then: “bored, cynical,

483 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 23 484 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 485 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 4 486 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 2 487 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin Books, 2003). 20 488 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 94 489 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 90

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apathetic”.490 Additionally Sontag argues that for some people this habituation does not occur, rather images continue to resonate, and increase their power to affect, which I consider further in the following chapter.491

Sontag argues that a habituation towards shocking images, or the possible reduction in compassion, is not cause to dispute the ethical necessity of showing such images:

That we are not totally transformed, that we can turn away, turn the page, switch the channel, does not impugn the ethical value of an assault by images. It is not a defect that we are not seared, that we do not suffer enough, when we see these images.492

These images are an invitation “to pay attention, to reflect, to learn”.493 Images remind us, she argues: “Don’t forget”.494 Thus Sontag’s argument places the agency on the viewer, it is not the responsibility of the image, or the showing of shocking images that is problematic. It is a question of whether one chooses to respond and witness.

Jenni argues that specific power of the visual image is its ability to bring the other into presence for us, bringing us into awareness of the other as subject. She argues that images can: “arouse the empathy of which most of us are capable, but that we ordinarily engage only in selected situations”.495 To witness one must see and attend to the other, and for moral motivation, understanding the other as a conscious subject is crucial. Jenni explains that the empathic affect is fleeting, that we return quickly to our daily lives and that the other is once again obscured and unreal. Further, Jenni points to how empathy is not shared equally, for example children display empathy with no restrictions to whether an object is conscious or not, and some adults have no empathy whatsoever. She also recognises that there is a capacity to empathise, but this is often limited by what she calls social conditioning and laziness. The importance of this for Jenni is that the success of graphic documentary imagery is contingent upon whether an audience is open and receptive to an empathic engagement with the animal other.

490 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 91 491 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 73 492 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 104 493 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 104 494 Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 102 495 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 5

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Jenni is therefore cautious about the use of animal liberation footage, and notes that such images may not promote or necessarily engage the empathy of the viewer. However, she also considers that they might create an underpinning for compassion, through the “vivid awareness of individual suffering”.496 She suggests that animal advocacy footage should be framed for the viewer, but carefully. Some visual presentations, she cautions, are overtly emotional and manipulative. Although she suspects that a distrust of the effects of shocking images stems not from a: “sophisticated savviness about the power of visual media, but a misplaced distrust of emotion”.497 This misplaced trust is problematic, she argues, because emotion is central in our moral life, it is the thing that indicates that what we are witnessing is wrong, it is the generator of moral thought.

Jenni considers empathic indifference as a potential reason not to show such footage, although other arguments could counter her conclusion. For example, Diamond argues that there is a necessity to condemn animal suffering regardless of whether the audience will respond empathically to animals as fellow creatures. Further, Sontag suggests that while people may become indifferent, or not see, this is not reason to avoid using images, as images appeal to us to pay attention and remember. As Jenni acknowledges, how one responds to this type of material is dependent upon what you know and think, therefore it is useful to position this type of testimony as a component of a larger attempt to engage empathy with animal subjects.

Jenni suggests that artists are perhaps better placed to represent shocking imagery, because their images are mediated.498 Her example is limited to Sue Coe, who she selects because while the work is direct and representational it does not assault the senses in the same way that audio-visual material can. In this section I consider the work of four artists working directly with either documentary methodology or found documentary material. These artists work would seem to satisfy Jenni’s demands for a testimony that is direct and representational, but do so in four very different ways.

496 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 6 497 Jenni, "The Power of the Visual." 9 498 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 20

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Sue Coe is a graphic artist and social activist, who visits slaughterhouses and factory farms, recording what she witnesses in detailed graphic drawings, paintings and prints. Coe situates her work as an act of bearing witness for animal suffering, her latest book is entitled CRUEL: Bearing Witness to Animal Exploitation.499 Donna Haraway states that: “her images have the force of William Blake’s and Pieter Breugel’s visions, and I need her flaming eyes to burnish my knowledge of hell - an inferno for which my world, including myself, is responsible”.500 Not all of the images Coe creates are reportage,501 in fact she takes the same imaginative liberties with creative expression as artists such as George Grosz, whose political drawings and prints are suitable precursors to Coe’s work. However, a great deal of her imagery is recreated from existing primary material she has drawn from direct witnessing, “I’m witnessing something real” she states, something that is not invented: “I record what’s concealed, and what people are indifferent to.”502

In creating images from experiences she has directly witnessed, Coe states that she is creating a ‘living memorial’ to the individual lives, a record, or memory that she can share with others. Coe discusses an experience in an abattoir, which seems to relate directly the image, Meat Flies, 1991 [Fig.83], where she sees a cow ready for slaughter:

Once her head was raised enough to see outside the box, but having seen the terrible sight of hanging corpses – it fell back again. All the noise is of the dripping blood and FM radio playing […] It is The Doors – a complete album side. I start to draw – and occasionally look back at the box to see her still breathing. Then I look again – I see the weight of her body has forced the milk from her udders, and it starts to flow in a small stream along with the blood […] blood and milk go down the drain. I look up and see that none of the cows had been milked, their udders are still full.503

The image is graphic and representational; it is also not a photograph. The cow in the knocking box is given expressionistic treatment; colour is only used to draw attention to the combination of blood and milk. The cow’s eyes are trained directly at the viewer. Me drawing in the slaughterhouse as a child [Fig.84] draws attention to the process of

499 Sue Coe, CRUEL: Bearing Witness to Animal Exploitation (New York. London: OR Books, 2011). 500 Haraway, When Species Meet. 334 footnote 18 501 Sue Coe describes the majority of her practice as reportage in Art of the Animal, available at http://vimeo.com/33971889. 502 Sue Coe, Art of the Animal 503 Extract from Sue Coe’s Journals, quoted in Steven Heller, "Sue Coe: Eyewitness," Eye Magazine 6 (1996), http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/sue-coe-eyewitness

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direct witnessing Coe undertakes: visiting slaughterhouses, drawing directly within them, standing in pools of blood.

Photographer Jo Anne McArthur, like Coe, visits factory farms, slaughterhouses, fur farms, zoos and other zones where animals are the ghosts in our machine [Fig. 85- 87].504 She takes poignant images that bear witness to the animals, which she makes available for animals’ advocates to use as necessary McArthur also articulates her practice as an act of bearing witness:

We must bear witness to suffering. It creates fire in our hearts, and a desire to change that suffering. Not just a desire, an absolute need. When you connect with those who suffer, you have to act. Please don’t be afraid to bear witness. It will change your life. And it will change the lives of those who suffer”.505

Her work is direct and representational and also haunting. Her focus on the faces, and the eyes, of the animals demonstrates her concern with creating an empathic link between the animal and the viewer. Her ability to make the most shocking image beautiful is sometimes disturbing, but it also mitigates the possibility that you might turn away from them.

Coe and McArthur work with direct representations of what they witness, the conceptual artist Jonathan Horowitz works with material gleaned from the Internet. His exhibition Go Vegan!506 [Fig.88-92] was held in an ex-meat works, and he left much of the original furnishing intact. This included the office lined with photographs of the owners and workers, including images of their hunting trips. Horowitz describes Go Vegan! as a combination of “art and advocacy”.507 He installed two alternating video monitors on the stainless steel butchers table in the walk in cooler, one showing PETA video of animals being slaughtered, and another showing footage of Paul and Linda McCartney set to music by Wings [Fig.89]. Norman Rockwell’s famous thanks-giving turkey is graffitied with ‘American gothic’ in red paint, subverting one of America’s iconic carnist artworks [Fig.92]. Alongside was a plinth featuring a block of tofu

504 Film: The Ghosts in our Machine, Director Liz Marshall, 2013. Jo Anne McArthur is the main human protagonist in this documentary film. 505 http://www.weanimals.org/ 506 Originally shown in Hamburg, Germany in 2002, the exhibition was restaged for the opening of Gavin Brown Enterprise, New York, 2010. 507 Candace Jackson, "Downtown Art Show Sends Meat Packing," The Wall Street Journal 8 May (2010), http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703338004575230492554828162.

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suspended in a bowl of water; a minimalist sculpture [Fig. 91], which he describes as a celebration of “this nonviolent, pure, wondrous foodstuff.”508 One room featured “200 Celebrity Vegetarians Downloaded from the Internet”. In the main room he placed a series of portraits of individual animals arranged in grids by type, which also included their naming as ‘meat’: poultry, beef [Fig.92], focusing attention on the individual animals caught amidst the ‘mass’ production of meat.

Horowitz, a vegan, states that he is interested in representing this subject in art because for a lot of people, vegetarianism seems like a ‘light political issue’.509 Horowitz explains the work as a: “broad metaphor for cruelty and senseless violence. But the work’s about the literal subject too.”510 Critics, however, were perplexed about how to read this show - was it ironic, a metaphor or a joke? Many were surprised to find out that Horowitz was quite serious about the issue.511 Horowitz states:

I think vegetarianism is a subject that some people would say is not important enough to make art about. I think a justification for political art is that it's irresponsible for artists to look the other way in the face of atrocity and injustice, and there are some situations that people across the board would say are intolerable and demand action. The vast majority of people, however, would say that eating meat doesn't fall into that category, and the vast majority of people who see the show are not going to be comfortably nodding their heads in agreement and patting themselves on their backs.512

For Horowitz meat eating is anything but a light issue, it is both “horrific and unconscionable”.513 His exhibition bears witness to the treatment of animals via the direct graphic video footage. Additionally through subverting images of meat that are often used without thought for the animals, and through celebrating the individual animals behind their names of meat.

In her recent series of photographs Animal Factories [Fig.93] Yvette Watt bears witness to the ways in which contemporary methods of farming are visible yet render the animal

508 Miranda Siegel, "Going the Way of All Flesh: Art replaces meat at Gavin Brown," New York Magazine May 7 (2010), http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/65888/. 509 Horowitz in Steven Cairns, "In Conversation: Jonathan Horowitz," Map Magazine 12 December (2010), http://mapmagazine.co.uk/9336/conversation-jonathan-horowitz/. 510 Cairns, "In Conversation: Jonathan Horowitz". 511 Jane Harris, "Dinner Conversation: Interview," Art in America June 16 (2010), http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/interviews/jonathan-horowitz-gavin-brown-go- vegan/. 512 Harris, "Dinner Conversation: Interview". 513 Harris, "Dinner Conversation: Interview".

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invisible. These large-scale documentary photographs were taken from the outside of factory farms. The buildings can potentially read as benign farm buildings in the landscape. We can’t see what they contain there are no animals present and no traces of animals. They are ‘ordinary’ buildings in the country. Watt’s photos evoke the comments by J.M. Coetzee’s character Elizabeth Costello: “I was taken on a drive around Waltham this morning. It seems a pleasant enough town. I saw no horrors, no drug-testing laboratories, no factory farms, no abattoirs. Yet I am sure they are here. They must be. They simply do not advertise themselves. They are all around us as I speak, only we do not, in a certain sense, know about it”.514

The title Animal Factories indicates the horrors these buildings contain; for anyone who has been in, or seen images of factory farming, the sounds, the smells, the heat, the crowding, the suffering of the animals comes immediately to awareness. Thus they engage with traumatic knowledge, and correspond with Rothberg’s formulation of traumatic realism, in that they reveal the ordinary and extraordinary coexisting. These ordinary settings, presented in a seemingly cool and objective photograph, create a sense of uneasiness and horror when we consider what is inside of the buildings. These photographs draw attention to the way the industry makes itself and the animals invisible. They draw attention to a potential failure to witness, and in doing so demonstrate, as Felman suggests, art’s critical ability to take the witness stand.515

Jenni’s text is pivotal to this research, however her analysis ties her concept of bearing witness to a provision of proof or representation. The artworks mentioned are very direct and representational methods of bearing witness: Coe practice engages with a direct witnessing represented through detailed graphic drawings and paintings; McArthur also directly witnesses her subject matter, taking photos which aim to emphasis the individuality of the animal; Horowitz reworks existing found imagery, creating an explicit installation that operates to witness through a variety of methods; Watt’s photographs demonstrate the invisibility of the animal, and the reality of contemporary farming.516

514 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 21 515 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 206 516 Though I would argue that Watt’s photographs operate suggestively as well, like Salcedo’s work, through the absent body/ies referenced in the work.

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The question this raises is how does my practice fit within Jenni’s concepts of bearing witness to animal suffering and death? The short answer is, it does not. It is not directly representational of what I have witnessed, nor perhaps is it respectful, in that animals are ‘represented’ through dismembered bodies, fleshy lumps and skin. Jenni’s work is guided by a caution towards representations of suffering and death that I have articulated in the context of materiality, aesthetics and the use of shocking images. This focus on bearing witness as a representation of fact, or provision of evidence, can limit the scope of what it is that art can do as testimony. I have shown in this research Salcedo’s work bears witness by absence, which represents loss. Salcedo’s work is not evidentiary or representational, although I note the inclusion in her early works of ‘relics’, which acted to link the sculptures to the real. Watt’s work bears witness through absence, and attests to the invisibility of the animal, the processes of modern farming, while simultaneously revealing this knowledge to be right before our eyes. The bodies of animals can themselves bear witness and act as memorials to their own deaths, as demonstrated by Singer’s recycled taxidermies and Baker’s photographs of roadkill. While these works expand the possibilities of visually witnessing, I also note that each of these works though has a link, or a trace, of the ‘real’ so to speak, which my work does not.

Earlier in the paper I suggested that artworks operate as testimonial objects and that testimony could exist through an object, and that in the process of bearing witness the testimony could be created in a material language. The testimonial object is the result of the working through, or bringing into language witnessed experiences. This is a different process of bearing witness than the one articulated by Jenni. This is a process that can also allow the subjective experiences of the human witness to interfere in the testimony. To allow the emotional connection and empathy experienced in witnessing animal suffering to affect the production of testimony. In the practice this was a process that focused on the development of sculptural languages to infer, rather than to explicitly recount or evidence for. This is an expansion of concept of testimony articulated by Jenni: it recognises that the one who bears witness by proxy for another, also has an experience of witnessing that can be articulated. Although, I suggest it is a territory that is fraught with traumatic knowledges and representational difficulties, which I will discuss in the following chapter.

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I acknowledge that the research focus articulates the one experience of this process, through my practice. However this focus has allowed me to investigate and thus tease out issues that might have broader consequences for critical arts practice. For example, how testimonial representations can be entangled by the various prohibitions and restrictions on representation of suffering. Additionally, how the pressure or obligation one feels to ‘get it right’ for the sake of the animal, raises the representational stakes.

Jenni’s focus on documentary or evidentiary representation provides no guidance for a broader range of practices engaging with witnessing. As Jenni suggests, bearing witness to animal suffering and death provides “conundrums and choices” that just “witnessing and remembering does not”.517 Therefore to frame or provide guidance for the practice, I return to the broader discourse in relation to depictions and representations of animals outlined in chapter two.518 These critical positions drew attention to the need to be attentive to the animal, and witnessing is an integral component in this. Further they suggested that attentiveness, therefore witnessing, should extend beyond the animal to the wider systems of control over animal bodies, and ideological systems that structure the way we consider animals. The use of the actual animal body to witness for violence towards animals would not be supported by this position; with the exception of those works that subvert or turn meaning, works that use the animal body without supporting those systems that perpetuate violence and domination towards animals.

There is the possibility that testimonial artforms might produce troubling depictions of animals, such as my representations of meat and flesh, and I draw support here from Baker’s defence of artistic experiments that produce compromising bodies and rhetorics, work: “that is, at least at times, characterized by (and welcoming of) contradictions, failures, uncertainties, and ambiguities”.519 Further, Baker argues that artists should be trusted to work with representations of the animal, despite these compromises and potential theoretical difficulties, because:

The look of the animal, the visual representation of the animal, still matters, still figures, and it’s the thing that art … can handle most persuasively. It

517 Jenni, "Bearing Witness to Animal Suffering." 28 518 As discussed in chapter two 519 Baker, Artist | Animal. Steve Baker is here considering the visual representation of the non-human animal as a “contested territory in contemporary visual culture”. 235

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can play its own forms and conventions, extend them, render them tenuous and porous. To do this, the ‘figure’ of the animal-body-in-art needs the ability to move back and forth … seeping through, overspilling and generally making a bit of a mess of things. And to do that, it needs contemporary art’s openness.520

3.11 conclusion

Bearing witness for an other was examined as a troubled site: one can bear witness by proxy, one cannot speak for the other, yet one must speak for the other. Bearing witness by proxy is provisional and limited, and the limitations and failures must be acknowledged. I have considered artistic testimony and bearing witness by proxy through the work of Doris Salcedo, who represents violence and disappearance through absence in her works. Through her work the opportunities to bear witness visually are expanded beyond the general meaning of testimony as direct representation, evidence, or reportage.

I argued that art has a role to bring violence and suffering into knowledge and understanding, although how this is done, and what respect is owed to the primary witness is contentious. Bearing witness to animal suffering and death, like that of human suffering, also requires a careful negotiation of representative practices.

I have also alluded to elements of the traumatic that are often intertwined with witnessing and the following chapter considers these concerns in more detail as they affect animals’ advocates and witnessing. This is in order to concentrate on the distinctive features of witnessing in the context of animal suffering.

520 Baker, Artist | Animal. 228. Rothberg also considers art’s role to include failure, an ‘afunctionality’ Rothberg, Traumatic Realism. 46

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4. TESTIMONY AND TRAUMATIC KNOWLEDGE

4.1 introduction

As the previous chapter has shown, witness theory can be developed to consider witnessing animal suffering and death. However, the specificities of bearing witness to animal suffering and death are, as Jenni’s research argues, only just starting to be considered. Witness theory can frame the concept of witnessing for animals, however it does not account for the specificity of this type of witness and testimony. I draw attention to two specificities in the creation of testimony: the characteristic of trauma as it affects animals’ advocates, and the struggle of developing a language of atrocities for animal suffering. This chapter explores these concepts and relates them to my practice, as it is in my practice that these key questions of trauma and language arose, directing and necessitating the research.

Firstly, this chapter considers how trauma impacts on animals’ advocates. It does this in order to situate the type of traumatic knowledges that can modify testimony, and further to articulate the broader context in which one might offer testimony. Secondly, the chapter considers whether the production of testimony is affected by a lack of common language, or lack of shared understanding between the advocate and the broader community. I consider whether the use of dreaded comparisons521 is symptomatic of both a paucity of languages to speak of animal suffering and death, and the inability to find common languages that speak across an impassable divide. Finally

521 The term is in common use and might originate from Marjorie Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (New York: Mirror Books, 1996).

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this chapter speculates how trauma operated in the development of the testimonial objects in the practice.

4.2 trauma and animals’ advocates

In this section I address the question of how trauma can affect an animals’ advocate. There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that animals’ advocates experience trauma as a result of what they witness, yet there has been a certain reluctance in the advocacy community to engage with this topic. Firstly this is because of the emphasis placed, quite correctly, on the suffering and death of animals, the necessity to maintain focus on the animals. Secondly, there is a concern not to be seen as an “emotionally unbalanced bunny-hugger”.522

The common articulation of trauma is a shocking event or experience that is experienced by the individual themselves. This is a dominant interpretation of trauma in the Holocaust literature. Why then consider the traumatic as something that occurs to an animals’ advocate? An animals’ advocate is not subject to the experiences of contemporary farming and other atrocities committed towards animals. However they are vigilant witnesses to these events through audio-visual materials, social media and activism. Does this mean trauma is associated with an over-identification with animal suffering and a vicarious victimhood? This research suggests that this is not the case: a range of triggers can bring about trauma for an animals’ advocate and it is a legitimate issue for animals’ advocacy movements.

Taimie L. Bryant’s text Trauma, Law and Advocacy for Animals523 covers recent legislative acts, trauma and an argument for animal rights, however I focus on Bryant’s articulation of the causes and symptoms of trauma related stress and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I supplement her text with supporting material drawn from a broad range of sources. Bryant argues that animals’ advocates can be affected by trauma through witnessing atrocities inflicted on animals in food production: a continuing event of subjugation and horrific violence. Further this trauma is compounded by a lack of ability to effect change. This is often accompanied by a self-initiated demand to

522 Regan, Empty Cages. 3 523 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals."

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continue to witness on behalf of the animals who suffer, no matter how traumatising this witnessing may be: there is a necessity to see and to know.

Bryant explains that trauma is often ignored or minimised by advocates and activists because it is understood as a personal frailty. Alternatively it is considered too self- centred to focus on one’s own psychological health when there is so much physical and emotional violence inflicted on animals. Bryant wants to draw attention to trauma, because it is her contention that traumatic symptoms are problematic for the end cause. She argues that advocates cannot engage fully and productively in activism without becoming aware of, and managing, their trauma.524

Bryant argues that trauma is caused, not only by knowing about the violence to animals, but also the normalisation of this situation in everyday life. Once one has witnessed the violence committed towards fellow creatures - meat, diary and leather products are no longer simply food and clothing products: they are flesh products bodies and parts of beings. This in effect means that advocates are surrounded in day-to-day life by the constant reminders of the atrocities against animals. Advertisements and children’s books show unrealistic pictures of farms: happy cows in the fields, pigs smiling and chickens roaming free. Supermarket shelves are filled with parts of animal bodies, and friends and family eat these foods in front of you. CAAN (Carnism Awareness and Action Network) states: “vegans, who are constant witnesses to the horrors of carnism, must live in a world that daily offends their deepest sensibilities”.525

Beyond the continued witnessing of animal suffering Bryant also demonstrates how antagonistic relations with carnists cause further trauma. Discussions between advocates and carnists are often conducted across what seems like an impassable divide. She argues that advocates feel compelled to be in command of a range of philosophical, nutritional, environment and zoological arguments to defend their position. Every conversation or argument about the use of animals becomes a necessity to defend or propose a position to the best of your abilities, on behalf of animals — so the stakes are high. W.J.T. Mitchell demonstrates how an argument for respectful treatment towards animals results in a sudden interest (on behalf of the carnist) into the rights of plants,

524 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." and also supported by jones, Aftershock. 525 http://www.carnism.org/2012-05-08-16-39-52/carnism-induced-trauma

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and then sometimes inanimate objects.526 Bryant argues that advocates should not have to defend their position, but rather Bentham’s contention, which I have already referred to, should suffice: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”.527

This impassable divide, which I also consider later in terms of language, causes problems for advocates who feel a responsibility, obligation or necessity to bear witness. Bryant supports Jenni’s contention that testimony or witnessing to animal suffering is often offered to an audience that is dismissive, and within a hostile environment. Bryant argues that this lack of audience can further traumatise an advocate.528 Both witnessing suffering, and the societal dismissal of one’s testimony causes trauma. As discussed in the previous chapter, testimony requires a responsive and receptive audience. Bryant thus summarises the affects of trauma on the advocate:

Social justice activists … are at particular risk of traumatic stress because it is in the nature of such activism to be exposed regularly to circumstances that we now know are traumatizing. Regular witnessing of violence directed against others, unsuccessful attempts to report or to address that violence, and having to contend with others’ denial of the very reality of claims of violence can be devastating. Advocates for animals are vulnerable to traumatic stress because of their ever-present awareness of the extent of violence against animals.529

To explore and support Bryant’s arguments I looked for broader references on the subject of animals’ advocates’ trauma. Laura S. Brown’s essay Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma,530 provides a critique on the dominant theories of trauma. She notes that in 1980 the American Psychiatric Association stated that the traumatic event was an event: “outside the range of usual human experience”531. As a therapist advocating for women suffering from sexual trauma, she was unable to argue in court that her patients experienced trauma despite the fact they clearly demonstrated affects of post traumatic stress disorder. Sexual assaults and incest were

526 W.J.T. Mitchell, Foreword: Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites (Chicago: London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). 527 Jeremy Bentham, Chapter XVII, Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Justice, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. 1789, Note 122. 528 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 67, 63, Bryant draws on research from Jeffrey C Alexander et al ‘Towards a Theory of Cultural Trauma’ in Cultural Trauma and Collective identity’ vol 1 issue 8. 2004, in which trauma is constructed socially where experiences are not validated by the wider community. 529 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 136 530 Caruth, Trauma. 531 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 94

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considered to be within the realm of human experience. Brown argues that these definitions of trauma are created by the dominant groups, and encompass narrowly defined experiences and events: “The private, secret, insidious traumas to which a feminist analysis draws attention are more often than not those events in which the dominant culture and its forms and institutions are expressed and perpetuated.”532 Brown advocates for a feminist analysis of trauma, which she argues would provide a clearer understanding of what is called insidious trauma.533 Insidious trauma is the traumatic effect of oppression, or a situation that might not threaten the body but causes violence to the mind.

The American Psychiatric Association revised the definition of trauma in 1994 to become any event: “involving ‘actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others’”.534 The threat to the physical integrity of an other is something animals’ advocates are exposed to when witnessing through audio- visual or other methods, the suffering of animals.535 This position is supported by social activist and animals’ advocate pattrice jones who states;

even the stringent diagnostic criteria for PTSD acknowledge that witnessing death, injury, or the threat thereof to another can be a traumatic experience. In fact, some researchers have found that witnessing - and being helpless to stop or prevent - harm to another can have a greater traumatic effect than being a victim of violence oneself.536 jones coins the term ‘Aftershock’537 to describe the after-effect of a traumatic event, in order to articulate the “reverberations of traumatic events endured by activists”.538 She describes post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] as a normal reaction to extraordinary experiences.539 The book Aftershock focuses on recovery, but jones notes that while general trauma focuses on coming to terms with and integrating trauma into one’s worldview this is almost impossible for an animals’ advocate. It is the ‘reality’ of everyday life, Jones contends, that continues to inflict trauma on the animal advocate:

532 Laura S. Brown, "Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma," in Trauma: explorations in memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995). 102 533 Brown, "Not Outside the Range." 107 534 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 94 535 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 95-6 536 jones, Aftershock. 93 537 jones, Aftershock. 538 jones, Aftershock. 65 539 jones, Aftershock. 75-76

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“everyday life can be similarly nightmarish for those who have undone the socialization that leads us to see cadavers as ‘meat’”.540 Because she states: “vegans, unlike flesh- eaters, never stop noticing the violence inherent in meat”.541

Psychiatrist/psychotherapist and traumatologist Paul Valent argues that the distinction between primary post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and secondary traumatic stress disorder (STSD) is not a difference in the affect of the trauma, but a terminological distinction about whether or not the person was exposed to the event.542 Valent demonstrates that STSD affects people who are put in situations in which they are faced with trying to help someone or save someone, and have those efforts fail. While Valent is specifically talking about human-to-human interactions; carers and helpers of human victims, his statements are as relevant to the situation of animals’ advocates. Animals’ advocates are put in a position where they try to help animals, these efforts fail, and they are constantly reminded of the failure of those efforts. The failure of these efforts leads to a type of STSD that has been called compassion fatigue:543

In the traumatic situation where victims could not be saved or properly cared for, compassion strain reaches traumatic proportions and may be called compassion fatigue. It includes […] severe anguish and intense guilt associated with the meaning of not having prevented […] harm or death. The distress and trauma of not having done enough to avert suffering or death is a common secondary stress and secondary trauma response in helpers544

The psychological and physiological symptoms of compassion fatigue are: “sadness, grief, depression, anxiety, dread, horror, fear, rage, and shame; intrusive imagery in nightmares, flash backs, and images; numbing and avoidance phenomena; cognitive shifts in viewing the world and oneself, such as suspiciousness, cynicism, and poor self- esteem; and guilt for survival and enjoying oneself”.545 These are the same trauma symptoms that are experienced by sufferers of primary post traumatic stress disorder.

540 jones, Aftershock. 90 541 jones, Aftershock. 149 542 Charles Figley in Paul Valent, "Diagnosis and Treatment of Helper Stresses, Traumas, and illnesses, in Treating Compassion Fatigue ", Treating Compassion Fatigue(2002). 19 543 Compassion Fatigue is a specific disorder caused by STSD, Figley in Valent, "Helper Stresses". 19 544 Valent, "Helper Stresses". 26 545 Valent, "Helper Stresses". 18

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Bryant notes that people affected by PTSD546 react differently to stimuli, they are prone to suffer:

intrusive thoughts about the violence; hypersensitivity to triggers of thoughts and memories of the violence; volatile personal relationships; persistent and involuntary emotional numbing or unregulated emotional extremes of outbursts and low affect; severe mistrust of others; and a strong perceived need to protect oneself from those who would harm or take advantage of the person.547

They also suffer from Hypermnesia which is a strong recall or vivid recall of memories, as well as these memories being ‘garbled’ by the brain that does not know how process these traumatic memories.548 Valent also notes exhaustion, accompanied by feelings of powerlessness and a feeling that no amount of effort will allow one to succeed in one’s goals. Concern and awareness about the trauma facing animals’ advocates is gradually gaining attention, CAAN’s website notes that:

Secondary traumatic stress (STS), sometimes referred to as “compassion fatigue” or “vicarious traumatization,” is the trauma experienced by those who witness violence toward others. STS is virtually ubiquitous among vegans, who both witness the violence of animal agriculture and contend with the denial or disregarding of such violence by the dominant culture. STS, when unrecognized and untreated, can lead to depression, despair, and ultimately burnout.549

Valent states that being listened to, and having a social system that supports the individual, is an essential part of managing these symptoms. This is unfortunately not always possible for animals’ advocates; often their testimony attempts to cross the impassable divide and is met with dismissal or argument. Laub argues that if one discusses traumatic experiences: “without being truly heard or truly listened to, the telling might itself be lived as a return of the trauma”.550 For Laub traumatic testimony is a process of working through that requires a listener, so that the story can be projected outwards. Laub states that:

Bearing witness to a trauma is, in fact, a process that includes the listener. For the testimonial process to take place, there needs to be a bonding, the intimate and total presence of an other — in the position of one who hears. Testimonies are not monologues; they cannot take place in solitude. The

546 Bryant does not distinguish between PTSD and STSD. 547 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 102 548 Bryant, "Trauma, Law, and Advocacy for Animals." 103 549 CAAN website, http://www.carnism.org/2012-05-08-16-39-52/vegan-support 550 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 67

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witnesses are talking to somebody; to somebody they have been waiting for for a long time.551

As these different terminological uses of STS, compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatisation, PTSD reveal this is a new territory, and the specifics and terminology of trauma in relation to animals’ advocates is still being formulated. CAAN, established by the psychologist Melanie Joy argues for a specific term for the trauma affecting animals’ advocates:

it is our assertion that carnism, like other atrocities, causes mass traumatization of not only the primary victims (farmed animals) but of secondary victims (humans) as well. For clarity and accuracy, we describe the traumatization resulting from carnism as carnism-induced trauma.552

I return attention briefly to trauma theory as outlined in the previous chapter, in order to contextualise this in relation to carnism-induced trauma. The dominant trope, as exemplified by Caruth’s theory, positions the traumatic as an experience inaccessible to the conscious mind or language. It is Vogler’s contention that the dominance of Holocaust studies in trauma theory has meant that little attention had been turned to other types of atrocities, and the different affects of trauma, which is the case for trauma affecting animals’ advocates. Trezise’s proposal that the difficulty of speaking might lie in the difficulty of expressing one’s experience in a language that has common meaning, and finding an audience willing to listen, parallels the situation of the animals’ advocate.

The trauma affecting animals’ advocates is complex: it is built on the shocking experiences of witnessing, often through repeated experiences, which can increase the affective response. It is compounded by an insidious trauma, the daily awareness of suffering towards animals. Attempting to convey the experiences of what one has witnessed, to convey it with the urgency and moral weight one feels about the atrocity, reveals a poverty of language in which to do this. Further, opportunities to testify to one’s experiences are often met with hostility or rejection.

Trauma operated in my practice in two distinct ways, firstly the emergence of disassociated knowledge into the practice, and secondly in the problem of finding a

551 Felman and Laub, Testimony. 71 552 CAAN website, http://www.carnism.org/2012-05-08-16-39-52/carnism-induced-trauma

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sculptural language to speak of this knowledge, to testify to it. In the second case, I consider that Trezise’s idea is relevant to this research. In the following sections I explore the difficulty of developing a testimonial sculptural language.

4.3 atrocities

In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka553

Social movements have historically borrowed languages from previous movements. In Britain for example, the movement for the abolition of child labour (in particular chimney sweeps) drew on the rhetoric of the abolition movement for slavery. To do so, they created comparisons between the sooty little boys and little black boys (slaves).554 The ‘dreaded comparison’, as I have previously mentioned, is a term used to describe the comparison of animal suffering with situations such as slavery and the Holocaust. This section explores the use of this dreaded comparison in order to consider how it demonstrates problems of finding or creating suitable languages to bear witness to animal suffering.

Charles Patterson’s book, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust555 infers connections between the Holocaust and the animal situation.556 His book broadly examines the treatment of animals and the vilification of groups of humans via association with particular types of animals. Patterson links historically the industrialisation of the slaughterhouses to the work of the Nazi’s, and the technologies of animal breading to eugenics. 557 A large section of the book includes testimony of survivors of the Holocaust who have become animals’ advocates, and it is this aspect of his work that is more compelling. Alex Hershaft, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and

553 Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Letter Writer," in The Seance (NY: Avon Books, 1964). 233. Isaac B. Singer, writer and holocaust survivor was also a prominent Jewish vegetarian who included vegetarian themes in his work. 554 Lynn Thomson: “But then he was not always black”; The Chimney Sweep in the British Social Imagination 1785-1875, College of Fine Arts, Sydney, 1996. 555 Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002). 556 Also see David Sztybel, "Can the Treatment of Nonhuman Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?," Ethics and the Environment Spring, no. 11 (2006). 557 Patterson argues that the moving assembly line that turned the live animal into meat products (dis- assembly), influenced Ford’s industrialisation of manufacturing (assembly), and in turn influenced the Germans.

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founder of the Farm Animal Reform Movement, statement is indicative of how the dreaded comparison is used:

In the midst of our high-tech, ostentatious, hedonistic lifestyle, among the dazzling monuments to history, art, religion, and commerce, there are the ‘black boxes’. These are the biomedical research laboratories, factory farms, and slaughterhouses - faceless compounds where society conducts its dirty business of abusing and killing innocent, feeling beings. These are our Dachaus, our Buchenwalds, our Birkeaus. Like the good German burghers, we have a fair idea of what goes on there, but we don’t want any reality checks558

Richard Iveson states this comparison between the bystanders who failed to witness the Holocaust, who turned away and did not see, with people who ignore the issues of factory farming, is one of the main reasons the comparison is considered to be problematic. People take offence because it can create guilt and shame, and reveals a community based on: “the guilt of exclusion, and marked by a failure to witness”.559

Other examples in Patterson’s book include second-generation survivor Lucy Kaplan, who states she was drawn to animals’ advocate work because: “of the similarities I sensed between institutionalised animal exploitation and the Nazi genocide”.560 Another second-generation survivor, Anne Muller, who with her husband runs an animal protection organisation, draws the comparison with the tacit complicity of those who live and work in the camps:

For most of the society, life was lived as if none of this was happening. People had regular jobs, concentration camp workers went off to work in the morning and came home at night to loving families, a home-cooked meal, a warm bed. It was a job for them as it is for the animal experimenter, the trapper, game agent, furrier, or the factory farm worker.561

First and second generation survivors describe how their awareness of what happened in the camps have propelled their compassion towards animals. Although as Albert Kaplan declares:

The vast majority of Holocaust survivors are carnivores, no more concerned about animals’ suffering than were the Germans concerned about Jews’

558 Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. 145 559 Richard Iveson, "Animal Oppression and the Holocaust Analogy: A Summary of Controversy," zoogenesis(2012), http://zoogenesis.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/animal-oppression-and-the-holocaust- analogy-a-summary-of-controversy/. 560 Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. 146 561 Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. 140

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suffering. What does it all mean? I will tell you. It means that we have learned nothing from the Holocaust. Nothing. It was all in vain. There is no hope.562

The comparison is also used by animal advocacy campaigns and artworks. PETA, no stranger to controversy, experienced widespread backlash for its campaign ‘A Holocaust on Your Plate’ in 2003.563 This was a travelling display of posters, in which images of the Holocaust were juxtaposed with images from factory farms and slaughterhouses. These images were examples of ‘shocking images’, which do not offer respect to either the human or animal victims. In one image/poster entitled: ‘The Final Indignity’, juxtaposed a photo from a liberation of a camp - of a pile of naked dead bodies of humans, with a pile of dead pigs. The campaign caused controversy in the US, and it was banned by the High Court in Germany for trivialising the fate of the victims of the Holocaust, and the European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban. PETA declared that they found the controversy curious: “because the display only renders the humans’ suffering ‘banal and trivial’ if the animals’ suffering is considered banal and trivial. Which is the whole point of the display”.564 This overlooks the fact that the majority of people do not consider human and animal suffering as equal. Further, it completely overlooks the necessity to bear witness with sensitivity and respect to both atrocities — the ‘final indignity’ was the sensationalised reproduction of these images on posters and billboards.

Philosopher Corinne Painter argues for the relevance of the analogy, in The Analogy between the Holocaust and Animal Factory Farming: A Defence.565 Painter argues that:

non-human animals have inherent value that makes raising them as food, particularly in the conditions present within modern factory farms

562 Albert Kaplan in Patterson, Eternal Treblinka. 167 563 http://www.peta.org/blog/peta-germanys-holocaust-display-banned/ For an insightful discussion of the controversy see: Claire Kim, ""In Relation to Animals, All People are Nazis": Holocaust/Slavery Analogies in the Animal Movement," in American Sociological Association: Annual Meeting (SocINDEX, 2009). Sherry F Colb, "The European Court of Human Rights Upholds German ban on PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” Campaign: Lessons for Animal Activists and for Animal Product Consumers," Verdict: Legal Analysis and Comment(2012), http://verdict.justia.com/2012/11/28/the- european-court-of-human-rights-upholds-german-ban-on-petas-holocaust-on-your-plate-campaign. and Richard C. King, "Troubling Images: PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” and the Limits of Image Events," Enculturation 6, no. 2 (2009), http://www.enculturation.net/6.2/king. 564 http://www.peta.org/blog/peta-germanys-holocaust-display-banned/ 565 Corinne Painter, "The Analogy between the Holocaust and Animal Factory Farming: A Defence," JCAS: Journal for Critical Animal Studies 12, no. 1 (2014).

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philosophically indefensible in a way that is relevantly similar to - though certainly not identical with - the indefensibility of the Holocaust.566

Painter contends that those that are opposed to the analogy are either misinterpreting it, or rejecting it on grounds that are speciesist. The idea that the Holocaust provides a language, a rhetoric for argument, finds agreement in Painter’s analysis. The Holocaust is “familiar and emotionally charged language and imagery”567 that can be used to engage with the argument regarding injustices towards animals. Both forms of suffering, animal and human are based on ideologies that are, Painter argues, defenceless, and it is at this juncture that the analogy can work. The analogy between the Holocaust and animal suffering should be used: “as a weapon in our fight against non-human animal injustice […] the repugnancy and moral outrage that most people feel toward the Holocaust should also be felt toward the practice of factory farming”.568 Iveson while more cautious about maintaining the distinctions between the Holocaust and animal suffering also agrees that the comparison is: “strategically important (as too is the comparison with slavery) insofar as it opens; ‘the question of the animal’ to the related concerns of shame and guilt”.569

The comparison with the Holocaust is found in the visual arts, sometimes as an undercurrent and other times quite overtly. The Australian animals’ advocate and painter Jo Frederiks, works directly with the analogy of the Holocaust, creating a link between the concentrations camps, Nazi ideology and the treatment of animals. Her latest exhibition is explicitly entitled The Animal Holocaust [Fig.94]. In the painting featured on her invitation, entitled Every. Day. [Fig.95] a flock of sheep, move up a widened railway track towards a building emblazoned with a Nazi swastika. This is explicit ‘take no prisoners imagery’, and is firmly and unapologetically animal liberationist. Her work is powerfully demonstrative. She uses shocking imagery to convey a very simple message: this is wrong. Her work is premised on the idea that, as an audience we have agreed that the Holocaust is wrong, and that it she is using a pre- existing vernacular symbolism of an ideological problem. The image on the right of her invitation entitled The greatest weapon on earth is the table fork, [Fig.96] shows both the split between the individual live animal, and its iconic remains, the skull:

566 Painter, "A Defence". 35 567 Painter, "A Defence". 48 568 Painter, "A Defence". 58 569 Iveson, "Animal Oppression and the Holocaust Analogy".

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surrounded by barbed wire, and the knife and fork, encrusted with blood, all set on a blood red background, one would be hard pressed to misinterpret this work.

Sue Coe has also used the comparison with the Holocaust, in her print entitled Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they are only animals [Fig.97]. This quote has been widely attributed to Adorno, although there seems to be no specific reference to it in his writings. It is more likely a paraphrase of this evocative passage:

The possibility of pogroms is decided in the moment when the gaze of a fatally-wounded animal falls on a human being. The defiance, which with he repels this gaze — ‘after all, it's only an animal' — reappears irresistibly in cruelties done to human beings, the perpetuators having again and again to reassure themselves that it is 'only an animal,' because they could never fully believe this even of animals. […] What was not seen as human and yet is human, is made a thing, so that its stirrings can no longer refute the manic gaze570.

Coe is as explicit as Frederiks, although her technique is more graphic, illustrative and emotive than Frederiks’ realism. This print, read from left to right, shows cows, sheep and pigs in transport, being pushed and kicked towards the slaughter. It is a powerful expressionistic nightmare scene. The woodblock technique that Coe uses (widely used by the German expressionists in the early 20th century) evokes Käthe Kollwitz’s haunting and defiantly sentimental work of suffering and death. Coe notes the problems of using the comparison, but also indicates its necessity, expressing the frustrations of communication:

My annoyance is exacerbated by the fact that the suffering I am witnessing now cannot exist on its own, it has to fall into the hierarchy of a ‘lesser animal suffering’ […] I am annoyed that I don’t have more power in communicating what I’ve seen apart from stuttering: ‘It’s like the Holocaust’.571

One of the many issues taken against the comparison with the Holocaust is the comparison of humans to animals. This is something that many animals’ advocates consider unproblematic because they are intent on dismantling speciesist divisions.

570 Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections From a Damaged Life (London: Verso, 1978). 105 571 Sue Coe quoted in Iveson, "Animal Oppression and the Holocaust Analogy".

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Kim Socha is more cautious, in The ‘Dreaded Comparisons” and Speciesism572 she observes that the hostility to these correlations is in part due to the need to keep what happens to humans, and what happens to animals, separate. For Socha, a Critical Animals Study scholar, the intersectionality of CAS means that ‘dreaded comparisons’ are about emancipation from oppression despite your species belonging. However Socha cautions that speciesism is a relatively new concept, and many in the broader community do not understand this perspective. Many see “human animalisation as vilification”.573 There are good reasons, she argues, to use the comparisons, but they must be used with care: “The dreaded comparisons can work in select activist contexts when there is time for historical perspective and careful word choice”.574 Socha also cautions that the comparisons are also inappropriate because: “Generations of sentient beings are born so that another species can slaughter and ingest them. In this way, the trans-species comparisons, while sometimes suitable, are far from ideal”.575

Iveson also makes this point stating that while there are possible relations between the atrocities: “what I would suggest is their necessary interrelation or reciprocity, that is, both their absolute historical singularity and their indissociability. While not an analogy, therefore, there nevertheless remains a relation.”576 He further argues that it is not that the comparison is ‘inaccurate or irrelevant’ but it is inappropriate to both the Holocaust survivors and the animal, he cites David Wood to elaborate;

If there is a worry that the distinctiveness of the human gets lost in such a comparison, there is an equal worry that the refusal of such analogies perpetuates our all-too-human blindness to the systematic violence we habitually inflict on other creatures.577

J.M. Coetzee uses the ‘dreaded comparison’ in his appeal for a changing awareness of the animal situation. In an editorial about factory farming, he starts by appealing: “To any thinking person, it must be obvious there is something terribly wrong with relations

572 Kim Socha, "The 'Dreaded Comparisons' and Speciesim: Leveling the Hierarchy of Suffering," in Confronting Animal Exploitation: Grassroots Essays on Liberation and Veganism, ed. Kim Socha and Sarahjane Blum (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company Inc, Publishers, 2013). 573 Socha, "The 'Dreaded Comparisons' and Speciesim." 229 574 Socha, "The 'Dreaded Comparisons' and Speciesim." 237 575 Socha, "The 'Dreaded Comparisons' and Speciesim." 226 576 Iveson, "Animal Oppression and the Holocaust Analogy". 577 David Wood quoted in Iveson, "Animal Oppression and the Holocaust Analogy".

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between human beings and the animals they rely on for food”.578 He continues, over the last 100-150 years farming of animals has moved from the traditional farm, which he assures us was not without its brutality, to an industrial production process. Although we mistreat animals in other aspects of our lives (Coetzee cites animal laboratories and the fur trade) it is the food industry that makes animals into products, and on a scale exceeds any of the other problems. He argues that people use and want these animal products, while simultaneously feeling a ‘little queasy’ if they think of what happens. Therefore, he states, people avoid considering it, or seeing it. History, Coetzee states, has given us a warning about what happens when we treat any living being as a unit:

This warning came so loud and clear that one would have thought it impossible to ignore. It came when, in the 20th century, a group of powerful and bloody-minded men in Germany hit on the idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter - or what they preferred to call the processing - of human beings.

Of course we cried out in horror when we found out what they had been up to. What a terrible crime to treat human beings like cattle - if we had only known beforehand. But our cry should more accurately have been: what a terrible crime to treat human beings like units in an industrial process. And that cry should have had a postscript: what a terrible crime - come to think of it, a crime against nature - to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process.579

Coetzee goes on to state that while people are appalled by what happens they take no personal meaningful action towards changing. Therefore one of the tasks of the animal rights movements is to model how it is possible to live a life without animal products, and without personal sacrifice, he says: “The only sacrifices in the whole picture, in fact, are being made by non-human animals.”580

Coetzee’s personal use of the dreaded comparison is also featured in his literary work. The following section considers Coetzee’s character Elizabeth Costello for two reasons. Firstly, to demonstrate the traumatic wounding caused through witnessing animal

578 J.M. Coetzee, "Exposing the beast: factory farming must be called to the slaughterhouse," The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 February 2007. also published as J.M. Coetzee, "Animals can't speak for themselves - it's up to us to do it," The Age, February 22nd 2007. This editorial was an extract of Coetzee’s speech at the opening of Voiceless: I feel therefore I am at the Sherman Galleries. Brian Sherman, husband of gallery owner Gene Sherman, is the founder of Voiceless: The Animal Protection Institute, which creates awareness for animals suffering in factory farms, with a particular emphasis on animal law. J.M. Coetzee is an active patron of the organisation. 579 Coetzee, "Exposing the beast" 580 Coetzee, "Exposing the beast."

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suffering, and secondly to explore how the dreaded comparison reveals a ‘difficulty of reality’ that occupies the attention of philosopher Cora Diamond.

4.4 the wounded animal

The fictional character Elizabeth Costello appears within J.M Coetzee’s Tanner Lectures.581 In these lectures Costello bears witness to the ongoing atrocities committed against animals and, I suggest, demonstrates the problem inherent in communication if languages of atrocities are not shared. Coetzee gives voice to the frustrating and hurtful conversations animals’ advocates have with carnists: over the dinner table, with friends and relatives, and within academia. Frustrating because of: the difficulties of communicating across the boundaries of normative behaviour; the lack of a willing and empathic audience, as Costello states: “Discussion is possible only when there is common ground”.582 Demonstrating Jenni’s idea of the ‘task’ and ‘labour’ of bearing witness, and attesting to the traumatic affect of witnessing to an unreceptive audience, Coetzee’s text reveals the wounding and trauma to the animals’ advocate through both the knowledge of what they have witnessed and the lack of community to bear witness with. In the final section of Coetzee’s lecture this is made explicit:

[Costello’s son John] ‘I haven't had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about the animal business’

She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. ‘A better explanation’ she says, ‘is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas’.

‘I don't follow. What is it that you can't say?’

‘It’s that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet everyday I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the

581 The Tanner Lectures, 1997, reproduced in The Lives of Animals. Coetzee’s lectures introduced two short stories in which the character Elizabeth Costello, an ‘author of some repute’, gives a guest lecture and a seminar at Appleton College where her son is a member of faculty. Costello’s lecture and seminar concerned the treatment of animals in philosophy and poetry and the narrative includes Costello’s interactions with various protagonists during her short stay. 582 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 66

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evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses they have bought for money.’583

To try to articulate her horror and make it understandable to her son, Costello explains that it would be the same as going into a friend’s house and seeing that they owned lamps made of human skin and soap made from human bodies. How can this be, Costello questions: “Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?”584 It is extraordinary to consider that people one knows, your family and your friends, are also participants in the atrocities against animals: “‘Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?’”,585 she states in tears. In this brief section Coetzee gives voice to trauma as it affects animals’ advocates. Through the character of Costello, he demonstrates that trauma caused by what you know, and further by trying to reconcile this extraordinary and traumatic knowledge with others acceptance of the situation as ordinary and normal.

The fictional Costello is a visiting lecturer who presents her first lecture on the subject of animals and philosophy, and to introduce the topic she advises that:

I will pay you the honor of skipping a recital of the horrors of their lives and deaths. Though I have no reason to believe that you have at the forefront of your minds what is being done to animals at this moment in production facilities (I hesitate to call them farms any longer), in abattoirs, in trawlers, in laboratories, all over the world, I will take it that you concede me the rhetorical power to evoke these horrors and bring them home to you with adequate force, and leave it at that, reminding you only that the horrors I here omit are nevertheless at the centre of this lecture.586

Costello presents the issue as something her audience knows, although does not necessarily think about. It is something she could summon, if necessary, to bring forward to presence, but leaves in the imagination of the individuals; as Derrida says, “Everybody knows”.587 Rather than feel compelled to describe the atrocities, Costello brings what ‘everybody knows’ to their minds, reminding them in the process, that they are aware of the horrors and injustices committed to animals.

583 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 584 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 585 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 586 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 19 587 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26

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In her lecture Costello makes the ‘dreaded comparison’ between atrocities committed on animals and the Holocaust a number of times. Initially to discuss the abstraction of death, which is when death is so numerous that it numbs the mind. Further she alludes to the complicity of indifference and the avoidance of looking in relation to animals. Stating that people who lived near the concentration camp Treblinka:

said they did not know what was going on in the camp; and that, while in a general way they might have guessed what was going on, they did not know for sure; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake”.588

Treblinka, she says was not unusual, there were thousands of camps, not all of them death camps, but camps filled with horror. Costello positions this indifference, similarly to Dean, as a “certain willed ignorance”.589 Costello then directly aligns the knowing and not knowing about the concentration camps, to knowing but not seeing the suffering of animals: “They are all around us as I speak, only we do not, in a special sense, know about them”.590 In order to emphasis the scale of animal suffering she states quite bluntly: “Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world of the purpose of killing them.”591 Costello acknowledges this comparison is a cheap and divisive point, and that she would rather find a ‘way of speaking’ that does not divide the audience into the ‘saved and the damned’.592 However, despite being an author she is unable to get language to make her claim.

Coetzee’s lectures provoked attentive responses by Cora Diamond and Stanley Cavell, who explore what Costello’s dreaded comparison reveals in greater detail. Diamond focuses on Costello as one of four case studies in a lecture presented in honour of

588 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 19 589 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 20 590 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 21 591 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 21 592 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 22

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Stanley Cavell.593 Her lecture concentrates on the ‘difficulty of reality’,594 a term she borrows from John Updike to describe an experience, which is:

resistant to our thinking it, or possibly to be painful in its inexplicability, difficult in that way, or perhaps awesome and astonishing in its inexplicability. We take things so. And the things we take so may simply not, to others, present the kind of difficulty of being hard or impossible or agonising to get one’s mind around.595

Cora Diamond argues that responses to Coetzee’s text have picked up upon Costello’s connection between the Holocaust and the treatment of animals as an analogy rather than a sensibility.596 Diamond suggests that in this instance the comparison with concentration camps demonstrates the difficulty of reality for Costello. Costello is: “presenting a kind of woundedness or hauntedness, a terrible rawness of nerves. What wounds this woman, what haunts her mind, is what we do to animals.”597 Thus Costello is positioned by Diamond as wounded by her knowledge and her inability to bear witness to this knowledge to a receptive audience. It could be argued that Costello is traumatised by her knowledge and her interactions with others.598

Diamond questions how can it be that things can be both astonishing and incomprehensible to us, and unsurprising to others.599 That is, how can Costello feel so wounded by her knowledge about animal suffering, yet most people consider consuming animal products to be ordinary? Diamond argues that philosophy must attend to these instances as they demonstrate a difficulty of reality. In order to do so, she advocates for a consideration that is active and responsive. She calls for an act of imagination, to inhabit the mind of the astonished, such as Costello in this instance; in order to enter her story and move beyond one’s own normal perception of things. This imaginative approach can offer insights, Diamond claims, which might push one from

593 Presented at ‘Accounting for Literary Language’, University of East Anglia, September 2002 and Hannah Arendt/Reiner Schürmann Memorial Symposium on Stanley Cavell at the New School in New York, October 2002. This lecture along with a response by Cavell was published in Stanley Cavell et al., Philosophy & Animal Life (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2008). 594 I acknowledge that I am cherry picking from Diamond’s lecture, the points related directly to Costello and the animal, rather than Diamond’s larger philosophical discourse. 595 Cora Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy," in Philosophy & Animal Life, ed. Stanley Cavell, et al. (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2008). 45-46 596 This is not strictly true, see Peter Singer Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 86 597 Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality ". 47 598 Other respondents have not been so generous, for example Cavell states she ‘brushes madness’, Stanley Cavell, "Companionable Thinking," in Philosophy & Animal Life, ed. Stanley Cavell (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2008). 106 599 Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality ". 62

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one’s ordinary life, to provide an insight that might “shoulder[s] one from one’s familiar sense of moral life”.600

In response to Diamond’s lecture, Stanley Cavell concedes that even though he has thought intermittently about the treatment of animals used for food, he has avoided thinking about it in any sustained way. He provocatively wonders: “whether there is a […] blindness we may suffer with respect to non-human animals”.601 For Cavell the difference in the way people approach animals has nothing to do with the question of information, or access to information and he argues: “no one knows, or can literally see, essentially anything here that the others fail to know or can see”.602

Cavell agrees with Diamond that there is a need to account for these different responses. Otherwise, he argues, we are ignorant of what and who we are. If there is madness or outrage and despair at something others care little for, is there not, Cavell argues, equal threat in finding that we are inconsistent to horrors.603 There are many times, Cavell admits, where we witness the pleasure of animals, and this witnessing is incompatible with eating animals.604 Further, Cavell considers that there is no such thing as ordinary in daily life; the ordinary is in fact “a task”.605 For example, eating meat is an ordinary thing for most people, but for others it is horrific.

Cavell points out that, unlike many other moral questions we face, the question of eating meat is one that directly affects most people. Further, it also affects their pleasure in doing so. This pleasure is an important and often overlooked distinction to make between atrocities. It is a distinction also noted by Adams: “it is a difficult task to argue against the dominant beliefs about meat when they have been reinforced by personal enjoyment of meat eating”.606 Cavell argues that this pleasure means that atrocities committed to animals are situated differently from other atrocities, which rarely pleasure us.

600 Diamond, "The Difficulty of Reality ". 64 601 Cavell, "Companionable Thinking." 93 602 Cavell, "Companionable Thinking." 93 603 Cavell, "Companionable Thinking." 125 604 Cavell, "Companionable Thinking." 96 605 Cavell, "Companionable Thinking." 96 606 Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat. 13-14

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What is remarkable about these two responses is how they demonstrate the capacity to be attentive to what the witness (Costello) is saying: they open themselves responsively and with response-ability to her testimony.607 Costello demonstrates the problems of bearing witness to animal suffering. In order to illuminate the depths of horror she feels she draws comparisons with aspects of the Holocaust. She is aware that the comparison is problematic, that it leads to polarised opinions, but even as a wordsmith, she struggles to find another way to articulate it: “when I think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken into a pillow”.608 Costello also demonstrates the difficulty in reconciling oneself to the way in which the extraordinary is considered ordinary by those who actively participate in it: “Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions?”.609 Trying to articulate this depth of confusion, this difficulty of reality, leads Costello to wonder why she can’t ‘normalise’ what happens to animals: “Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?”610

4.5 confessions of comparisons

The focus on the possible comparisons between the animal situation and certain facets of the Holocaust was motivated through the practice. My sculptural bodies were initially influenced by visual sources and readings that included the Muselmann, in particular Primo Levi’s If This is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved611. The Muselmann, as discussed, is the most abject of concentration camp victims, the victims who did not survive to bear witness to their suffering. Nicholas Chare describes the look of the Muselmann; the thin skin, bones rubbing through, muscles collapsing, bodies in dissolution, the damage on the body reflected in the damage caused to the psyche: “Their borders became unstable, their shape uncertain”.612 Although I modified and amended the figures so that they were not directly referential, definite visible traces remained.

607 Oliver, Witnessing. 91 608 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 609 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 610 Coetzee, The Lives of Animals. 69 611 Primo Levi, If this is a Man (London: Abacus, 1987). Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (London: Sphere Books Ltd, 1988). 612 Nicholas Chare, Auschwitz and Afterimages: Abjection, Witnessing and Representation (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). 105

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Using the Muselmann as a pre-existing visual language was particularly problematic and yet compelling. The Muselmann haunted this research, re-emerging in theories of empathy, trauma and witnessing: in the Holocaust literature and testimony. However, I had not aimed for a direct comparison or analogy, and I knew I was leaning on an already loaded figure. Agamben’s examination of the Muselmann creates an understanding of how and why the Muselmann figured in my practice. The Muselmann is the primary witness who does not survive to bear witness, yet is testified for, by proxy by secondary witnesses. Further, it is Agamben’s articulation of the Muselmann that has most resonance to this practice: as an entirely new and unknown entity; a new configuration of the human, overlooked or avoided, and whose existence – if considered - threatens to change philosophical and legal definitions.

Agamben’s project is extremely anthropocentric in attempting to keep the boundaries of the human and the animal separate. Agamben uses the terms in-human or non-human, because for him to even suggest there are limits to what is human is to continue the work of the Nazis. Holocaust scholar LaCapra criticises this aspect of Agamben’s work, stating that what has been overlooked is the fact that being aligned with animals is obviously not a problem (because we are animals), but rather the problem lies in how we think of and treat animals.613

These issues Agamben raises in relation to the Muselmann parallel (but are not the same as) some of the issues I struggle to articulate in relation to the animal used for consumption. The animal in factory farming is a relatively contemporary phenomenon. The factory-farmed animal is an animal removed from all dignity, respect, and a life that it is proper to them. This phenomenon is mostly overlooked, or avoided, or treated with indifference; most people prefer the idea of happy farms depicted in advertising, or not to consider it at all. The initial concern to represent something of the suffering in life, through the early ‘whole’ sculptural bodies, lead to the appropriation of the form of the Muselmann. However, this research revealed that the language of existing atrocities such as the Holocaust, no matter how sensitively or specifically used, often divides audiences, even within the field of Critical Animal Studies. Possibly this is because as Derrida suggests there is a great difficulty keeping these two atrocities distinct while

613 LaCapra, History and it's Limits. 157

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still noting their “similarities and parallel logics”.614 Another reason to move away from this model was the necessity to consider, as Socha suggests, what it is that is distinctive about animal suffering and death. Using an existing language of atrocity deflected the work required to consider the discrete characteristics of bearing witness for animals suffering.

What other languages are there to use? Derrida considers carefully using the term ‘animal genocides’,615 however recent use of this term suggests that it is just as problematic. When animal activist Brian May, used the phrase “stop genocide in the countryside”616 in reference to the Badger Cull in the UK, the response was outrage,617 he was accused of disregarding the suffering of humans. May’s apology included an argument that genocide is in fact an appropriate term for the culling of an entire species of animals, since genocide relates to the killing of a genus, akin to a species. However while genocide is potentially appropriate to situations such as the cull, it is not appropriate to farmed animals, as genocide means a destruction of a genus, but farmed animals are continuously breed, it is an eternal genocide. Genocide is also an unsatisfactory term because the word focuses on the death, and not the life of the animal. It is the life of the animal from artificial insemination to death that is horrifyingly part of the atrocities committed on animal.

This lack of appropriate language for suffering and injustice is redolent of the traumatic inability of speaking when there are no pre-existing areas of knowledge. Language must be forced and forged to deal with the animal situation linguistically and

614 Calarco, Zoographies. 112, Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26 615 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am. 26 616 interview in the Gloucestershire Echo, 7 September 2013 available at http://www.brianmay.com/brian/briannews/briannewssep13a.html - 617 See: Steve Nolan, 11 September 2013 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 2417214/Queen-guitarist-Brian-May-angers-Jews-describing-cull-5-000-badgers-genocide- countryside.html, Simon de Bruxelles, 11 September, 2013, The Times, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article3865683.ece. ‘Brian May apologies over badger genocide comment’, 12 September 2013, The Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/428873/Brian-May- apologises-over-badger-genocide-commen. Louise Gray, ’Brian May criticised by Jewish community for comparing badger cull to genocide, 10 September 2013, The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/10298941/Brian-May-criticised-by-Jewish-community-for- comparing-badger-cull-to-genocide.html

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materially.618 Donna Haraway states: “It is not that the Nazi killing of the Jews and others and mass animal slaughter in the meat industry have no relation; it is that analogy culminating in equation can blunt our alertness to irreducible difference and multiplicity and their demands. Different atrocities deserve their own languages, even if there are no words for what we do”.619

I understand the potency and rhetorical power in these comparisons and parallels, however I agree with Haraway, that animal suffering deserves the attempt at developing a language of specificity. I suggest that in most cases, the effect of using the comparison is to further the impassable divide between the advocate and the broader community. Further, I suggest that Holocaust literature, rather than provide an analogy or a comparison, can be explored to consider how atrocity modifies the conditions of testimony.620

4.6 trauma, practice and testimony

At this point I return attention to the affect of trauma and the production of visual testimony. Bennett621 whose account of working with trauma I considered earlier, argues that trauma has a positive role in the struggle with language.622 There are possibilities, she argues, in speaking through trauma to develop languages, to transform the traumatic knowledge into a common language. She acknowledges the trope of trauma studies prioritises the unrepresentable nature of traumatic memories. However she argues that it is possible to align this trope with contemporary art concerned with representing the unrepresentable, with the search to find a language or expression through formal practice. What is difficult to represent, she argues, is that which

618 Linguistically a number of new terms are being established, Richard Twine refines Barbara Noske’s Animal-Industrial Complex to consider the use of animals in capitalism and its normalising functions. Twine, "Revealing the 'Animal-Industrial Complex' - A Concept & Method for Critical Animal Studies?.". Melanie Joy has used the term Carnism to demonstrate that meat eating is a choice and a position. Joy, An Introduction to Carnism. 619 Haraway, When Species Meet. 336 fn. 23 Haraway herself uses the comparison when mentioning her visit to the animal pen and abattoir; “beasts turned into efficient, healthy enough, parasite-free, meat-making machines in the death-camps of industrial agribusiness”. 84 620 Adams describes animal advocacy videos as; ‘traumatic knowledge’, I use it in a wider sense, that is of knowledge of animal atrocities. Potts, "The Politics of Carol J. Adams: interview with Carol J. Adams." 21 621 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 622 I recognise that this is built on, and augments, arts general principle of developing new visual languages and forms.

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“transforms the language of art”.623 Bennett draws attention to the way visual art can work between the borders of deep memory (traumatic memory, sense memory) and common memory (language shared in the community). In turn, in working with the friction between trauma and visual language, artworks can generate an affective encounter, which in turn: “stimulate[s] thinking in a different way”.624 She goes on: “It is, then, the political imperative — to confront the Holocaust, to confront AIDS, to confront taboos — that forces art to transform itself and in the process to transform thought”.625 Thus Bennett positions art as having the possibility to face and confront traumatic events, and in responding the ability to develop new visual forms. There is no reason to suggest that the atrocities committed towards animals have any reason to be excluded from this list of rather human-centric political imperatives.

In order to consider this further I contemplate the traumatic affect on testimony as it affected my practice. When I started to create the skins and more specifically the flesh lumps, their emergence in the studio was unexpected and troubling. As a figurative sculptor, committed to working with the ‘whole’ body and empathy it was unexpected to be generating broken forms: fleshy lumps and skins. The wax bodies were violently hacked apart, the parts compressed, reshaped, squashed, damaged, sometimes barely any traces of the body remained. Sculptural bodies were coated in layers of latex, then cut and skinned, flayed. I was astonished at the level of violence I committed towards my sculptures. Further, I was left with a studio that resembled a butchers shop, and for a vegan this is certainly a strange and unexpected event. It is common for artists to work with a sense of unknowing, to refuse a mastery over materials and content, however there was also something else at work in my practice. Cautious of self- diagnosis, a reflection on the practice reveals that disassociation was strongly present in the twists and turns I undertook to avoid confronting the emergence of the animal as subject.

In retrospect I speculate that the somewhat contradictory and irreconcilable aspects of my practice are a response to both trauma (experiences of witnessing) and traumatic knowledge (experiences of offering testimony, developing testimony into language and

623 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 15 624 Ibid. 35 625 Bennett, Empathic Vision. 15

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encountering unreceptive responses). Working with trauma involves a working through, and bringing into knowledge and sculptural language deep sense memories. Working with traumatic knowledge is more closely aligned to Trezize’s contention that trauma reveals a difficulty of finding a common language, and Rothberg’s Traumatic Realism, which considers the necessity to show the extraordinary existing within the ordinary. Trezize and Rothberg’s ideas are focused upon a historical event, whereas animal witnessing is an event that is happening in the present. Thus, one is additionally confronted with the traumatic knowledge of the event as continuing, ongoing and normalised, and one’s testimony is offered within a societal context that dominates animals, and one’s testimony is offered to those who participate in this.

Reflecting upon what emerged in the studio, I can see how the animal subject emerged unbidden and uncontrolled in the traumatic testimonial engagement with materials. My materials were my listener: to my utterances; my hesitancies; violence and care. The empathic encounter with the subject — the fellow creature remained integral. Materially this is reflected in the care and attention given to the objects, and the focus on rendering intricate and beautiful surfaces. This sustained attempt to work materially with the traumatic knowledge developed an emergent sculptural language that represents the animal as skin and flesh: a materially problematic reference to the animal body. The violence I had witnessed in relation to animals materialised in the practice, as the whole subject/body was dis-assembled into the object. Thus traumatically the practice sculpturally depicted the actual and cultural violence that transforms the subject to the object.

In this way the practice demonstrates the struggle to testify through a sculptural language. Concerns that affected the practice included the perceived risk in experimenting with form and materiality, these included: how to represent animal suffering and death in a respectful and meaningful manner; how to negotiate the representation of animal consumption; how to use sculptural form and aesthetic properties to represent atrocities; how to balance the beautiful with the atrocity and how to represent the violence without explicitly recreating the violence.

As I discussed witnessing often operates through practices that are directly engaged; through direct witnessing such as Sue Coe, Jo Anne-McArthur, Steve Baker, or like

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Angela Singer practices that engage materially with animal death. Through researching expanded concepts of witnessing, I have been able to situate bearing witness as an act that might take multiple positions on what is being witnessed. This expanded concept of witnessing focuses attention on both what is witnessed (animal suffering) and the context in which bearing witness and testimony operates (traumatic knowledge). That is to say, it is a context specific testimony, that incorporates the broader issues related to the distinctive act of bearing witness to animal suffering and death.

My testimony is offered as both a statement and a plea for pity: I see the animal subject in the object meat. In fragmentation I see the suffering and the brutality and violence that reduces the subject to the object. The suffering I represent is not abstract, but located in the treatment of animals for consumption. This testimony uses art’s ability to bring into visibility that which is wilfully ignored or overlooked, and art’s ability to critically witness failures of witnessing. I make this testimony, despite the knowledge that it may or may not be received empathically, in line with the assertions that art can know, it can remember, and it can show.

At this stage I have not reached any conclusions about using the human body to witness for the animal. As the discussion around dreaded comparisons reveals, speciesism is not a well-accepted concept, and perhaps can only be used selectively; otherwise its intention will be mistaken. However, empathically the human body is shown to create stronger empathic affects, and therefore remains useful to engage an empathic response.

The practice has both led the research, and has been fundamentally changed by the research. The research has generated a lighter and somewhat liberated approach to bearing witness for animals by proxy. I avoided representing animals for a long time due to difficulties of representation. I was also restrained by a certain feeling of ineptitude towards the topic — perceiving the stakes to be so high, and the responsibility to get it right to be so demanding. However I now consider it as a necessary though perhaps impossible task, that one can approach with a sense of being able to get it wrong. I have clarified, and through this research identified, certain parameters for this practice, such as: an attentiveness to the animal and their contexts, and an avoidance of complicity with systems that reduce the animal to product.

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Additionally through the practice this research has demonstrated the possibilities of sculpture to respond to these ideas.

As a result of this research, and particularly the dialogue between practical and theoretical work, I am increasingly able to confidently draw on my position as an animals’ advocate. In this research I have used an assured voice and aimed to speak as if the position of an animals’ advocate is normative. In part this is due to the research leading me to the field of Critical Animal Studies; which in the academic context has made it easier to speak in this voice and on this topic. However, I am simultaneously aware that I speak, as Derrida puts it, with a marginal voice engaging a formidable war against pity, making an appeal for a testimony to pity.

4.7 conclusion

The focus of the chapter was to demonstrate the necessity to consider the specifics and distinctiveness of bearing witness to animal suffering and death. This chapter considered two such distinctive features: the issue of trauma and the problem of language in relation to animal suffering.

Witnessing animal suffering and death can traumatically affect an animals’ advocate. The trauma is not only caused by witnessing, but also by trying to locate this extraordinary knowledge into pre-existing ordinary frameworks, that is to say, in a world that has normalised or made invisible and un-thought of, the atrocities committed upon animals. The traumatic has affects on witnessing, not least because testimony with the broader community either attempts to reach across a seemly impassable divide, or modifies itself to avoid confrontation. Thus it indicates that while witness and trauma theories have relations to bearing witness to animal suffering and death, they cannot be directly transplanted to this situation. I have aligned the traumatic, in relation to advocates, with a problem of language or communication across an ideological divide.

To elaborate on this problem the thesis explored the difficulties of working with previously existing languages of comparison demonstrating the poverty of expression for bearing witness to animal suffering.

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I situated how the traumatic operates in my practice, producing testimonial objects that bear witness to not only the animal subject but also this difficulty of reality, that is to say, the context in which testimony is performed. Testimony gives voice to knowledge, in the context of animals’ advocate, sometimes this voice is hesitant, and through this chapter I have demonstrated why this might be the case.

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5. CONCLUSION

beautiful - This word confronts the challenge of aesthetic representations of violence towards the body. The sculptural objects referred to the atrocity of producing flesh and skin from the body of a once living creature. Simultaneously the surfaces evoke a fragile sculptural beauty. These detailed surfaces aim to engage an attentiveness: to focus attention on seeing and looking.

little - evokes the young, undeveloped, unsubstantial, the small fragile remainders of bodies in flesh lumps and the baby-forms in slink. These small delicate bodies were generated through acts of violence and care. In their littleness, they call for care, they appeal for pity. Little also refers to the sculptural concern to maintain a practice on a scale that is both human and animal.

dead - sculpture is inanimate, yet the focus of this research was the recognition of the lived experience of another being. This was explored empathically through the ‘whole’ body, then through the focus on witnessing fellow-creatures: animals. The word dead attends to both the object-hood of sculpture, and the readings of death provoked by the display of hanging skins, dis-assembled bodies, and fleshy lumps.

things - things draws attention specifically to the sculptural object-hood of my works, their material nature and the need to attend to their form and materiality. Sculptures are things that exist in the world, objects that can call upon us to act and respond. Empathy interacts with things in the world to bring them to presence. Things also refer to the end product of processes of consumption that turn the animal subject into the object both literally and linguistically. It attends to my concern to witness and bear witness through testimony to the subject in the object.

* * *

Working with the animal as subject in a critical arts practice is difficult territory. It has been necessary in this practice-led PhD to establish the cultural contexts in which I operate. This thesis has shown how negotiating the dominant systems of thinking about

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animals can be traumatic for the researcher. Through the use of empathy, witnessing and testimony I have accounted for how the practice negotiates and witnesses these affects.

Both the practice and thesis investigated a role for sculpture in bearing witness to animal suffering and death. In order to examine how sculpture might bear witness, I have shown how broader concepts of witnessing, such as those developed in Holocaust Studies can contribute to this knowledge. The research has specifically considered what is bearing witness, who can bear witness, and how can one bear witness. Further, how can one bear witness to the one who does not survive? To respond to this the research drew on witness theory that demonstrates both the necessity and impossibility of bearing witness by proxy, in particular exploring ideas that extend the use of testimony outside the necessity to provide proof or direct evidence. Testimony does not need to be explicitly representative: it can operate by generating affective feelings, which might engender thought. Testimony can operate by revealing absence or loss, and it can also operate to bring into visibility that which is mostly invisible and overlooked. Thus it becomes possible to frame the practice as a testimonial practice.

I have argued that is necessary to consider the specificities of animal suffering and death in relation to bearing witness. Human-Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies are relatively new fields, and I have undertaken work to apply established theories of witnessing within these newer contexts. There are differences between human-to-human witnessing and human-to-animal witnessing, and the research located and examined two aspects that related to the practice: firstly, exploring the concept of trauma as it relates specifically to animals’ advocates, in order to consider the context in which testimony is offered; secondly, considering the difficulty of languages, which affect the production of testimony and the possibility of finding a responsive audience in the broader audience. These examples have shown that bearing witness for animal suffering and death has distinctive characteristics that affect the production and reception of testimony. For example, testimony is offered in a social and cultural environment that will most likely be unreceptive and unresponsive. Using art’s ability to critically witness failures to witness, to bring into visibility that which is invisible can generate guilt and hostility.

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‘Everybody knows’ but not everybody looks. The research has shown that attentive witnessing is a performative act; one must choose to respond to the other. In this research attentive or empathic witnessing has been situated in opposition to wilful indifference: empathic witnessing brings the other into awareness, whereas wilful indifference violently erases the other. The proposal that a lack of empathy is culturally conditioned supports Diamond’s contention that who can be our fellow creature is culturally learnt behaviour.

The research has found that the questions initially raised about empathy were built upon broader concerns about the recognition of subjectivity, and in particular the subject- hood of the animal. My initial question was could the empathic process reveal the other (the subject) in the sculptural body (the object)? The practice responded to this through the sculpting of a series of whole bodies, aiming to generate empathic encounters. The traumatically generated sculptures that resembled flesh and skin extended the enquiry to a consideration of how the subject (animal) is absented in the object (meat). Subsequently the practice negotiated whether sculpture could testify to the presence of the subject (animal) in the sculptural object (flesh/meat). Can sculpture make the absent referent visible? That is to say, not just the absenting of the animal in meat, but the broader cultural process, which sees the animal absented through physical and conceptual fragmentation. I hope I have shown that visual arts practice can engage with what is visible and yet significantly invisible in the world, and that practice is able to bring this ‘invisibility’ into presence, and to bring it to attention. In this I suggest that my sculptural objects offer testimony to the ‘invisible’ subject in the object.

The final exhibition drew together the distinct sculptural elements developed through the practice into a single installation. Included in the exhibition were the creatures bound in muslin and strung from the ceiling. The flesh lumps and fragmented body parts displayed on studio tables. The latex skins, slink; adult, baby and sac, were suspended on the I-beam that transversed the space. Two latex screens were suspended over the windows, and were gently activated by the breeze during the exhibition. One ‘whole’ sculptural body, and one partially dismembered sculptural body provided counter points to each other. Both bodies were suspended by simply constructed steel systems. The instability between wholeness and fragmentation, subject and object was alluded to through the installation.

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In this practice the materials were pushed to their limits through violently crushing and dismembering sculptures. The violence of the fragmentation was enacted and made visible through this process. This alluded to violence implicit in the reduction of the subject to object, the reduction of animals to products. This was a specific and contextual violence. These sculptures were the result of a serious and sustained attempt to develop a sculptural language for the suffering of animals, in the context of empathy and witnessing and testimony. Developing beauty within objects that resembled animal by-products was an unconscious attempt to care for the objects, and draw attention to the object, draw focus onto the objects. The fragility of both these materials (wax and latex), and their essentially ephemeral nature was incorporated into the practice, and the fragility and impermanence of the body is evoked through this materiality.

The materiality of sculpture has the potential to evoke the real, the physical: thus sculpture was put to work in my practice to create a physical testimonial form. The practice worked with the possibility that even the smallest perception of the animal, or a trace of the animal would bear witness to that which is often overlooked, testifying to their presence. This was evoked through the traces and remnants of the original object (subject) remaining in the flesh lumps. Similarly the introduction of teats on the skins would, I hoped, operate to bring the animal body into attention in these forms. With the groupings of the skins, I aimed to create an awareness of the things we share with animals: our mortality, birth, our emotional and social complexity, things that make animals our “fellows in mortality.”626

The research responded to Herder’s provocative suggestion that the sculptural body “speaks to us as an act”. 627 beautiful little dead things speaks of and to another act: the ‘act’ of choosing to respond empathically.628 These sculptures are offered as testimony and invite the viewer to engage and respond: to act. If the viewer responds empathically they bring the object, and the subject of testimony, into presence. The empathic act can occur with all objects and subjects in the world, but it is heightened in response to aesthetic objects. This opens out possibilities for visual testimony to circumnavigate wilful indifference and to negotiate the contingency of empathy.

626 Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People." 474 627 Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion's Creative Dream, trans. Jason Gainger (The University of Chicago Press, 2002). 80 628 Lipps describes the process of choosing to respond as an ‘act’ see section 1.5

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Through this research I have sought and found a way to work sculpturally with the ever- present death of the animal, in a way that I consider is ethical and attentive. Through the practice and the thesis I have both described and argued that the lives and deaths of animals, marked out for consumption, is horrific. The horror is nowhere more present than in the invisibility of the animal subject in the consumed object. By working sculpturally with the processes of empathy, witnessing and trauma, I give the animal subject a presence within the object. These sculptural objects are an appeal and a testimony for pity. I have aimed to do this because I believe art is a place where ethical questions retain their urgency. Art can take the witness stand, as it has been argued, as a critical activity, as a form of memory, revealing failures to witness, absence and loss: art can remind us – don’t forget.

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: MOWSON, LYNN

Title: Beautiful little dead things: empathy, witnessing, trauma and animals' suffering

Date: 2015

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/43080

File Description: Beautiful little dead things: empathy, witnessing, trauma and animals' suffering - Volume I