Abstract
During rain-drenched summer of 2007, I encountered giraffe outside zoo in Germany. You might be surprised unless I admit that I discovered this giraffe in Kassel at Documenta 12, curated by Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack and organized around motifs of bare life and migration of form. This migrant giraffe did not live, though I would not label it simulacrum. creature in question is exclusive material of Peter Friedl's installation entitled The Zoo Story. Cocurator Buergel's catalog introduces Friedl's giraffe as a fatality of armed conflict. animal died on August 19, 2002, in Qalquiliyah Zoo, the only zoo in West Bank. When Israeli forces moved into this city of 45,000 inhabitants in wake of second Intifada, Buergel explains, outbreaks of shooting ensued. nine-year-old gi raffe named probably panicked, ran into an iron bar, bumped his head and collapsed to ground. This spells death for giraffes, as Buergel informs us, because their strong hearts are designed to pump blood upwards.2 This poetic hint of divine or Lamarckian teleology lodged in giraffe's heart quickly veers into global genealogy. Before Brownie was bestowed with cutely generic name and mortal destiny that attended it, he lived in South Africa with his mate who remains name less here. Buergel narrates: [Brownie] arrived in Qalquiliyah via Israel in 1997?in days when this Palestinian town was agricultural centre of West Bank and not yet cut off from outside world by
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