VES Students Slaughter Birds

One Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) lecturer has given her students an unusually fowl assignment--slaughtering chickens and creating sculpture from the birds' bones--prompting disgust from some students and fascination from others.

In an attempt to bring art to life for her students, Ritsuko Taho, who teaches VES 30, "Fundamentals of Sculpture", gave each of her students a live chicken and instructed them to keep it for a day, take it to a slaughterhouse, and watch it be killed.

Taho said she also asked her students to cook and eat the chicken and use the bones in an original sculpture.

"There is a distance between the artist and the object. I wanted [the students] to break down the barrier between the artist and object," the VES lecturer said. Taho added, "Because they will have eaten it, the chicken will be a part of [the students'] bodies. This experience will expand their imagination and understanding."

But some students in the class and members of animal rights groups said the assignment promotes cruelty to animals.

Three students refused to be involved in the slaughter, said Hannah Gittleman '88. Gittleman said she could not do the project because she thought she would develop a relationship with the chicken.

"It would be like a pet, and to take your pet and have it killed is not a comfortable thing for me," she said.

Instead, Gittleman said she and another student took their chickens to a New Hampshire animal shelter. She said the experience made her decide not to eat chicken until "I can kill one."

Students who refused to participate in the project will still have to create a sculpture, but their work will be strongly influenced by the decision not to kill the chicken.

Leah Zuch, executive director of the Cambridge Committee for Responsible Research, said of theproject, "that's disgusting. That's an awful wayto think of art. I think it's detrimental to art."

Of the 17 students in the class, however, 14were willing to try the assignment.

On Monday, immediately after picking up one ofthe live chickens Taho ordered, the studentseither took their chickens home for a day whileothers brought them immediately to the MayflowerPoultry Company in East Cambridge forslaughtering.

Alexander J. Kahn '89, who witnessed thekilling of his chicken, said "It's a veryinteresting process to watch. It's something youdon't usually see."

"I'm just trying to sort out how I feel aboutwatching this chicken lose its life," Kahn added,saying he had never seen an animal die before.

Another member of the class, Gitanjali S.Bodner '90, said she "wasn't really bothered" bythe slaughter, "except for the smell. It didn'treally bother me to kill something to eat."

Bodner, who kept the chicken in her Dunsterroom before she had it killed yesterday, said,"It's better to eat something that you had arelationship with because you respect the factthat it was alive."

Kahn said, "It's more than just making asculpture from chicken bones. Some people wentthrough a very emotional experience and that'sgoing to reflect itself in the final project. Itwill be about the structure of chickens, but alsoabout the people who are doing the project.