One of the most popular events at this year’s Next Wave Festival is the Dachshund UN performance art project, held for three Saturdays at Museum Victoria, Australia. Sculptor Bennett Miller, a 29-year-old artist from Perth, has created a replica of the former United Nations office in Geneva, Switzerland, to be installed outside Museum Victoria for the duration of the festival. For three weekends, 47 dachshunds will engage in rigorous debate in an attempt to solve the world’s human rights issues. Miller put together his UN assembly with the help of the Dachshund Club of Victoria, whose initial skepticism was overcome once Miller was able to demonstrate that he wouldn’t “portray the dogs in a demeaning way.”
“Dachshund UN is both a joyful and chaotic experiment,” says Artabase, “and a meditation on the utopian aspirations of the Commission on Human Rights, and our capacity as humans to imagine and achieve a universal system of justice.”