Original version
Urban Planet: Knowledge towards Sustainable Cities. 2018, 400-403, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316647554.035
Abstract
Imagine a baleen whale: immense, rendered in black and white, with a sliver of red – animated, yet evidently butchered – emerging from the meeting of brick and spackled walls. A spout of black liquid rises from its blowhole, its presence startling in an otherwise empty parking lot. Figure 33.1 is the work of Belgian artist ROA: aerosol paint applied meticulously in thin lines against exterior walls in the small coastal city of Stavanger, Norway. The piece is site-specifi c, sharply referencing to the Nordic welfare state as hunters of whales made rich by the discovery of oil. Is it possible to appreciate ROA’s whale in the absence of this knowledge of media, artist, and context? What if you mistakenly believe whales to be fi sh? Must you know that it is a mammal to appreciate its grandeur, its whaleness ? Would your aesthetic appreciation be augmented if you knew whales to be mammals, members of the Cetacean order, related to dolphins and porpoises? [...]