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Graduate student Christos Galanis looked out into the courtyard of the Art Building Wednesday afternoon at where his newly abandoned temporary home stood. In the cramped courtyard sits a large brown sofa and, a few feet away from a small metal enclosure, a pile of trodden hay and donkey excrement.
Galanis, one of the first three UNM students to get a degree in art and ecology, had just canceled his thesis project: living in the courtyard for four days alongside a donkey.
“The idea of what is success and failure within art is really interesting,” Galanis said. “Sending the donkey home for her own safety, people are like ‘Oh, there’s no art anymore, there’s no show.’”
Galanis, who transferred to the University from Montreal, spent the last three years studying art and ecology while teaching undergraduate courses in the art department. His focus of study is the methodology of walking and how the intention of walking is a constantly changing thing.
“Some of us pay crazy money to REI to go hiking in the woods and the mountains, but then migrants are risking their lives to hike through the same mountains,” Galanis said.
Similar to walking, the direction of Galanis’ thesis has changed countless times in the past year. At first, Galanis planned on walking a trail from El Paso to Santa Fe with a donkey, but he scrapped the idea after discovering the trip would take more than a month. Galanis said he then decided to live alongside a donkey at the University and take walks with it during his stay on campus. Galanis, who works at the Edgewood Longears Safehouse donkey sanctuary, said the project would highlight recent mistreatment cases of donkeys and horses, such as people abandoning them because of the drought.
Happy with this new plan, Galanis said he then spent the next four months preparing for his living art piece. Galanis spoke to University police and campus security about his project, contacted Safety and Risk Management to discuss the legality of his project and attended multiple committee meetings. In order to conduct research with an animal on campus, Galanis had to receive a tetanus shot.
Galanis, who has never owned an animal before, said Saturday afternoon that he had doubts about the project.
“I’m definitely terrified and excited of what’s going to happen because it’s an animal and I don’t know if she’s going to shit all over the building, if she’s going to bite someone or kick someone,” he said.
Stephanie Loveless, a friend of Galanis, visited from Brooklyn to assist Galanis with his project. She helped him set up the donkey’s pen Monday night.
Loveless spoke Monday night to the Daily Lobo as she questioned whether the donkey would react calmly to its new surroundings.
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“Maybe animals at all don’t belong here, maybe we don’t belong in these kinds of structures and environments … to be in any building kind of structure, to go against nature,” Loveless said.
As a storm slowly brewed Tuesday morning, Fairuz the donkey was transported from her home at the sanctuary to the University. At 11 a.m., Galanis helped lead Fairuz through the art building, where she walked across a newly laid path of carpet squares leading to the courtyard. As soon as Fairuz reached her pen, however, she began to move nervously through the area. After attempting to calm down the donkey for three hours, Galanis called a member of the donkey sanctuary to bring Fairuz back home.
Galanis met with the Honors College’s “The Archaeology of Walking” class Wednesday morning to address the recent mishap with his project. After Galanis mentioned the route through campus he had planned to take with Fairuz, one student suggested the class take the walk with him and without the donkey.
“We actually walked it, and it became a memorial piece of the walk that would have happened, which was really emotional for me,” Galanis said. “Even though it wasn’t with the donkey, they imagined what it would have been like with the donkey there.”
Galanis said his project took a new step forward after the Wednesday morning walk and that he would fulfill his previously scheduled walks, shifting the walks’ discussion to be about the ethics and value of a project in which the animal’s welfare trumps the artistic vision of a piece.
“Even as a group walking silently, we create a performance. There’s something that changes a space, and a type of interaction that happens,” he said.
Schedule of campus walks
Today 9:30-11 a.m. and noon-1:30 p.m.
Friday 9:30-11 a.m. and 2:30-4 p.m.
Meet in the courtyard of the Art Building
