Iškamšų muziejus kaip žmogaus ir gyvūno santykių istorijos teatras

ENThe episodes from the former lives of taxidermied animals staged in Tadas Ivanauskas' natural history museum in Kaunas create a realistic, if frozen, spectacle. According to American art historian Giovanni Aloi, taxidermy represents the "philosophical impossibility of animal death." The posing and movements of individual representatives of a given species allow audiences to forget that such an encounter with humankind is impossible in nature, and that the diorama window is not only a physical, but also a conceptual division between culture and nature that permits the violation, extermination and preparation of animal bodies for educational and economic purposes. Michel Foucault referred to museums establishing taxo-nomical order as panopticons, in which a centrally-placed viewer is able to scan the entire system of natural forms at one glance. In an essay published in 1980, John Berger explored why we look at animals and what our observation means. After the classical paradigm of knowledge removed both the threat posed by animals as well as their magical powers, animals began to decline, restricted to live in nature reserves, parks and zoos - becoming a sight to see. Video cameras allow us to see them anywhere and at any time, but animals never observe humans. In a natural museum, however, visitors are surrounded by the gaze of animals. They appear almost like living characters, since the masters of taxidermy succeed not only in recreating the movements unique to a given specifies, but also in fashioning individual characters. The animals appearing in dioramas created according to the nineteenth century paradigm of knowledge must perform the requirements imposed on "others" by the homo sapiens: to demonstrate diligence and devotion and to be well-mannered, meek and obedient bodies.In the twenty-first century, however, those same dioramas have come to remind us of the demolished ecosystems of former colonies and once distant territories discovered by research scientists, or the Anthropocene and the potential end of civilization. Today's artists use the powerful imagery of taxidermied animals to criticize the institutional, ideological, cultural, linguistic and power systems that have separated man from the animals and allowed us not only to learn about them, but also to exploit them, as asserted by Giovanni Aloi. They seem to resurrect the animal bodies they find to allow them to live as active subjects, at least in a speculative space. For example, in his book The Resurrectionist, writer and artist E. B. Hudspeth rewrites a museum's past to create the fictitious biography of the late nineteenth century American scientist and medical doctor Spencer Black. Mythological creatures are also featured in Dr. Black's Codex of Extinguished Animalia, illustrated and described adhering to the rules of natural history, as if they had been actual predecessors of today's man. Spencer "resurrects" these creatures by implanting animal parts into human bodies. This strange book touches upon the connection between the theory of evolution illustrated in a museum, the "substandard" human bodies of twentieth century experimentation, twenty-first century genetic engineering, the environmental movement's urge to "merge with nature" and the encouragement of posthumanist philosophy to "become animals.". [From the publication]