In 1976, artist Kim Jones entered the Union Gallery at the California State University, Los Angeles. His body was caked in mud, he wore an elaborate wooden structure on his back and a pair of tights over his face. He wandered around the gallery, barking poetry and undressing until naked. He then unveiled a cage containing three live rats. He doused the rats in lighter fluid and set fire to them. As the animals screamed in agony, he screamed alongside them. The audience stood horrified, then fled. After the performance, Jones was charged with animal cruelty. The director of the gallery was fired.
It appears, on a simple reading of these facts, that Jones’s act is impossible to justify. Animals should never be killed for the sake of art. This was pure, undiluted cruelty with no redeemable aspect. But dig a little deeper and the moral ambiguities start to shift. Jones was a Vietnam vet who wanted to alert people to the hypocrisy of war, pain and violence. The university where the piece took place killed hundreds of animals every year in laboratory experiments, while millions of rats are exterminated in equally cruel ways all the time. Billions of animals are killed every year to feed us. So who, exactly, is the monster?
