I’d like to point out a few recent discoveries I made while researching more into this Habacuc business. First of all, regarding last post about him, it is true that he is not 50 years old, but 32. The rest of the information about his artwork, which you can find here seems to be true.
I received a comment however, pointing out that the artist’s official website was this one : Arte Habacuc (in Spanish). Although I cold not find the authors of the interviews shown there in any of the newspaper’s sites, I have no other reason to believe they aren’t true.

Most importantly though, I found the following information which I am translating below, so we can finally bring this whole business to a closure:

What happens when we are brought upon common realities as unique objects? Controversy an indignation, however, street dogs keep dying everyday and no one is doing anything. But it seems to be enough to take one pathetic (from greek pathos, that moves sensitivities) and isolate it from the rest, and it becomes, terrible, unacceptable.
True, the dog suffered, but lets be honest with ourselves: do we do something when we see an ill, lonely dog full of flees roaming the streets? Could be the governments fault, but shouldn’t our conscience be a personal initiative to do something for stray dogs?

Only when we are faced with cases like Madelaine’s kidnap do we stop and think, while in the meantime thousands of kidnappings and rapes remain unsolved and unpunished in countries like Mexico or Colombia, and thousands of people die in the Middle East everyday, compared to only a handful of soldiers…. It all comes down to pointing out a specific case, and we forget about the problem as a whole.

I believe Habacuc’s work is something to be discussed and not just criticized.

I’ve decided to post this entrance since I’ve found sooo much information against this artist, most of it critising it and condemning him, and little of it seems well informed of the situation, and above all of the Artistic process involved in his work. Hence, I did some research and found this which I considered worth publishing, in order to have both sides of the argument and defend Mr. Habacuc as an artist:

Hello everyone. My name is Guillermo Habacuc Vargas. I am 50 years old and an artist. Recently, I have been critisized for my work titled “Eres lo que lees”, which features a dog named Nativity. The purpose of the work was not to cause any type of infliction on the poor, innocent creature, but rather to illustrate a point. In my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought.

Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway.

The dog died the next day in the exhibition, according to the editor of La Nacion’s cultural section editor, Marta Leonor González, in Nicaragua.

The exhibition also included the frase “Eres lo que lees” (you are what you read) written with dog food, as well as a Sandinist Himn playing backwards on a loop. Habacuc said his work was a homage to Natividad Canda, a Nicaraguan who died after being attacked by two rottweiler dogs in a workshop in Cartago.

“What’s important for me is the hypocrisy of people: an animal like that becomes the center of attention only when I put him in a white cube where people go to see art, but no one cared when it was as stray dog roaming the streets starving. The same happened to Natividad Canda, people were concerned only after the dogs had killed him.”

“No one came to free the dog, or give him food or water or called the police. No one in the exhibition did anything.”

The point of publishing this post in my blog is to defend Habacuc as an artist, given that no one has taken the time to thoroughly and reasonably analyze his intentions in this work.
Even though the act of killing a dog is cruel, the conditions and intentions of doing it should be taken into account. The dog was VERY ill, and as a street dog (who no one looks after or cares about) it would have died VERY soon anyway. Unless you’re an animal rights activist, it is very hypocritical that people get so alarmed and overreact over what happened to this dog, when thousands of dogs die on the streets with no love, care or attention.
Why are people acting so shocked when they can see worse things on TV that have no real intention or point towards nothing, and thus create no real reflection??

Check out this videos so you get an idea of what the banners look like on the pedestrian bridges. Next week I’ll upload the last video-record of the last illegal urban intervention in Mexico City….

Here are the photos of the banners that were put up on February the 19th in different pedestrian bridges around Mexico City (click on the images for bigger photos)

First banner in Churubusco

Banner 2 in Periferico

Third banner again in Periferico

(click on the logo to see it in its real size and download it if you like)

This blog was created on 30th January 2008 and will be “officially inaugurated on Tuesday 19th February 2008. It consists of 3 artistic projects titled “I’m gonna be famous”, “Spaces and memory” and “Video-monologues” and its principal strategy is publicise itself through banners hung on the Periferico in Mexico City. I invite you to explore and invent your own narrative, even if you didn’t see the banners and to leave your comments. Or download the logo free!

Thanks vor visiting.

If you’re interested in reading the whole document you can click here to download a version in Acrobat .pdf (document still unfinished, will be updated every week.) Hopefully an English version will be ready soon!

Another option is clicking here to download the Word document: thesis

You can download my CV in .pdf here, or alternatively read an extract right here in this post: