Mice And Man - Carsten Holler and Rosemarie Trockel - Brief Article

ArtForum, Feb, 2001 by Daniel Birnbaum

Holler and Trockel's Eyeball, their final collaborative work addressing our relationship with the animal kingdom, sums up the dominant themes of the previous projects, radicalizing the role of the human gaze, transforming it into an organizing principle that also manifests itself architecturally. This pavilion is not a construction about the power of the eye, like the panopticon. This pavilion is an eye. But since the pupil is turned toward the sky, there are things going on inside that remain unseen. Here it's no longer a question of such delicious creatures as hens and pigs that, according to Derrida's model, have to be incorporated for humanity to define itself as other than animal. In this work, rather, it's a question of animals normally considered unworthy of our attention, let alone respect. Dirty and despicable animals. Vermin. Rats and pigeons. But, in an uncanny way, they have entered a space that is interiority itself. They've made themselves at home in a home that I thought was only mine. Unheiml ich.

Daniel Bimbaum is a contributing editor of Artforum.