Graham Budgett - (Zoo)Logical Garden

In the first place, Eve did not eat the Apple of Knowledge, Adam plucked his rib and ate it. The whole history of man and womankind was thus foretold in the very first act of Consumption.
(Give us this day our daily bread.)

Later, the mighty Prussian army (the State as Reason) besieged the then capital of western civilisation, Paris, and in desperation her citizens were obliged to feed on beasts from the zoo.
(I think therefore I am.)

Still later, the capital of old Prussia itself was besieged by the Allies (My enemy's enemy is my friend.) Then, the Red Army walled the red, white and blue armies into - and the rest of Germany out of - west Berlin. (You have nothing, to lose but your chains.) But the occupants of the city did not then storm the zoo as one might expect; and for their civility they were rewarded with manna from Heaven. (Annuit Coeptis.) Food fell miraculously from the skies, and the zoo-dwellers praised their Keeper for captivity.
(Give us this day our daily bread.)

Nowadays, animal-lovers walk their dogs around the zoo, and walls protect them from the wilderness within; but tomorrow tbe pets might all be gone, remembered only in token on the Streets of Berlin. Only then perhaps, will the zoo satisfy the Berliners' taste for animals; only then perhaps, will the Cultivated become once more, the Wild.

(Zoo)Logical Garden/(Zoo)Logischer Garten - from Berlin bei Nacht, 1987 - Cibachrome on aluminium 100x75cm

Graham Budgett

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