On the occasion of our current exhibition “Motivation and Personality” by British artist Stuart Middleton, Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg will talk about the topic “Utilizing Animals—an Ethical Journey from the Farm to the Exhibition Space”.

In the last years, animals have sparked an interest in many: science investigates increasingly their complex socio-cognitive abilities, animal ethics questions, how we have to consider animals ethically, politics and society debate on their utilization in farming, zoos or animal testing. Animals have also emerged in the exhibition space and are orchestrated there.
The lecture offers insights into the way the human-animal-relationship is organized in our time, how animals are utilized and to what extent reflections informed by cognitive science and ethics set limits to this utilization. It will be argued that occasionally also the use of animals in art is not unproblematic, especially, when it ignores current ethical debates. What does or should it mean to do animals justice, as subjects within an artistic practice?

Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg is university assistant at the department of ethics of human-animal-relationships at the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. Her dissertation on “Socio-Cognitive Abilities in Animals and their Relevance for Animal Ethics and Animal Welfare” was published in 2012 as part of the series “Animal Welfare–Human Duties” of Harald Fischer publishers and was awarded the German Study Prize, among others. Next to questions of culture, language, theory of mind and abilities of morale in animals, she researches the socio-cognitive abilities of pigs and an ethical critique of zoo animal husbandry.