150.Action has been and gone. Yet even in its passing I am still sorting out my feelings towards the event.
I dislike that someone cannot be anti the bull being slaughtered for art if they eat meat.
Ethical escalations like this really get me. If I care about one thing, do I therefore have to care about everything in order not to delegitimise the first thing I care about? I would rather a bunch of hypocritical meat eaters than more people to be uncaring.
Its done in the same stream as the person that criticising the protestor for handing out paper flyers. “Ah you care about the earth, but what about the paper, what about the ink? what about the plastic or even wooden pole?” Why, one could use vegetable ink and recycled paper and a fallen stick for a pole. But It’s not always that simple. (Though at Nitsch’s performance protestors had mirrors – I triple take my hat off to them.)
I find its used by people with no moral or ethical standpoint to make themselves feel better. This is a great article about the “do-gooder degradation.” Though Tobias suggests a step program to make non-vegans feel less morally reproached. I’m not totally convinced by it. Maybe I’m bitter.
I wonder what Hermann Nitsch’s thoughts are on climate change and veganism. When his work is so much about hedonism as it is ritual. It is human centric taking, that doesn’t challenge the majority held view, it falls in line with it. After 30 years of the same act, the messages of ritual, death, hedonism, tribe mentality are tired. As it’s 2017 and my rituals include morning coffee and Facebook. Death is a kid, Hedonism is getting drunk off Champagne and meringues. While Tribes can be found every weekend at a sports ground.
I wonder this is a more current version of 150.Action:
Advertising it the same, but instead bathing in the blood of a dead bull, spectators watch a cow give birth. Instead of eating the bull meat, spectators get sent home with a corn-on the cob. Then sit back and laugh as they protest the lack of bull and blood. Maybe also display the corn cobs that people refused to eat and make a video of the new born calf in the fields eating them.
Life feeds on life 