"Die Kastration von Nett und Niedlich"

Neutering that what's Nice and Neat. The future of the Internet is becoming more and more uncertain – Gigabytes of cute kitten pictures and videos are being sent,uploaded and shared by users from all walks of life, day by day. According to this behavior, our limited bandwidth and storing space on the Internet are facing an ultimate overkill due to this phenomenon in nearer future.

In 1999, the city council of Paderborn, a small german city, released a progressive obligation that expects a castration of an outgoing cat by the owner. Without knowing, they started a revolutionary agenda and set a milestone in protecting the world wide web. This was the ignition for “Die Kastration von Nett und Niedlich” - an experimental video installation that prevents us from seeing little kittens sprawling goofily around1 in their living rooms and preserves the Internet as we know it.

A Castration is the removal of the testicles. The operation is a one off procedure and is not reversible. Once your cat has been castrated he will never be able to father kittens. The normal cat has two testicles situated in the scrotal sac.

"Die Kastration von Nett und Niedlich" is a video installation streamed in realtime to the Internet.

 

"Die Kastration von Nett und Niedlich"
DV-Pal, 0:06:23, no sound
2010

 

"Die Kastration von Nett und Niedlich", installation view

 

Examples of castration of cats in Art history / Review by Ulf Kristiansen. (.PDF)