Bennett Miller Dachshund U.N.

Duration: 45 minutes
Outside Ikon, Oozells Square

Bennett Miller’s Dachshund U.N. is both a large scale architectural installation and a performance work that examines the role of the United Nations as a risk management organisation. A scale replica of the former U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland, will be erected outside Ikon and on Saturday 31 March this structure plays host to a unique meeting of the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights, at which all 47 of the international delegates are live dachshunds, or ‘sausage dogs’. Dachshunds are the only type of dog to have a ‘racial variety’ within the breed – there are smooth, long haired and wire haired dachshunds in all sorts of diferent colours. Dachshund U.N. is a playful and chaotic experiment; 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.

Footage of the 2010 performance in Melbourne can be seen here.

Presented by Fierce Festival in collaboration with Ikon.

Dachshund U.N. is supported by Department of Culture and the Arts (Western Australia), Australia Council for the Arts and the British Council Australia.