Sneaker blog SlamXHype blogged about this a few days ago.
“Last year, Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, in the name of art, took a dog from the street, and starved him to death. Endorsed by the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of the Central American, Habacuc has been invited to repeat this unbelievably cruel act again in 2008. We at SlamXhype stand with Arkitip Intelligence in boycotting this ‘artist’ and urge you to sign this petition to end this right now.”
Meg Onli is a visual artist and blogger born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Meg moved to Chicago, Illinois in 2005 where she received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been with the Chicago-based art and culture podcast/blog Bad at Sports since 2006 where she is currently the Associate Producer. She has an unfathomable apatite for documentary films, 60s & 70s performance art, and cute cats. Meg has exhibited work in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. Currently, she is working on a project that documents her steps in recording Motwon’s first girl group sensation, the Marvelettes, version of “Where did Our Love Go?â€
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Lamentavel!!!!! Como um ser humano chegar ao ponto da perversidade sarcastica, e dizer que é arte?????? Será que essa criatura não teve mãe para ensina lo a respeitar a vida. Nunca teve um aninal de estimação para amar e respeitar? Esse cara nunca deve ter amado, mas com toda razão, quem poderia ama-lo?? Já que ele se mostra um monstro!!!!! Tenho pena desse sujeito, porque do homem ele pode figir , mas de DEUS NUNCA!!!!
This dog is actually still alive, he did take him off the streets but he didn’t kill him! he did feed the dog. A lot of people “think” that he starved him but he didn’t, research it and you’ll know.
Blah blah blah.
BAS Has been starving Mark in a gallery for month, but I suspect Hudgens has been sneaking him food.
If you saw my middle-aged belly you would know that starving I ain’t !
There is a new “explanatrion” for this “piece” every twenty minutes — and new “assertions” about what did or did not happen by the artist and his backers as they come under pressure. Either way, it is NOT drawing attention to anything, it is EXPLOITING something — which is the sickest, typical, symptom of the current careerist artworld. Either as intent, or action, or “referencing” or whatever academic mannerist bullshit rhetoric it gets packed in, it is exploitational sick shit.
Horrible, how can this be allowed
Stop this ever happening again.
Truley disgusting! Hope he burns in hell!
For my next art project I plan to tie Guillermo Vargas Habacus to a wall and starve him to death in order to “make a statement” about dog torture. What a sick and desperate man he must be..
Someone should tie Guillermo Vargas Habacuc to a wall and starve him to death.
in order to”make a statement” about cruelty. What a creep.
How could people do this. It’s evil. these people desirve to have what they do to these animals done to them. It’s cruel and stupid. In other words. f— them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I put beyond MY name also my last name (mauro barbavara of Genoa Italy) I make part of those persons who perhaps respect more the animals….that the persons….BUT SHAME guill vargas habacuc DOES NOT THINK an ARTIST THINKS a GREAT PERSONAGE… SINCERELY WE IN ITALY BOASTS PERSONAGES AS (GALILEI-LIGABUE-GIOTTO-ECC ETC) AND THEY DID NOT USE ANIMALS AS ART I HAVE EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW ….. EXCUSED to ILO TERM I SAY BUT IT SINCE FOR HE the ART AND a MERDA ….. HE AND TRULY a MERDA… AND WHO ACCOMMODATES IT TO the BIENAL… AND the PERSONS GO WHO IT TO SEE CONSIDERING a SLAUGHTER OF THE SORT ART.
Art is meant to create, never to destroy. There must be a lot more artists out there that we never knew about guys! They feature awesome artists like this right on cable t.v. Turn over to Animal Planet and watch the ASPCA at work. They hunt down these artists and send them to jail. :}
Good lord people, do a little damn research. Type into Google “hoax + artist starves dog”
Starving dog exhibit reported as a hoax
The story of a dog being starved to death as part of an art exhibition appears to have been falsely reported by Costa Rican newspaper The Nation, according to new sources. I reported the appalling story here last week among global outrage about the exhibit and a reported invitation to repeat the work elsewhere.
It has now emerged, however, that artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas intended the work to be a stunt to show how a starving dog suddenly becomes the centre of attention when it is in a gallery, but not when it is on the street. The work was intended to expose people for what they really are – “hyprocritical sheep”. He said that in order for the work to be valid, he and the gallery had to give the impression that the dog was genuinely starving to death and that it died.
That was his FIFTH explanation, if you research it you’ll see that he kept changing it as the nature of the outrage changed and grew. So “research yourself” and further.
Plus whether the dog died or not in no way affects the criticism that it is no more than a cynical instrumentalization of cruelty; among other “sins,” it is an exceedingly typical ploy by “event” Neo-Con artists to get attention at all costs. It is disgusting no matter how many endings he can create to the tale.
THIS MAKES ME SICK!
this is cruel, inhumane and SICK. i can’t believe people who viewed it didn’t just cut the rope and run off with it, i would had!
This man should be murdered
Fair enough, Mark, for sure, I just looked at one post.
HOWEVER, whether that explanation is the truth or not, it sure rings true to me.
I lived in a neighborhood where a poor family got a dog in lieu of a security system. The sweet puppy turned into a monster over two years of being mis-treated and freezing in the Chicago cold. A neighbor and I went in on an igloo doghouse for the poor thing and gave it to the family. It sat overturned in their yard. I called animal services, they issued a warning. People turn their back on suffering every day. People turn their back on cruelty and injustice every day. So when I see a lot of armchair-internet-lashing-out-but-doing-nothing outrage, it sort of ticks me off. OK, John Wilks, let’s go murder the guy. Good thinking. Now hit your favorites button and visit another site and do nothing about the injustic you see there.
That’s all I’m saying. All this outrage over a dog when 10,000 people died of malnutrition today.
I understand your point Kathryn, and it is what is often made in defense of illustrative cruelty, etc. But the problem is
1) instrumentalization of suffering for career gain, which I think this reeks of more than illustrational agit-prop and
2) what matters ethically is what you yourself do in your encounters in life. One is not freed from personal moral obligations just because somewhere else other people whom you do not control do vast horror. There have been several genocides in the last century. But I cannot kill off a race of other living beings like dogs, call it art, and be free of responsibility simply because I view it as an illustration or event symbolizing the holocaust or Ruanda or Armenia or whatever.
What bothers me most beyond the failure of ethical logic is the clear weazeling for press by this man, and the wavering explanations which prove the sophistry of it all once the press wasn’t what he apparently wanted.
if it is true and i got my hands on him, i would tie him and derprive the bastard of food till he was within inches of kicking the bucket….but i would be tempted to let him die
i sware to god on my life that i would slit this motherfucking artists throat if i ever saw him
oh and mark staff brandi u are a fucking dousche bag
Brendan,
That seems a little uncalled for and unfriendly. We are trying to keep the name calling to a minimum.
Thank you,
duncan.
This is terrible- but what is worse is that it was displayed for days and no one tried to release it or call the police. And he’s not a criminal- he’s an artist and is rewarded by acceptance into an international art competition.
que onda este hijo de puta. deverian amarrarlo y que la misma hambre se lo coma vivo igual como se lo iso al pobre perro. Los animales no son los animales pero nosotros mismos (no quiero ofender a nadie).
Do your research!!!! The dog DID NOT die! He was on display for three hours a day for three days and then escaped. He was fed while not on display. Artists are not cruel idiots that just torture animals for fun! His point was to show how a starving animal (something found everywhere in large 3rd world cities)is ignored in everyday life and but noticed when on display. It is a comment on art and a comment on life.
http://thepetextraordinarium.blogspot.com/2008/03/starving-dog-exhibit-reported-as-hoax.html
Do your research before you jump to conclusions about “stupid foreigners” If you have traveled outside your lucky US life, you would know that starving animals are a seriously ignored problem internationally.
I don’t believe in insulting foreigners either, — and I live “abroad” permanently. But do YOUR research and you’ll find that this stupid-event-for-attention artist changed his story about what happened at least FIVE times. Whatever happened, it is stupid, mean-spirited and whether or not OTHER creatures suffer or not does not justify ones own misuse of suffering, whether actual or virtual, as exploitation for fame, even if the artist begins to explain that it wqs only illustration of an idea. Self-serving neo-conceptual event art at its worst.
fuck people who went to watch this
“So everybody has looked at the photo and the headline, become upset, signed the petition, blogged about it… and then had dinner. Don’t you feel righteous and fullfilled now that you’ve signed an online petition? Did it take much effort, or inconvenience you in any way?”
Since when did “You are not as good as you could be so your good acts are meaningless” become a valid argument?
Come and try that shit in New York
I would pay to see the same thing done to this artist
in defense i would say this was a success.
those who choose to discount this as an act of cruelty have missed the meaning of the piece altogether. not sayin i’d do this, but at least i understand it. criticism created out of anger and rage comes from not understanding. this was far from a stupid, self-serving, mean-spirited act. it is pure hatred, an apathetic gesture, dissatisfaction of what humanity was, is, and will be.
please do not misinterpret my criticism as negative. adopt a dog, don’t eat meat, quit looking at art, read a book, stop watching television. thank you.
If I’d been there, I would have taken that dog home. This disgusting creature who calls himself an “artist” makes me sick. And this guy above me needs help, who would defend this??
i think this is disgusting whats the point in having a dog if you aren’t going to look after it.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he is sick in the head