Following the three days of the eikones Summer School ›Attention in Animal Ethics and Aesthetics‹ in September 2024, I went on a trip through Italy and Croatia, from Basel to Milan, to Bologna, to Venice for the 60th Biennale d’Arte and finishing in Rijeka before heading back home.

At the summer school we came together as a group of people, focusing for three days on establishing modes of attention, from a human perspective, but with animals very much in mind. We talked about care and caring for, including the possibility of misled care. We talked about places in which humans and animals come together, in science, in art and in everyday life and thought, places where a collaboration is possible without being led by human interests and needs. We drew from theoretical texts, but also from personal experience.

We also practiced our own attentiveness on two field trips, an animal-themed city walk, and a guided tour to ›compas - Institut für tier- & naturgestützte Interventionen‹.

While preparing a short presentation on Doug Aitken’s video work ›migration (empire)‹ from 2008, I already had a few questions guiding my attention set in mind. As my interest in human-animal studies started as a student of comparative literature, the determination of factual or fictional animals and visibility or invisibility struck me the most. Admittedly, reading about an animal is different from using actual animals as models or materials for artworks or collaborating with them in another creative process. But in the end, similar things can be learned by humans from imagined animals.

For my subsequent journey, I didn`t set any goals to immediately set to practice these newly gained insights. But as I went to Bologna and visited the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna with a friend, I immediately noticed the artworks of the permanent collection that were connected to human-animal studies. For example, the video work ›Presente‹ by Valentina Furian from 2018. The work is presented on a big flatscreen TV leaning against the wall, at foot level. The four-minute video plays on a loop, showing a white donkey wandering around an exhibition space in between exhibited items, white floors, plastered walls and scaffolding. Reminding me of my presentation of Doug Aitkens’ ›migration (empire)‹, a single animal is shown here in a space usually reserved for human animals. In Aitken’s work it is a place of transit, the motel. Furian on the other hand chose a space in transition: The airy halls are being prepared for a new exhibition, they are not even meant to be seen by the human public. The work shows the donkey in motion, close-ups of different body parts and glimpses of adjacent rooms through open doors. Describing her own work, Furian says she is interested in documentation and narrative fiction and the relationship between human and nonhuman beings.https://www.valentinafurian.com/about She plays with expectations by showing what’s not supposed to be exhibited and allowing the donkey to be the first visitor. The question is to what extent the donkey is joining in the creative process. It was free to roam around, but the camera perspectives centred on the donkey, not for example on what the donkey chose to explore. For comparison, the horses Gus and Deuce had the camera following them around when they explored the Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina for the work ›Gus and Deuce go Elsewhere‹ in 2014.Bartram, Angela, and Lee Deigaard. 2023. Shared Brains, Proprioceptiveness, and Critically Approaching the Animal as the Animal in Artworks. Arts 12: 119, p. 10.

Continuing to Venice, for the 60th Biennale, I was surprised when I entered the Hong Kong Pavilion. After walking through the tourist-filled old town of Venice, looking for the entrance of the Arsenale venue, I decided to enter the ›Courtyard of Attachments‹ by Trevor Yeung, right across from it. I was welcomed into a small courtyard with a fountain made of aquariums and the calming soundscape of running water (pic. 1). Passing through, I entered a dark room, filled from floor to ceiling with more fish tanks, dividing the room into narrow hallways. Returning to the question of visibility or invisibility, there were no fish in them. But the sound of water, water pumps and filters evoked images of cramped sea creatures, separated and stacked on top of each other. In a second room, little water-filled plastic bags were tied to a metal fence, some of them with markings on them, like the ones pet fish are sold and transported in. Again, with no actual fish present.

According to the description of the pavilion Yeung took inspiration from his father’s seafood restaurant, pet shops, his own childhood keeping of fish as pets, and feng shui arrangements. Yeung was always trying to play with expectations and to evoke questions of power dynamics. The confines of an aquarium are emblematic of the human role in institutional governance: the power to regulate, sustain or intervene. He raises questions of control and care on a large scale, as well as in social contexts.https://2024.vbexhibitions.hk/

The following day, while exploring the Giardini venue, I walked into the Czech Pavilion. Curated by Hana Janečková, the title of Eva Koťátkovás exhibition is ›The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter‹. Visible are body parts of a giraffe, for example some bones lying on the floor next to the explanatory text and castings of a giraffe (pic. 2). The main part consisted of big tunnels made from fabric and plastic pipes meant to allow visitors to experience walking through the giraffe’s neck (pic. 3). Inspiration was drawn from Lenka, the first giraffe captured in Kenya in 1954 for the Prague Zoo, who only survived two years in captivity.  Recorded stories about the giraffe’s life were told by children and elderly people and played through speakers.https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/czech-republic Taking the pavilion as a critique of the relationship between institutions and the natural world, it connects issues of animals in zoos with questions of colonial power dynamics.

Furthermore, it is an example of points that were raised during the summer school, while talking about attention towards nonhuman animals in the context of zoos. As zoos advertise themselves as educational spaces that conserve different species and allow for human-to nonhuman-encounters, we had a discussion about whether they actually show the fragmented life of fragmented species. Individuals in captivity are supposed to represent a whole species, their enclosures try to rebuild and represent parts of the different natural habitats, allowing the visitors a world tour. The animals ideally should behave in expected ways, acting charismatic or cute. The installation around Lenka the giraffe at the Czech pavilion allowed a wider audience to feel empathetic and imagine the abrupt and inexplicable changes made in the giraffe’s life ‒ being captured and transported to a different continent.

Arriving in Rijeka, I visited the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art MMSU. On display was a monographic exhibition on the works of Croatian artist Igor Grubić, whose photographic, videographic, and installation work is characterised by political activism.https://www.art-collection-telekom.com/de/kuenstler/grubic-igor In the last room, smaller versions of five different billboards were shown. Grubić had shown the originals in various northern Italian cities. The photos depict the interiors of former slaughterhouses. Questions starting with ›Do Animals…‹ are written across, retracing the different steps the animals take from life to death (pic. 4). For instance, ›Do animals have legal rights?‹, ›Do Animals know they are products?‹, and, on a billboard with a black background, ›Do animals dream about freedom?‹.

Again, no actual animals are visible – the slaughterhouses have long been shut down – but Grubić’s work draws attention to livestock animals and how their lives are restricted to what they are granted by a systematised farming culture designed to feed humans. When his work is displayed on billboards in the city centre – spaces usually reserved for commercial advertising – the passersby are presented with a call to responsibility and examination of their own consumption of animal products.

Certainly, my mind was extra responsive to human-animal artworks, though I hadn’t planned a trip exclusively focused on them. Instead, I visited a range of contemporary art exhibitions. Walking through these very anthropocentric spaces, it was the absence of animals – the places where they might have been – that demanded reflection. The invisibility of the nonhuman animals reveals power dynamics. It is made apparent who serves whom, and who creates the conditions of a world shared by humans and nonhumans. The works at the Venice Biennale led the visitors’ interpretation with the information given at the entrance of each pavilion, but being aimed at an international audience, and created by international voices, they show the importance of attention to animals. The kinds of questions raised in human-animal studies are questions of universal interest that can be discussed much further than is possible in a three-day summer school.