I saw laboratory monkeys on TV who looked so bored. They looked ill, sad and disturbed, all at the same time. After all they are really bright creatures. It’s so unfair. “Whatever, let people die from disease instead, only so they won’t have to suffer for us.” “What if it where your child,” someone said. “Wouldn’t you want good medicine and its life saved, of course at the cost of animal testing?” “Certainly not,” I said. The guy who asked had kids, I didn’t. I was never allowed inside a research centre. “The monkeys have AIDS, what if you get squirted in the eye and become infected.” “I see. Is there anything else one could do for the animals?” I did Animal Performance. But it became something completely different. In my Animal Performances I am seen dancing in front of sheep, goats, horses, cows and stripping in front of monkeys. The spectator becomes a voyeur, watching the animals who are watching me. The spectators are deprived of their passive roles. Who is looking at whom and why? Who has the power over the gaze, the power over seeing?
Animal Performance is a serie of five acts: Sheep Performance, Horse Performance, Goat Performance, Cow Performance and Monkey Performance.
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