Design Federation

****EDIT****

Thanks to one kind reader “Robert D”, we now have some more information on the whole sorry saga. As someone allegedly said, “The truth shall set you free”

http://harmonicminor.com/2008/04/07/the-guillermo-habacuc-vargas-hoax/
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/story/0,,2269320,00.html

****EDIT****

Now, I am yet to see a proper news article on this written by reputable news outlet, but this is the internet so anything can be seen as real.

So the story is this. A man named Guillermo Habacuc Vargas, allegedly exists, and allegedly did an art installation where he tied up a stray dog as Art and it died. What his alleged point was, is that there are thousands of dogs around Costa Rica dying every day and nobody cares.

Now first off, I am a dog lover, I have a dog, and it’s like a best friend.
So I should be appalled and shocked at this. I should call for this man to be murdered the same way that poor dog died. I should help organise a lynch mob to hunt this evil demon down and string him up.

In the event that this story is true, I will raise my hand and say yes I think it is awful, it was cruel like life is, and that the dog was poor and defenceless and the man had no right to torture it for arts sake, I will raise my hand and say, this is not art. Guillermo Habacuc Vargas could have taken photos of stray dogs, he could have filmed them, and he could have done all sorts of other things that would have conveyed the same message without degrading the living and the dying.

But will you raise your hands and say, people die in Iraq everyday for a war on oil, or hundreds of people die making the shoes you wear, the gold around your neck or coffee you drink, yet you are more likely to get upset and outraged about a stray dog dying in a gallery.

We consumers are as much to blame about this as this alleged artist is.

- David Goldberg