Neozoon. Fur Agency

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The starting point for the exhibition “Fur Agency” focuses on animal fur as an effective actor, in how it provokes reactions in its viewers. Fur evokes a feeling of warmth and comfort, the desire to look at it or touch it. The “incumbent” Berlin city bears were also subjected to this romanticized view.

“In principle, each cage is a framework around the animal”, writes John Berger in 1980 in “Why Look at Animals?”. The animal becomes an image in the zoo which we can view. We feel close to it, but at the same time it is alien to us. It is its otherness that particularly fascinates us. Nowhere else is that so apparent than in the zoo, where humans – despite also being mammals that are part of nature – exhibit and view animals as museum objects.

“Fur Agency” not only thematizes this way of keeping animals, but attempts to challenge established habits through an artistic lens. On these grounds, the female artist collective NEOZOON develops the three-part, multimedia installation "Bearly Legal" for the Bärenzwinger.