Zoo for a Temporary Autonomous Zone: Jouke Kleerebezem and Paul Perry
'The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs,' wrote Marshall McLuhan. 'He then builds models or Noah's Arks for facing the change that is at hand.' With the Zoo for a Temporary Autonomous Zone, Paul Perry and Jouke Kleerebezem have built such an Ark. Installed at Bureau Amsterdam, this project is located in the interstices of our patterns of thought on the question of what is natural and what is not. Like Ashley Bickerton, Mark Dion, Thomas Grünfeld, Vincent Shine and Andrea Zittel, Perry and Kleerebezem express in their work some of the changing perceptions of nature and culture.
The odour of live animals permeates the gallery. One of the works is a metal pen containing two young porcupines. Most of the time, these animals hide in a hutch covered with tartan, decorated with cow skulls and equipped with a continually revolving radar antenna, resembling a primitively rigged Mad Max observation post. Two giraffes rise up from behind the fence of the second accommodation - not living examples, but metal skeletons clad with giraffe hide and camouflage material. The zombie-like creatures are equipped with video cameras and keep a watchful eye on the vicinity.
In the Zoo for a TAZ, we observe the animals, but the animals also observe us. It feels like we are being spied on from all sides with the latest equipment that is generally used only for military observation and social surveillance. Here, the subject of the spectacle has been reversed. With this distortion of the hierarchic relationship between the viewer and the viewed, Perry and Kleerebezem undermine the reassurance that zoos provide as proof of man's supremacy over nature.
Once, the zoo was a reflection of the Garden of Eden. In our information age, with its continual decimation of endangered species, the zoo has been transformed into a data bank for biogenetic information: a reserve, artificially preserving what is becoming extinct elsewhere. The giraffes and porcupines in the Zoo for a TAZ have developed an unusual defence tactic against this destruction. Just as people camouflage themselves when going into the wilderness, so too dothese animals adapt to technological civilisation. The absurd combination of prehistoric primitivism and advanced technology, reminiscent of science fiction films like Planet of the Apes, has been turned into a metaphor for cultural camouflage as survival strategy.
'Imagineers', the Disney Company's name for the designers of its amusement parks, seems a more appropriate name for the creators of this work than 'sculptors'. Although a connection can be made between this piece and Joseph Beuys' The Pack, or Robert Smithson's Dead Tree, an association with educational theme parks and natural history dioramas is perhaps more fitting. Zoos - like museums - have from time immemorial been curiosities, attractions, fascinating sights. Exotic animals have been displayed in side-shows, annual fairs, royal menageries, bestiaries and safari parks. Particularly after World War II, zoos took their place among the box office successes of the recreation industry: in 1952, London Zoo drew no less than three million paying visitors, primarily due to the birth of two polar bear cubs. The zoological garden, originally no more than a collection of stalls and cages, now features cafeterias, playgrounds and souvenir shops.
The Zoo for a TAZ, too, has its own kiosk, constructed of separate, identical elements, which could have been assembled in any number of ways. It is intended as a sort of play corner for children. In contrast to the other two accommodations, the kiosk gives the impression that it could easily have been built differently. The concept of the whole and its parts is reflected in the crash dummies scattered throughout the kiosk and in the schematic depictions silk-screened on the wooden panels. They show separate porcupine and giraffe body parts which, it seems, could be put together in any random fashion. The sheep-goat comes to mind, as do other animals that have been 'constructed' with genetic engineering.
Two small monitors in the kiosk show what the cameras on the giraffes' heads are registering. In this way, we can, metaphorically speaking, see the world through the eyes of the animal. But can we really share Dr. Doolittle's dream, Saint Francis' vision? Now that genetics and Mother Nature have entered into a joint venture and the alleged antithesis between nature and the world of information technology has been revealed by Hakim Bey as a 'semantic falsification', the question Bill McKibben put forward in The End of Nature resonates more penetratingly than ever: 'What will it mean to come across a rabbit in the woods after genetically engineered 'rabbits' are widespread? Why would we have any more reverence, or even affection, for such a rabbit than we would have for a Coke bottle?'
