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The goldfish is dead, but is it art?

by Simon Longstaff

Recent controversy has surrounded the creation of an installation inviting people to pulverise a live goldfish in a blender; all of this done in the name of art. To date, the most common response to critics of this practice – in particular to those who condemn the act as cruelty to an animal – has been to invoke the principle of freedom of artistic expression. How might we respond?

One approach might be to wonder about the significance of the claim that killing the goldfish is cruel. For example, does the cruelty arise because the fish feels pain (even only momentarily) or does it arise out of a determination to end the life of the fish? In other words, would even a painless death inflicted on, say, an anaesthetised fish still be cruel?

This leads to another way of considering this matter – in which the central question is not so much about the problem of potential pain and suffering but rather, to do with the ethical status of a goldfish and the purposes to which such a creature might be put.

For some people, a fish may count for nothing in the ethical balance of the universe. In some traditions, including much of mainstream Western thinking, human beings are placed at the apex in what amounts to a 'hierarchy of being'.

Situated at the apex, human beings are thought to possess an inherent dignity that cannot be transgressed. For example, many people accept Immanuel Kant's dictum that it is always and absolutely wrong to treat another person (usually assumed to be another human being) merely as a means to some other end. Of course, the tragedy of history is that it has so often been the case that some human beings have been deemed by others to be 'not fully human' – because of differences in appearance, gender, religion etc.

One example of moral progress has been the way in which we have recognised that the claim to 'personhood' (the right to be treated as having inherent dignity) is universal for all in our species. However, what then should be the status of other creatures – including goldfish?

The artist, Marco Evaristti, who placed the goldfish in the blender evidently thinks that goldfish have some ethical status – that they cannot be disposed of with indifference. We can see this by understanding the purpose of Evaristti's installation, designed to force people to “do battle with their conscience”. This can only be achieved if you assume goldfish to count for enough to trigger contemplation of one's conscience.

It therefore seems that Evaristti has a serious purpose in his art. As such, it might be argued that it ranks alongside other 'non-trivial' reasons that some people accept as justifying the killing of other animals (eg. for food, clothing, medical research, etc.) Of course, not everybody accepts such reasons as being 'good enough' to offset the wrong that they see in the use of other creatures for our benefit. That is, some people wish to extend full dignity to all (or at least some) other creatures in a way that would make it just as wrong to use them merely as means to an end as it would be to do the same to a human being.

Defenders of Evaristti's work may wish to by-pass such discussion by making the claim that there are no rules for art; that anything done in the name of art is to be allowed (free from the usual critique offered from an ethical position). It seems to me that this is an untenable position – surely there must be limits. As a colleague asked, “what if it was a human baby in the blender?”. Our revulsion to the thought of sacrificing a child for 'art' is not based on any belief that it would merely be illegal to do so. The matter goes deeper than this.

Evaristti's best response is therefore to argue that his art was conceived within ethical boundaries and that these allowed, on balance, the killing of goldfish as an acceptable cost (to the goldfish and the universe) in return for the opportunity to engage the conscience of gallery-goers. “Yes,” Evaristti might say, “goldfish do count for something – but not that much!”

Unfortunately for Evaristti, his art is compromised by the possibility that those choosing to 'press the button' (and blend the fish) proceed to do so without any thought at all. Indeed, it could be that nobody seeing the predicament of the fish is caused to engage their conscience – even for a moment.

Let's assume that those who kill goldfish in blenders do so without a moment's reflection or hesitation. In these circumstances, has the art failed in its own terms? Was the death of the fish the waste of a piscine life?

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