Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau present:
„LET ME OUT !“
Project description (may 2008):
Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau will present a living sculpture in their booth at the Subversiv Messe in Linz 2009. They will present their loving pet „Marcel“, an African Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) emprisoned in a golden cage.
It is expected that Marcel will perform a short and heart breaking speech in the booth throughout the Subversive Messe crying: „LET ME OUT!“ – and thus addressing a direct request to the visitors of the „subversive fair“ and making a comment on ‚subversion in a golden cage’. The parrot yawl will be omnipresent at the fair and confronting the visitors with an exotic pet crying for freedom.
Realisation (february – april 2009):
We bought a one year old African Grey parrot from a private person in Belgium who showed us medical documentation of it. But only after a week the parrot started to show alarming signs of not wanting to eat and not looking healthy generally. We brought it to a specialised veterinary who told us that it has a severe Chlamydiosis (Psittacosis) and started a treatment immediately. Despite our efforts to give the parrot its medication every day it died after two weeks of treatment.
We decided to show the dead parrot (taxidermised in the position we found it dead) in its cage. We understand that this is quite a strange thing to show but it appears that life can be much more subversive than any smart or stupid art project – especially when it ruins a ‚subversive’ art project.
We asked a taxidermist to prepare the parrot in the same position it died and followed the work of the taxidermist. At a certain point – before the taxidermy was completed – we found the bird cleaned and emptied on the taxidermy desk, folded like a costume. We decided to keep it in this strange form which might suggest the ultimate escape of the soul from the body.
Kristofer & Ondrej
I think the idea of a crying parrot yelling „Let me out“ and locked up in a golden cage is extremelly strong! Well done. Its a shame the parrot died…and if you would have 2 parrots in a cage? a dead one and a living one…humhumhum
no art is good enough for a parrot, suicide is all right.
It’s not pinin‘, it’s passed on!
This parrot is no more!
It has ceased to be!
It’s expired and gone to meet its maker!
This is a late parrot!
It’s a stiff!
Bereft of life, it Rests in Peace!
If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it’d be pushing up the daisies!
It’s battened down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!
This is an Ex-Parrot!
Cleese Rules!!
this cage is NOT GOLDEN!!!!!!
dieser käfig ist nicht golden!
ce kaeefique n’est pas d’orrrrr
lo kafigo necipo non orro!
R.I.P.
…and I bet it’s white gold 😉
Greetz and Team404 forever !!!
this is utter shit and I am really annoyed that you emailed me about such a a pathetic and obvious stunt
I worked for years on my craft to get to where I am ….this is bullshit and congrats you got some attention …big fucking deal
this kind of shit is a waste of time
how does one buy the fart vapor trail of year old bullshit by the way?
I like this bird story. The Big Art Idea versus severe Chlamydiosis, and in the end the art is no match. You guys must now realize that you may never create a work more profound than this. Here is an art review of your piece:
Chlamydophila has a biphasic life cycle and exists as elementary and reticulate bodies. Elementary bodies are infectious, non-replicating particles that exist outside the body. Reticulate bodies, metabolically active particles that replicate by binary fission, form from elementary bodies that have entered epithelial cells. Rapid growth of the chlamydial organisms in the infected cells causes formation of multiple micro-colonies or intracytoplasmic inclusion bodies. Reticulate bodies then condense into elementary bodies, which may be released after cell lysis. Released elementary bodies may infect other host cells or may be released into the environment. Elementary bodies were found in feather dust, feces, urine, saliva and ocular, nasal and respiratory secretions. New hosts are commonly infected when elementary bodies are aerosolized and ingested or inhaled. Nestling birds may be infected during feeding, and vertical transmission has been documented. Manifestation of chlamydiosis in birds is variable, ranging from asymptomatic to sudden death. Asymptomatic infections are common and birds may shed the organism for several months without exhibiting clinical disease. Persistent infections in carrier birds may be latent for years before a stressful episode leads to the emergence of clinical signs and shedding of the organism. Most acute outbreaks and deaths are in young birds exposed to high doses of a virulent strain.
(http://www.addl.purdue.edu/newsletters/2003/fall/avchlamid.htm)
Stephen Nowlin
ESSA GAIOLA NÃO É DE OURO!
pooor old and not special at all – seen it thousand times before … whats the f.. deal with a parrot
presented by the artist team insted their gallery (wished they had a decent one..) at the fair
and now we are questioning the existing situation at an art fair….nd so on. blablabla.
Well there are people climbing over fences with cameras on their head, people screwing old furniture
together or rolling walls, there are some trying to become a famous art group, and there are you both…
czech republic has got some better ones – I bet ! In the nineties people went to you and didnt
ask for a polite answer if they were upset – they came up to you and punched you right in the face…
then you remember, this was a bad idea…simple as in school it used to be.
PUNCH !
Once ano artist put some gold fishes in the mixer – howa hoa hoa..it was everywhere in the press.
Does anyone remember his name anymore ???? NOPE ! But we remember this guys who cut some animals in half right ?
These guys we wont remember…
–It perhaps only needs to be more carefully balanced: the desired scandal properly used as a tool to emphasize a decay of certain values and their sudden corruption—
Adam is right with hs last sentence about your work guys – go home sit down and think about why Francis Alys walks out with a gun in Mexico City is a deeply and powerful gesture – versus sitting like an idiot with your laptops next to the piece at an art fair !
YOu fucking spamming pissing cunt. Take your fucking spam and shove it right back up your fucking arse. CUNT FUCKER
I like the spam work too
this looks to me like the good old parrot scetch from the Monty Python Group.
So it is not really originally and new.
and it seems to be quite obvious.
not so good all in all
Why do you ask us to criticize your work?
I guess because you also think its bullshit?
Go home and open up a nice petshop.
thanks for the spam. i guess ill spam you back later. i have a nice morning now.
i wander if you have really made marcel learn LET ME OUT, or its just some other recording.
i guess i want to buy it, of course. it will go nicely together with teemu makis sex and death video, which i have bought as well.
i wish you happiness and catartic joy making art in the future.
krisztian kristof
Shame all this critique. I think you guys made an important statement about how we (humankind) fuck with animals and life and nature. Parrots do not belong in cages. Let me out! hits the right note.
Thank’s. I will be hapy to invited you in my street, My street is large and periferical. I imagine one cage each trees, that mean 40 Marcel let me out. My street is caliing rue Marcel Duchamp. Paris.
Thank’s for coming to my email boxe.
Have gravity fun, I like it ! Alix Delmas
change your name to :brodypathetic
I think it is really human unworthy to let die a parrot, an animal, for an artistic career,
but if the parrot truly died before you had put it into a cage, and when you treat animals
with respect, then all is well.
kindly,
Steven Vrancken
OK, OK, I get the point. But the 3000 Euro price tag!?? The amount would keep quite a few (birds included) alive in the part of the world I come from.
Did you artists write all these comments yourself? I wonder. Might be an anthropological research project. Art nowadays’s so vaporized I suspect you did hahahaa..
Hey, you’ve just deleted all the spam posts here. The block letter spams. Whoever wrote them, they were part of the critique you were asking for. Censor Parrots!
I am quite surprised by the animosity this work provokes. just because one deals with animals and life. The artists want to provoke reactions of course, but to me the work is not a matter of scandal, they didn’t torture the animal, they rather took care of it. It can be read in many different ways, which makes the work rather interesting I guess.
This is what art always is, when it is exhibited. A dead body in a golden surrounding. The relict of a process in the mind. Ready for the art market to turn it into gold.
Strong work.
It would be much more interesting if in the place of this parrot , it was Brody or Paetau ( preferentially ) . This could be a really powerfull artwork ! Congratulations for both !!! Said William Monachesi , an anonymous plastic artist .
And in addition to my former message, I’m thinking of the metaphorically meaning of the parrot. His words don’t have a meaning, he just repeats what is already said. But now the parrot is dead. So what will be the next work?
Karin B.
not at all art…bullshit..
was this work another attempt at challenging ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ art conceptions within one and the same project? Possibly direct confrontation seems impossible between these mal conceptions, therefore we decided to mix up their respective values again in another project. Using well known schemes and inviting browsing amateur artists to perform spam and to exhibit within specific conceptual frameworks or list appeared a method to us for experimenting within boundaries of the art market. The event and the exhibition turned out to be commercially succesful as as usuall; many of the comments where brought immediately into new projects, – in the majority by a ‘conservative’ art critique. On the other hand, the project raised criticism from a ‘progressive’ art public, questioning the sustainability of such a populist policy on a larger list like spectre or such…..
i really wish you guys would just turn into what you really are,
shitty wannabee „big“ artists.
why don´t you start to work with watercolor, to relax from stressfull beeing cool and arty all the time.
me for example, i did sell weed and cocaine, for about 11 years, and then started to work out only my
work. decent. laid back. no need to get attention for anything behind my W O R K,
but you could maybe one day be models for american apparell.
super! a little pricey though. would you take 100 euros?
p.s. they’re too white to be american apparel models.
This is nice! What if someone wants to buy it??? isn’t that somewhat of a
moral dilemma after such a strong sociological statement?
Thank you, it’s a very nice project, I love the blog especially, that you guys publish such shit, it’s very refreshing. I think you really allow people to demonstrate what morons they are.
well, that’s not a new thing, but its allright..
thanks for comments. better than art. go on from there guys. the parrot
Mssrs Pateau and Brody,
Bravo! The parrot is a hoot! Toot toot!
Anything under lights flanked by folks on mac laptops at ikea desks in temporary, white and logo-less surroundings = good art. And good artfair art no less!
The cage is nice but more institutional than golded or gilded, which is just as well.
How much does it cost BTW?
Mark.