The object which is shown in this project is an attempt to separate religion from its economic utility. The aim is not to show evidences for or against, but showing “absurd” figures of the subject. Giving a human the status of a sacrifice only brings it down to its animalistic substance. As a scapegoat, the human is not something better than an animal. The victim becomes an animal. An animal which is worthy of contempt rather than compassion. The Dog is based on the identity of a false subject, which in here is represented by the pig, and not the identity of a victim. When we read dog backwards we get god. The dog in many mythologies and religions is god’s messenger but instead of a dog we see a pig. Somebody set us up.
The Dog is based on the fake identity of a bogus subject, which is PIG, and not on the identity of the sacrifice. DOG spelled backwards reads GOD.
We look at the barbarity of the situation which here is understood in the category of the human right for salvation. It really is about political, economic practices. Identifying a human with the victim (in the name of the idea of kindness) becomes a misunderstanding. The deception is to hide that we do not have anything to sacrifice, there’s no scapegoat. In love we give what we don’t have, while in the crime we commit out of that love, we rob the loved one of the things he or she is actually missing (as Slavoj Žižek said).
During post-production editing the film became a black-and-white version, which resembles a burlesque by Buster Keaton (the necessity to exit the part of a victim to avoid becoming deranged). That is why that comment is so important; it’s a video reproduction but better than the original. You can say that the commentary is the original.
In various religions and mythologies, a DOG serves as a messenger; here, however, we see a pig instead of a dog. There is an idiom in my native language used to describe a situation when someone is trying to sling mud at someone else — to make malicious charges and otherwise discredit their opponent – it is called “podłożyć świnię: ”to planting a pig” on someone.
In the Awangarda gallery bwa Wrocław the work is shown as an installation in a window on a led screen (300 × 200 cm), recast as a DNA sequence. The untampered image is accessible to the passers-by through a touch sensor placed outside of the window. Changing the picture on the screen we become the authors of one the versions. The “weaker” the life is in reality, the more we try to create an abstract picture, an illusion devoid of meaning through an empty, aesthetic gesture.
The second variant is a recasting of The Dog video into television noiseto form a series, a soap opera (one season, 12 episodes 35 minutes each). That noise is not a disturbance, it is the possibility to enter the right frequency and to see more. The less we can see the more we create images in our heads.
DOG video is projected on a screen made from the same kind of fabric on which Juan Diego saw the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Video The Dog recast as a DNA sequence
