Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Arts Council and I took part. I created various pieces of art, acquired an instrument (and know a couple of notes on it), learned to edit film and wrote some. Not enough to make me 100% happy, but enough that I gave serious consideration to what I viewed as art and work, and the Council sent me a T-Shirt which was the total cherry on the cake. (mmmm. cake.)

Today I got a Facebook protest about an exhibit in Nicaragua last August where a street animal was allegedly starved to death in front of a crowd to a) draw attention to the plight of street animals and /or b) commemorate a burglar who'd been killed/eaten by guard dogs. It could be real, it could be part of an elaborate PR campaign on behalf of the artist. More info here:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/art/archives/134292.asp
and here:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2269320,00.html

Lets assume the part where the dog was hungry, and used in this exhibit are true. There's two issues for me, here. Art makes people think, feel, gets a reaction. If someone just places something they didn't make themselves (pylon, broom, can of hairspray - whatever) in your path that forces a reaction, never mind if that reaction was necessary or important, are they an artist? They're facilitating a reaction, but not creating anything in this case, remember. Does putting something in your way in a gallery make it more artful? Nope, don't think so. (But I also don't think God gets better reception if you pray in church as opposed to your bathtub.) So there's the one issue, I just don't think it's very creative or a credit to art.

The second thing is - it's a fucking starving dog. A living, breathing, suffering thing. What the fuck? Is it okay to deny an AIDS patient their medication and put them, against their will, in a glass box on Bay street to slowly die in order to better draw attention to suffering in Africa? Fuck no. Yes, you can argue in favor of it. You can argue in favor of anything, but that flavor of narcissistic hubris masquerading as logic is how crazy shit happens all the time. War, genocide, vivisection, all manor of horrors. It's "only" a dog, whether it died or not, but to me it's the thin edge of the wedge - not art.

And that is my opinion on this matter. Good evening to you.