A student at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) killed a live chicken in the college’s cafeteria on April 18, claiming his demonstration was an act of performance art.
The student, Miguel Michelena Suarez, says he slit the throat of the chicken as part of a project titled “Fact or Fiction.”
Suarez said the piece was meant to make students aware of how the food they eat reaches their table.
“I tried to show the process of what they are eating,” he said. “How a chicken breast becomes a chicken breast.”
Suarez did not face criminal charges after police were called to the scene, nor did he face any academic discipline by ACAD.
However, an investigation by the college into the incident led to the firing of his instructor Gord Ferguson, who had served as head of the school’s sculpture department for 32 years, on May 6.
“It got blown out of proportion and the message got lost,” Suarez said. “They couldn’t see past it as the killing of a chicken.”
ACAD announced Ferguson was reinstated May 15, stating in a press release that the instructor expressed his wish to “have had a greater opportunity to advise and support his student before he undertook his performance.”
Upon reinstating Ferguson, ACAD said it would use this opportunity to “develop clear principles around the issues of academic responsibility and artistic freedom” and hopes to host a symposium on the issue in the coming academic year.
“While the College’s decision to terminate Mr. Ferguson was never intended to be about academic or artistic freedom, the College acknowledges the perception this action may have created,” the press release stated.
The reinstatement came after several weeks of student pressure, including a petition circulated by Suarez with about 1,400 signatures.
Suarez said he and Ferguson underestimated the impact his project would have.
“We didn’t think it would get to what it got,” he said.
Prior to Ferguson’s reinstatement, The ACAD Students’ Association posted a letter of support for Suarez and Ferguson on its Facebook page, written by Greg Olsen, who identified himself in the letter as the student association’s first president.
“What happens at the Art Colleges is research,” Olsen wrote in a comment on the letter.
“People who go to art colleges should be willing to be involved in the thought experiments that happen there. Dripping caustic solution in bunny rabbits’ eyes is not pretty either. Do we fire science researchers for this?”
Ferguson told the Calgary Herald he “[couldn’t] believe how many people came out in [his] support.”
