Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When I lived in Denmark I visited the art museum in Copenhagen. Tucked away in an alcove near the back was a little shelf holding a blender filled with water containing a plastic goldfish. Upon enquiring on the purpose of the exhibit I was told that the viewer was being presented with a dilemma, to wrestle with their conscience and choose between life and death. I learned this exhibit was a replica of an original, where ten blenders were on display at an art museum in Kolding, and had had live goldfish in them. Viewers had had the option to press the 'on' button and take the life of the fish, or walk away. Only one of the blenders were ever switched on, and the two fish within it died. Due to complaints against the nature of the exhibit, the power was disconnected and the question remained posed in theory. As I looked at the plastic goldfish floating in the water, I imagined the real exhibit, with real fish, real lives helpless to defend themselves against the blades always present below them...and the capricious will of a more powerful being who could simply press a button and end their life.
I remained troubled by this scenario for a long time. It was a successful exhibit. The artist's work had taken me to a place of discomfort, and made me aware of my place in it. This exhibit wasn't about the fish, it was about man and his ability to choose to take a life which appeared to be of little worth to either him or the creature it belonged to. I wondered what would happen if it were not a goldfish, but an elephant, or a tiger, or a sheep, or an eagle. Would people react differently if it were a 'greater' or 'lesser' life? What if it were an old man, a convicted criminal, or a newborn baby? My thoughts frightened me, so I stopped thinking about the goldfish anymore.
Five years passed and I found myself thinking of this exhibit again, though it came back to me in an indirect way. It all began with the planting of the flower garden earlier this summer and an invasion of snails. My garden gives me such peace, to be around beautiful plants as they bloom and grow, their leaves and buds unfurling in the sun, the scent of the herbs and the lavender, the riotous proliferation of the tomato plants. It is so wonderful to watch the garden birds, the butterflies, the honeybees and bumblebees, the little red squirrel, the doves, the crows and the magpies all sharing the garden and living peacefully together.
Then one morning shortly after planting a large variety of annuals in amongst the perennials I discovered our back garden was infested with snails. It was as though they had appeared out of nowhere, I began to collect them up, counting to 150 and then giving up. The pail was heavy with their weight when I finally took them far away and left them in their new location out in the woods. The next day as many were back and my poor flowers were clearly losing against them. I agonised what to do. I did not want to kill them, but they certainly didn't seem willing to compromise and find some other place to be. Somehow my garden had become the snail version of Noma and word was getting out. Every snail within miles around was coming to see what the fuss was about. As the days went by I continued to collect the snails in the morning and relocate them far away, sadly looking over the straggly remains of their festivities upon my return. In the end I had to admit the snails were winning. No matter what I did, they would succeed in killing everything I had planted if something wasn't done.
