Eventually, after looking at a lot of artist work I was drawn to a piece by Keith Haring. Haring is an artist I've admired before, but I'd never seen his piece 'Crack Is Wack'.
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| 'Crack is Wack' by Keith Haring (1986) |
This piece stood out to me, as it was something that Haring decided to create based on his own worries about drugs being used by young people, and he wanted to create an anti-drugs mural somewhere where it would be seen and noticed. Haring created the mural without city permission, however after it was seen and the message was deemed to be of importance, it was protected and is still there today.
I really admire Haring as an artist as he basically started out just creating graffiti in local places so people would see his message. Although he got into trouble a lot originally for producing his art illegally, it never stopped him from creating art for the things he believed in.
This lead me to think about things I am passionate about, but also something I would want to spread a message to people about. I thought I could channel my art from something that I stand for and adopt into my lifestyle, and that's being a vegetarian and standing against animal cruelty. Although, as a vegetarian, it doesn't bother me if people eat meat or their reasoning for wanting to eat meat as I would never force anyone to change their lifestyle, this differs from my passion regarding animal cruelty, as I think that is something everyone should know about and be involved in trying to change the way animals are controlled for human testing.
Animal Testing
Thinking about all these ideas made me remember that a widespread store, Lush, runs an animal testing campaign. This is good publicity for these issues as there are loads of Lush stores scattered around the country and they raise awareness by printing all their bags with their fighting animal testing logo. This is a really good way to raise awareness as people will see this campaign on bags and adverts for the store.
I also found an article discussing a campaign promotion that Lush did in their Trafalgar Square store, where they subject a woman, who completely consented, to the sort of tests they would do on animals in front of shoppers, to show the horror that these animals would go through for our cosmetic testing.
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| http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134555/Lush-animal-testing-protest-Woman-subjected-experiments-horrified-shoppers.html |
The photos above shows Jacqueline Traide, a performance artist, sitting on a plinth in the shop window, wired up to electrodes and another photo of her being restrained and has her mouth clamped open while being subjected to brutal animal testing practices at the Lush store.
This was to bring awareness to what we allow animals to be subjected to on behalf of cosmetic tests. If we think its horrific to see it happening to a human, why should we allow it to be done to small animals.
This was to bring awareness to what we allow animals to be subjected to on behalf of cosmetic tests. If we think its horrific to see it happening to a human, why should we allow it to be done to small animals.
My Idea
Similarly to the performance art above, I thought about having several performance artists crammed into one cage, left in a dark corner of the road or at the opening of an alleyway, similar to how they cram animals into cages to be left in dark warehouses until they are used for testing. Using human beings seems to shock the public more and would make them think about whats actually going on behind closed doors, so to speak.
I also thought about having the public take part in the art itself, maybe creating something similar to a petting zoo, allowing people to cuddle and pet the small animals before giving them placebo tools that would be thought to be used on animals, and encouraging them to test on the animals themselves. Obviously it wouldn't be allowed to go that far and like I said, they would be purely a placebo, there wouldn't actually be anything that could harm the animals, but my thoughts behind it were that people probably would be able to test on animals themselves, so why are they still allowing others to do so?
The final idea I had would be to create a stand in a public place that looks to be selling makeup, but brand all the products with photos of the animal that was tested on to make that product. With people seeing the cruelty on the product it would hopefully discourage them to buy it and support the evil that happened to make the product. This would bring attention to the fact that a lot of commercial cosmetic brands use animal testing and then sell their products so they look entirely glamorous, not making the public aware of what happened in order for them to be able to sell the products.
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