By now we’ve all heard about the lady in Oregon who was photographed by her boyfriend inside the corpse of a horse. When I first heard this bizarre story, I struggled to understand the meaning behind her actions but, after some reflection, I realized why the actions seemed familiar and were performed in the first place: It was an attempt at art.
I think one of the best ways to understand art and artistic practice is by associative reasoning, pulling images, words, feelings, etc. from experience and applying it to whatever it is you’re looking at or hearing, for some type of understanding sans a formal education.
STORY: Global Crazy! Naked Woman Climbs Inside Horse
British performance artist Leigh Bowery first sprung to mind after I read this crazy story, first aggregated via BuzzFeed early this week. I didn’t see the photographs until today, and they are gory.
Several years ago I saw footage of Leigh, who is the archetype of Lady Gaga, and many performance artists, giving birth to a fully grown human female on stage somewhere in New York City or London. Bowery’s action, a critique on gender, was just as bloody and grotesque as these new photos.
Creating Art can be spontaneous. I’m sure Divine didn’t plan on eating dog turds on film for John Waters back in the ’60s. If we are to believe these Americans’ claims that their acts were about spontaneity and a way to get close to the animal, I’d say they were pretty brave, stupid and without compassion.
What’s questionable and also foul, is the fact that they had to play and feast on the animal’s organs in order to feel at one with it. Documenting the process looked like art but the end product was different than say, someone’s vacation photos.
I hope the horse is reincarnated as a higher animal and not a crazy human being trying to be an artist.
What do you think about this crazy story?
Bowery giving birth below.
