30 Apr 2008

DOG CARPETS - a project by Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau

Article in the popular daily newspaper 'Extra' On march 06, 2007 in La Paz, Bolivia

DOG CARPETS (2007) http://www.brodypaetau.com/?page_id=119

DOG CARPETS - a project by Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau (january - may 2007)

Excerpt from an interview with Ondrej Brody and Kristofer Paetau by Kristofer Paetau, april2008.

See full documentation at: http://www.brodypaetau.com/?page_id=119

What is this project about?

Ondrej: The dog carpets are essentially about society's hypocrisy. It questions the special status that dogs and cats have in our, western society. Although we can see that in China, despite the local culture and cuisine, the pet culture is on its rise as well. The Bolivian experience was about hypocrisy as well, but it involved on a larger and direct scale mechanisms and structures within the society.

Kristofer: It's about the tradition of producing carpets with wild animals as a hunting fetish. But in this case we were using an inappropriate animal, a pet - and like this we wanted to question the values behind this tradition. Ondrej was speaking to me about this idea already before the Bolivia show, but when I got the opportunity to participate in that show I thought it would be interesting to realize the dog carpets there with Ondrej, mainly for three reasons: more adventure, lower production costs and the problem of street dogs in South America (in contrast to the beloved inhouse pet in North America and in most European countries).

How did you proceed to realize the work and how important was the local context for realizing the work?

Ondrej: The context is always important. In fact in comparison to most countries in Europe, in Bolivia (La Paz) there is a great concentration of street dogs. We were informed then, that there is a municipal company called Zoonosis which is in charge of hunting street dogs and dealing with animals within the city of La Paz. They catch about 100 dogs a week and execute them every friday noon. We were supposed to prepare a project that would take place in a city Museum called Museo Tambo Quirquincho. The communication with Zoonosis was relatively simple, since both institutions were run by the city. We requested to obtain 10 sacrificed dogs for our "installation". This seemed to be a perfect paradox. A hunting carpet from a dog that is being hunted by the society.

Kristofer: The local context was striking: when we went out in the center of the city at night there were dogs all over the streets eating garbage. We discovered that there is a whole municipal organisation dealing with the problem of street dogs in La Paz. The municipal service Zoonosis is hunting for street dogs during night time and collecting the dogs in a kind of dog prison and then killing them, about 100 dogs every week. We went to visit Zoonosis and talked to them about our project and we also explained our project to the director of the Museo Tambo Quirquincho. She wrote a recommendation letter for us and with this letter we went to Zoonosis again and met with the director. He signed and gave us a small post-it to authorise us to get 10 killed dogs the following week...

Excerpt from an interview with Ondrej Brody and Kristofer Paetau by Kristofer Paetau, april2008.

See full documentation at: http://www.brodypaetau.com/?page_id=119