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Giraffe Killed During Intifada Travels to Art Fair as Found Object
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by kate | July 17, 2007 at 01:29 pm
896 views | 4 Recommendations | 1 comment
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Berlin-based conceptual artist Peter Friedl has been garnering a huge amount of attention at Documenta 12, in Kassel Germany, for his artwork The Zoo Story. The piece is a taxidermied giraffe from the Qalqiliyah Zoo in Palestine's West Bank, named "Brownie", which was killed in an Israeli bombing raid during the second Palestinian Intifada in 2002. Not only are people reacting strongly to the presence of this giraffe and to the strength of this conceptual gesture, but a lot of chatter has been generated by a recent lawsuit alleging copyright infringement.
Documenta is a huge art festival held annually in Kassel, Germany. From the Documenta website:
The documenta is regarded as the most important exhibition of
contemporary art, drawing attention from all over the world. It was
initiated in 1955 by the artist and art educator, Arnold Bode, in
Kassel. After the period of Nazi dictatorship, it was intended to
reconcile German public life with international modernity and also
confront it with its own failed Enlightenment.
Friedl was subject to a short-lived lawsuit when artist Ayse Erkmen alleged that The Zoo Story infringed on her copyrighted idea of borrowing the giraffe from the zoo, which she had attempted to do (but been denied) in 2004. Here is how Artnet describes the suit.
Artnet News
COURT CHALLENGE TO GIRAFFE ARTIST
A star attraction of Documenta 12 is "Brownie," a taxidermied giraffe brought to the international show from the Qalqiliyah Zoo in the West Bank by Berlin-based conceptual artist Peter Friedl. A
casualty of the violence in the Middle East, the unfortunate animal was
killed in 2002 during the second Palestinian Intifada, and subsequently
stuffed by the zoo veterinarian and exhibited (along with several other
taxidermied animals) in a kind of museum. Freidl heard about the
exhibit and borrowed the animal for Documenta, citing the arrival in
Germany in 1220 of the first living giraffe, and noting that such
"orientalist transfers often preceded European expansion."Once in Germany, however, Brownie became the object of a short-lived court action claiming copyright infringement. Artist Ayse Erkmen
accused Friedl of stealing her idea to borrow Brownie and the other
stuffed Palestinian zoo animals for a museum exhibition. In 2004, Ermen
says, she attempted to borrow the animals for a show in a natural
history museum in Birmingham -- an effort that was unsuccessful.Her request for an injunction from the Kassel regional court was quickly dismissed, according to a report by Anna Blume Huttenlauch in Artnet.de. In Germany as in the U.S., ideas aren’t covered by copyright -- and the court recognized that Friedl’s Zoo Story, as he dubbed his giraffe-as-found-object, was essentially a conceptual act.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 14:13 on July 17th, 2007
kate, the desperation of a animal in a zoo and its subsequent death is perhaps a crude metaphor for the frustrations on the ground in the region. With little hope in sight and an increased feeling of entrapment amongst Palestinians Brownie in a way symbolizes such sentiment. The fact that a fight erupted over the exhibit just adds to the total frustration and reinforces the point. I'd like to see some pics. I'd recommend that you paste your article from Word to Notebook then to NowPublic so that the spacing isn't messed up. Good stuff.