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Little Danny - Made in Austria
2002
BY
PENG Hung-Chih
Little Danny - Made in Austria
2002
iron stand , wires , sensor device , power supply , toy dog
230x810x216cm
01 / 10

"Little Danny" is Peng's largest installation in recent years. For this work, he attached over 3000 15-centimeter big toy dogs - all of them "Made in Taiwan" - to the body of an almost 4.5 meter high "Little Danny"; they form its "clothing", its exterior. These little toy dogs have a small electronic drive system, so that they can move their bodies and bark. The artist connected all of them to a central control system. This control system, reminiscent of a central nervous system, is connected with a movement sensor in the exhibition hall. Every time a visitor approaches "Little Danny", the sensors are activated and a deafening barking concert begins. In the high-ceilinged, expansive exhibition hall of the O.K Center, this results in the impression that the visitor dives into a fictive world: you stand before the giant body of "Little Danny", from which several thousand little dachshunds impertinently bark down at you. At a closer look, it appears to the visitor that each dog has its own special features. They wag their tails and seem to beg for attention and are not at all as helpless and timid as they first appeared. The visitor feels flattered and unconsciously begins to smile.

This installation touches on questions of human existence, which is increasingly subjected to a tendency toward uniformity, collectivization and fictiveness, as it is characteristic for the system of our modern culture, politics, economics and society. From the humans that have mutated into digits in "Matrix" to the small, structural connections of the "multitude" resisting the system in the book "Empire", we are slowly recognizing which role art can play in revealing the mechanisms of the system and in resistance against the system. Laotze described the relationship between human beings and Tao with the following words: "Heaven and earth are not kind. To them, human beings are like straw sacrificial dogs." If we relate this description to the situation of the modern human being, it may seem quite apt and also quite frightening at the same time. Yet for this reason as well, the question of how we can break through the system, how we can escape the compulsion to collectivization, is an extremely urgent one.

Text: Manray Hsu (Excerpts from "Do Dogs Wear Clothes? On Peng Hung-chih")

ARTISTS
30 artworks / 38 exhibition
Installation Art , Video Art , Painting
My artistic identity is no different than that of ordinary intellectuals in other disciplines, only it involves more artistic technique and aesthetic ability. I express common problems, just like a writer uses his pen to comment on current events, ...
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KEYWORDS
PENG Hung-Chih, 2002, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2009, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2007, Video Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 1997, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2006, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2007, Video Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2007, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2005, Video Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 1999, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2007, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2006, Video Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2001, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2001, Installation Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2008, Video Art
PENG Hung-Chih, 2007, Video Art