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Artist sparks anger with dead animal show

Animal rights activists have filed a complaint against Austrian enfant terrible Hermann Nitsch over his current exhibition in Sicily featuring dead animals on crucifixes, a spokeswoman for the artist said on Thursday.

Published: 17 July 2015 07:47 CEST
Artist sparks anger with dead animal show
Animal rights activists have filed a complaint against Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch. Photo: Dieter Nagl

Nitsch is one of Vienna's famed “Actionists”, a radical 1960s avant-garde movement whose members are known for skinning animal carcasses, tying up human bodies and using blood, mud and urine in their works.

The 76-year-old is best known for his long-running Orgies Mysteries Theatre, a performance-based show representing slaughters and religious sacrifices.

The latest edition of the exhibition, which opened in the city of Palermo in Sicily last Friday, sparked outrage among animal rights groups who accused Nitsch of blasphemy and inciting violence.

The exhibition was a “shame” for Palermo and in violation of the 1978 UN Declaration of Animal Rights, said Italian activist Antonio Leto who filed the complaint.

An online petition started by Leto has so far collected 70,000 signatures asking for the show to be shut down ahead of its official closing date on July 20th.

But Nitsch's wife rejected the protests as “blown out of proportion”.

“I have been married to my husband for 30 years now and I can tell you that this kind of small ruckus is always part of (his work),” Rita Nitsch told AFP.

“But quality has triumphed over the polemic. The show is a huge success and it annoys me when the media pick up this sort of thing instead of focusing on all the positive reviews we have received.”

Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando who attended last week's launch has also endorsed the show.

Nitsch has at least three museums devoted to his work in Austria and in Italy.

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CLIMATE

Sicily braces for rare Mediterranean cyclone as storms continue

Sicily's residents are bracing for the arrival of a cyclone later on Thursday, the second this week after a deadly storm hammered the Italian island, killing three people.

Published: 28 October 2021 16:35 CEST
Sicily braces for rare Mediterranean cyclone as storms continue
Cars and market stalls submerged in Catania, Sicily, after heavy rain hit the city and province on october 26th. Photo: STRINGER/ANSA/AFP

A rare tropical-style cyclone known as a “medicane” is set to reach Sicily’s eastern coast and the tip of mainland Calabria between Thursday evening and Friday morning, according to Italian public research institute ISPRA.

“Heavy rainfall and strong sea storms are expected on the coast, with waves of significant height over 4.5 metres (15 feet),” ISPRA said.

The Italian Department for Civil Protection placed eastern Sicily under a new amber alert for Thursday and the highest-level red lert for Friday in anticipation of the storm’s arrival, after almost a week of extreme weather in the area.

A total of three people have been reported killed in flooding on the island this week amid storms that left city streets and squares submerged.

On Tuesday, parts of eastern Sicily were ravaged by a cyclone following days of heavy rains that had sparked flooding and mudslides, killing three people.

Television images from Tuesday showed flooding in the emergency room of Catania’s Garibaldi-Nesima hospital, while rain was seen pouring from the roof inside offices at the city courtroom.

Thursday’s storm was set to hit the same area around Catania, Sicily’s second-largest city, even as residents were still mucking out their streets and homes.

Schools were closed in Syracuse and Catania, where the local government ordered public offices and courts closed through Friday.

The mayor of Catania on Tuesday shut down all businesses and urged residents to stay home.

Antonio Navarra, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper this week that Sicily was at the centre of extreme weather events, including heatwaves and cyclones.

“We’re trying to understand if, with climate change, these phenomena will become even more intense, if they will change their character as their frequency intensifies,” he said.

READ ALSO: Climate crisis: The Italian cities worst affected by flooding and heatwaves

Cars submerged in Catania, Sicily, after storms hit the city and province on October 26th. Photo: STRINGER/ANSA/AFP

Other forecasters have said the “medicane” is the latest evidence that the climate crisis is irreversibly tropicalising the Mediterranean, after the island’s south-eastern city of Syracuse this August recorded a temperature of 48.8C, the hottest ever seen in Europe.

“Sicily is tropicalising and the upcoming medicane is perhaps the first of this entity, but it certainly won’t be the last,” Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate emergency at the University of Catania, told The Guardian on Wednesday.

“We are used to thinking that this type of hurricane and cyclone begins in the oceans and not in a closed basin like the Mediterranean. But this is not the case,” he said.

“This medicane is forming due to the torrid climate of north Africa and the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean Sea has a temperature of 3C higher than the average, while the Ionian Sea has a temperature of almost 2C higher than the average. The result is a pressure cooker.”

The storm is expected to leave the area between Saturday and Sunday.

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