folded item

When enquiring about this item use the tag ‘harmed calf’.

This is number two in an ongoing series of folded items addressed to the Art, Response, and Responsibility panel convened at the annual conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists held in March 2021. They are all archived in folder 6202. This item is a single sheet of paper which has been folded and cut seventeen times. Its overlapping and manoeuvrable sections are covered with pictorial jottings made during the panel presentations. The paper is attached to, and folded into, an archival four-flap folder. Various creaturely likenesses appear at different moments, reappearing upside down or on their sides as the overlaps are disentangled. All this imagery refers to Holly Dugan’s 2019 article Early Modern Tranimals, which prompted my ‘irresponsible’ use of hinges and ties made from the skin of a ‘harmed calf’. The following video responds to Dugan’s description of a 17th century vellum manuscript as an ‘operational animal thing’.