David Motari Redux: Guillermo Habacuc and His “Starving Dog” Art
Published on April 22, 2008 by Daniel Taylor · 2 Comments
As was the case when a video of a US Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff in Iraq sparked widespread outrage, death threats and maudlin displays of outrage across the internet, the news that Costa Rican artist Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas had starved a dog named Nativity to death as part of an art exhibit has been making the rounds on Myspace bulletins and well over a million people have signed internet petitions calling for his banishment to the Chateau D’iff of the art world. First off, the story is almost certainly just another performance art hoax, like the recent Yale abortion art. But even if it were real, the whole point of Vargas’ as he himself explained was to “illustrate the point that…in my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought. Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway.” If illustrating the lazy hypocrisy of so-called “animal lovers” was the goal of the installation, I’d say Vargas succeeded in spades. All the people signing these petitions and expending their energy making Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas a famous performance artist in the name of “animal welfare” should take a good long look in the mirror and realize that millions of cats and dogs are euthanized in this country each year for no other reason than people don’t care enough about them to pay for them to live. Likewise, many millions more are tortured to death every single day to provide our cheap, overly meat-laden diets and yet most people do nothing. I guess its a lot easier to sign some fucking stupid petition than to actually do anything real to back up your supposed convictions. Great job everyone! Way to make a difference. OBAMA ’08!
David Motari Redux: Guillermo Habacuc and His "Starving Dog" Art,Tags: Art, costa rica, David Motari, dog, Guillermo Habacuc, hoax, Motari, starving, Vargas
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Animal lovers do everything they can to help with animal overpopulation, to fund humane shelters, to change the laws relating to puppy mills, factory farms, etc. We vote with our dollars by shunning KFC for their needless torture of chickens, and reward corporations who do better, like Burger King (for carrying a veggie burger option), Good Times (for using naturally raised Coleman beef) and Safeway (for making concessions to PETA on how humanely they treat and slaughter their own meat).
Where the fuck do you come from to say that animal lovers don’t do these things? Have you ever known any animal rights activists? Do you live on a farm in the third world or something?
What we don’t do, could never stomach to do, is to purposefully torture an innocent to punish those who feel compassion for him. A psychopath does that.
And what ever happened to that sicko Motari? So far as I can tell, absolutely nothing. He’s walking along, singing a song.
You are correct in stating that millions of dogs and cats are euthanized every year, and this is a terrible thing. However dogs and cats that are euthanized die humanely. Starving to death is far from humane. I also agree with you that people don’t do enough to help these animals, and this is more than likely because they don’t know how to help. The point is there is an easy solution to the overwhelming amount of homeless pets in the world. If we all spayed and neutered our dogs and cats, and left breeding to breeders, we would not have this problem