Page 18 - Studio International - December 1971

Newton techniques of suffocation or percussion, let alone bewildered by it all and thought it very dull (as a
the lingering tortures devised by gentlemen few sick fish swimming about in a murky tank
Harrison: anglers. But man's relationship with animals has indeed are).
Harrison uses a rhetoric about 'survival'
always been full of contradictions. In my view,
big fish in anyone who is going to take life in a symbolic rite which is becoming a familiar part of current
ought to have very lucid reasons for doing so. American culture since the ecology movement
small pool Harrison seems to me confused in his reasoning. took off a few years ago. want to know how I
I am told that similar killings in California have will survive—how we'll all survive', he says.
caused no public comment. I don't think we Such talk of survival reflects, perhaps, the
Technology and art 31
should be ashamed of the 'sentimentality' the economic jungle in which an American artist—
English show on such occasions (you can blame one of the few remaining free-lances in an
the Press, but in such matters they reflect their institutionalized society—has to compete.
readers' feelings fairly faithfully). Electrocution If any artist claims that his work is actually
has a very powerful literary symbolism—evoking promoting the survival of the human race, he
judicial murder, whether just or unjust—as must, again, be very lucid in his reasoning. We
Harrison might have learnt by considering would all like to survive. But it could be argued—
Warhol's paintings of electric chairs. I would not press the point strongly since the
On the opening day, before the censorship, I issues are too complicated—that Harrison's piece
spoke to an intelligent young English artist who may be symbolizing the poison rather than the
had come to protest about Harrison's work. He antidote. Barry Commoner, the American
pointed out that the feast planned for that ecologist, has argued that the primary economic
evening—when the catfish were to be eaten—was cause of pollution in the USA is neither
not supplied for the poor or undernourished, population increase nor affluence, but the
but for a group of rather precious art-lovers. unnecessary use of advanced industrial
The killing was an unnecessary indulgence, and technologies such as plastics and electrical
therefore wrong. I find it hard to fault this appliances. The expensive technical complexity
How to humanize the machine is the problem, reasoning. We all know that our society tolerates of Harrison's piece almost reverses the precept
not how to symbolize its dehumanizing effects. much unnecessary violence, and prefers not to `More with less'. His experiment may be
Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols think about it. Art can perhaps help to reduce contrasted with what could be called 'minimal
this violence. But the conclusion that we should technology', which some young scientists are
Newton Harrison is explicitly not one of those ritualize violence is alarming. I am not accusing working on at present—techniques of production
American artists who specialize in manipulating Harrison of being what Paolozzi and J. G. that use as little energy as possible and interfere
news media. But his Portable Fish Farm: Ballard seem to aspire to be—dandies of the with natural equilibria as little as possible.
Survival Piece 3 at the Hayward Gallery this torture-chamber2 —but simply of naivete or However, I should stress that the practicality
autumn will be remembered more as a news hastiness in not thinking out the implications of of such techniques, both scientifically and
story than as a work of art. Since the end of this aspect of the work. socially, has yet to be demonstrated, and
September the episode has been mentioned by Harrison calls his work a 'cycle of production Harrison's ideas about fish-farming on land
numerous social commentators as an illustration and consumption'.3 In the ecological sense, there may be an equally practical solution to some of
of cultural decadence. Few of those is no cycle exhibited (except, I suppose, in the the ecological problems of the future.
commentators attempted to inquire into the true local exchange of energies occurring within the I am entirely on Newton Harrison's side
reasons for Harrison's plans to electrocute two ecosystem of each of the six tanks). The when he says : 'Art has to change. Its whole
dozen catfish in public. Their lack of scruple, farm requires an elaborate support system of ground must be redefined. It is sterile; it is a
though inexcusable, should be a lesson to the water-heaters, agitators, syphons, etc., powered closed system; it is stiflingly cross-referential
avant-garde in how unseriously it is now taken by electric current which presumably was and its yield per quantum of effort expended is
by the general public. generated at one of the big power stations in pitifully low.' Partly through his own fault, his
Harrison's defence of the electrocution was South London that belch smoke into the air. motives have been sadly misunderstood by the
that it was only part of a larger metaphor. The So not only did Harrison fail to recognize the British public. There are a lot of intelligent and
`farm' consisted of six sea-water tanks containing literary symbolism of electrocuting fish: he also mature people who believe that contemporary
catfish, oysters, shrimps and lobsters. The catfish failed to recognize that his consumption of art is simply not worth bothering about; the
were actually bred in a special spawning power was polluting the air of London and Portable Fish Farm might have won some of
container, as far as was practicable in an using up fossil-fuels. them over. I hope he will be invited again. q
exhibition that lasted only five weeks. Such fish- To take the cycle further on : the guests who JONATHAN BENTHALL
farms may one day, it is speculated, become a consumed the catfish—this ritual act of
practical necessity if pollution of the sea conspicuous consumption is perhaps the most 1 I understand that the Arts Council did not actually
continues. specifically American part of the artwork—had cancel the killing but asked Harrison to postpone the
Harrison had no premonition before he came to transform the energy some way. I am not feast planned by the Contemporary Art Society for
to London of the hostile reaction of the Royal insisting that Newton Harrison should have 3o September. After meetings which included Lord
Goodman and the artist, it was decided to remove the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, actually made a collection of the Contemporary act of killing from the public gaze, but otherwise not
and of other Londoners. I do not defend the Arts Art Society's excrement and recycled it into the to interfere.
Council's attempt to impose a last-minute system. But there was no hint in the presentation 2 J. G. Ballard (in conversation with Eduardo Paolozzi
and Frank Whitford, Studio International, October
censorship,1 and I consider Harrison one of the of his artefact that he was interested in the 1971): 'I agree with something Eduardo said the
most thought-provoking artists who has shown central idea of ecology, which is that of the other day, that violence is probably going to play the
in London for a long time. The RSPCA, and all continuity and interdependence of processes. same role in the Ios and 8os that sex played in the
5os and 6os.' If so, there will be no babies for
concerned for the welfare of animals, are in a This could have been simply corrected with a 18 years. Or do they merely mean that they hope to get
hopelessly self-contradictory position. Harrison few charts on the wall explaining the flows of into Vogue magazine ?
quite rightly pointed out that electrocution is a inputs and outputs. As it was, poor Mr Nigel 3 11 Los Angeles artists, introduction by Maurice
Tuchman and Jane Livingston, Hayward Gallery
more humane way of killing fish than the normal Gosling (Observer, to October) was quite Catalogue, 1971.
230