Behaving Badly: Animals and the Ethics of Participatory Art

Abstract

This article examines the artistic and curatorial strategy of inviting harm to animals in participatory art installations. Marco Evaristti's controversial Helena (2000), at the Trapholt Museum, demonstrates how the use and mistreatment of animals in art can generate intense debates over animal rights and artistic freedom. The modernist space of the museum, with its presumption of autonomy, can become, in these instances, a site of moral exceptionalism that produces problematic social and legal behaviour in the audience. The deliberate inclusion of animals in provocative and threatening situations poses an ethical quandary in both art and society at large, as well as raising difficult questions about conduct and responsibility within museums.