224THIS IS NOT A HORSEultimately “possessing a transformative power over humans.”^10 But how
do these conceptions of animal studies relate to the new sensitivities to
materiality proposed by vibrant materialism, object-oriented ontology,
and the emergence of animal skin in contemporary art?
Fudge’s recognition of the irreducible materiality of animal skin within
technocapitalist systems relies on Heidegger’s tool-being and relates to
Graham Harman’s conception of sensual objects. Although both theori-
zations emerge outside artistic contexts, Bill Brown also argues:
We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for
us; when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy,
when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, con-
sumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily. The
story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a
changed relation to the human subject and thus the story of how the thing
really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation.^11The loss of function has been identified as one of the prerogatives of
objects-cum-art.^12 De Duve clearly summarizes this process in relation
to the Duchampian readymade as follows: “Duchamp chooses an indus-
trial product, displaces it, puts it to another purpose, whereby it loses all
its utilitarian dimension as well as all ergonomic adjustment of its form,
but by the same act, gains a function of pure symbol.”^13
Fudge’s argument therefore not only presents assonance with Shukin’s
own conception of rendering but also echoes Broglio’s invitation to take
animal surfaces into serious consideration. Seen through these lenses,
the animal skin, the animal-made-object, the rendered surface that cannot
be silenced, becomes a destabilizer of affirmation on the account that
t he anima l-livingness that characterized it, along with its otherness, onto-
logically sets it apart from any other inert artistic/mechanically produced
material. However, as mentioned in the discussion of Agrimiká, this pri-
macy assigned to animal skin is far from being ethically unproblematic.
The contemporary emphasis on flat ontology and its aim to decenter an-
thropocentrism brings us to consider the vibrancy/livingness of all mate-
rials and thus invites a reconsideration of the very concept of life itself.
The invisible animal deaths inscribed in everyday objects should count
just as much as visible ones.