Berlin Teen Fails to Stop Flying Cow Spectacle
By Alexander Scrimgeour
BERLIN (Reuters) - An Austrian artist dropped a dead cow stuffed with fireworks from a helicopter in Berlin on Thursday in a controversial performance that an animal-loving teenager had failed to stop in a last-ditch legal bid.
Patrizia Strunz, 13, told a Berlin court that watching a cow flying through the air and exploding when it hit the ground could trigger "spiritual shock,'' but the court rejected her complaint, saying the teenager did not have to watch.
German police cordoned off a main road in Berlin's trendy eastern Prenzlauer Berg district where several thousand people gathered to watch the performance by artist Wolfgang Flatz.
To pulsing music punctuated by the sound of a cow mooing -- and with an ambulance on standby -- Flatz, 48, was suspended from a crane wrapped in a sheet streaked with blood-colored stains.
The sheet then dropped to reveal the artist naked with his arms spread in a crucifixion-pose.
To cheers from the crowd, a helicopter rose from behind a building, dangling the headless, skinned carcass of a cow. The corpse then plunged about 40 meters (130 feet) into a demolished building and a loud explosion went off.
Carrying banners reading "Animals have rights too'' a small group of animal rights protesters turned their backs to the performance and handed out protest leaflets to the crowd.
MAD COW DISEASE
But many spectators were clearly disappointed that the show was not as gruesome as they had expected.
Rather than the cow exploding due to its pyrotechnic filling, the loud bang heard on impact came from a separate firework set off nearby.
Flatz's own blood from Christ-like wounds on his hands and feet had been expected to drip onto couples waltzing below to a string quartet. But while the waltz did take place, it was held inside a building long after the artist was down from his crane.
A local official told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that although the performance had provoked much criticism, it could not be banned as the dead cow had the legal status of food.
"Throwing food around is not illegal,'' said a city official. However, regulations required the cow to be gutted and tested for mad cow disease before the performance, called ''Meat.''
Claudia Pfister, spokeswoman for a Berlin animal rights group, said she feared the performance could lead to copycat actions, such as people throwing their pet dogs out of windows.
"It is disgusting. Of course we condemn it,'' Pfister said.
Flatz has previously made himself a human doormat in front of a Munich art school and had darts thrown at his naked body. He spent New Year's Eve 1990 as a human bell, suspended head downwards bashing against steel sheets until he lost consciousness.