We Were Promised a Human Petting Zoo

What does the phrase “human petting zoo” make you picture? Is it a human on all fours in a cage, munching on those little brown petting zoo pellets out of your hand? Is it softly petting a human’s fur while worrying they might nibble on your clothing? Is it furries in elaborate farm animal fursuits—A sheep? A goat? Maybe even a llama roaming around a fenced-in pen? Or maybe these very same furries turn the table on their human captors and, instead, pet you? Or, perhaps, a semi-naked performance collective prowling around with unfastened harnesses and collars and faux horse tails jutting out from their buttholes… slinking their way around you, rubbing themselves against your leg, nudging their heads near your crotch, aggressively gesturing to your hand, that you might soothe them with a gentle rub, leading you into a false sense of petting security before they abruptly chomp your finger off? … 

OR… Do you picture ratty fur suits sans humans, some dismembered as if they encountered a serial killer with a serious cosplay hang-up, strung up like flying puppets on freestanding walls, spurting out a piss-like stream of water into small ball-strewn kiddie pools, all to the grating and depresso sounds of atonal droning?

WRRRRRR….BZZZZZZZZ….WRRRRRROOOOO…WEEEEEEOOOOOOORRR

Yeah. The latter isn’t what we imagined, either. But that’s exactly what we found at Brian Andrew Whiteley’s (mercifully) one-night-only installation Human Petting Zoo at Brooklyn’s The Invisible Dog Art Center. Uh…where is the human petting zoo we were promised?! If we’re feeling generous (and mmm, nah, we’re not), we’d surmise this ghastly and dull exhibit as a half-baked and humorless evocation of Mike Kelley’s uncanny antics–only without the uncanny antics…

It wasn’t just the Party City free-for-all of gorilla and sheep masks, insect-like pom poms, itsy American flags, tacky fake flowers spackled to fursuits with an astonishingly generous spurt of spray foam, a material that oozed out of fursuit joints like congealed fat. Nor was it simply the random insertion of a pirate mascot among the critters that appeared to be wearing Uggs. Nor was it the copious wall-sized projections featuring—oh, thank god!—more of these neon yellow-eyed fursuits doing nothing but staring blankly. It wasn’t even the random objects like a basketball or a ball of yarn lying on the floor. Someone dropped something! It was the expansive gulf between the boasting, anticipatory invitations, press releases, and social media posts and the half-assed, pathetic, slapped-together, and, even more tragically, humorless (at least intentional humor) reality. In fact, this gulf made Human Petting Zoo akin to an art version of the now-infamous grifting immersive Glasgow Wonka rip-off, Willy’s Chocolate Experience. At least that had some sort of engagement with the audience, even if it was a poor masked actor terrorizing young children from behind a mirror in their role as the AI-generated character, The Unknown. We would have taken it!

To fully understand the (hilarious) failure of Human Petting Zoo, the promotional materials must be put forth as heinous crimes of false advertising! One of the first invite emails received described the installation as “NYCs [sic] most exciting art experience,” “a world of oversized furries, playful fountains, mesmerizing projections, refreshing pools, cloud rooms with live music and electronica soundtrack.” Technically, all these things did exist in Invisible Dog’s industrial space but not exactly as “mesmerizing” as the flowery language would imply. Sure, a hose streaming out of an Easter bunny’s mouth into a kiddie pool, within which floats three sad un-played-with beach balls and other smaller plastic ones stolen from a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit, is a fountain, we guess, but not exactly a playful or refreshing one. The most baffling of this litany of promises has to be the “cloud room.” Was Whiteley referring to the glued-together puffs of cotton-ball clouds that acted as an elementary school play backdrop for a black-and-white fox?

At least this was adjacent to accuracy. The same cannot be said for the Invisible Dog’s website. Below a photograph of a naked tattooed man in a blonde-wigged bunny head on an NYC rooftop, an image that features heavily in Whiteley’s Instagram promo videos, which are much more chaotic, wild, and visually interesting than the installation itself, the text reads:

“…immerse yourself in a unique atmosphere where you can pet, play, and connect with live humans in furry outfits. The immersive art installation features performers in cosplay suits, video and projection art, paintings, a functional furry fountain, hay bails [sic], live music and electronic sets by Brian Wenner with select instrumentalists.”

Um…where were these live furry performers?! Certainly not at the 6 PM press preview, which consisted of us, a KN-95-wearing fellow writer who told a worker he just got over COVID (what a way to avoid unwanted conversation! Taking notes!), the artist wearing a tux, and a few security guards staring down at their phones. One guard was peering down so intensely at his phone, so disengaged from anything around him, that it led us to believe he must have discovered a human petting zoo somewhere in there… but no, not here… 

Nobody seemed interested in conversation, let alone petting, playing, or connecting with live humans. Now, we know what you’re thinking: Maybe the live performers showed up during the public event, you snotty press swine? Well, not according to our post-installation Instagram sleuthing, searching Invisible Dog’s geotag, #humanpettingzoo, and Whiteley’s own comprehensive story-reposting in an attempt to discover some proof of the installation picking up later in the evening. No such luck. We found nothing other than the arrival of ​​musician Brittany Anjou on Farfisa and a poster noting there was “no petting of humans.” We know, honey! And while this may be a minute detail, where the fuck were these hay bales?

Farther down Invisible Dog’s page, a second paragraph puts forth a warning that is perhaps funnier than the rest of the content combined: “This is not for the faint of heart.” Were we supposed to get the vapors from the rapid motions of rainbow streamers blowing in the fan-produced wind? Or heart palpitations in response to the constant unyielding cacophony from Brian Wenner, buzzing on and on in the corner of the exhibition space, a sonic atmosphere that yet another press release pinpointed as “whimsical” rather than, as we would, pretentious and unnecessary?

And don’t think we forgot about the Instagram caption promising “CAGED NUDES,” which, combined with the possibility of live furry performances, inspired us to RSVP! We wanted to bear witness to that! And feed the furries from this fruit plate that almost all the press releases mentioned. 

On the day of the installation, Whiteley was still building anticipation with an email of instructions for attendees that opened with a scream: “HOLY SHIT! HUMAN PETTING ZOO IS TONIGHT!” The email, along with naming every person who RSVP-ed (a PR faux-pas!), set out some excitement-killing ground rules and a promise of hoards of furry fanatics clamoring to crush into the art space:

“Performances and experiences will be broken up into hourly segments so please exit once your experience is complete to allow for more guests to enter. Please Queue up respectfully – if you are with PRESS please speak to our security guard. Photo and video is allowed inside of HPZ but please conduct yourself in a professional manner. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING unless you are ASKED. Your RSVP grants you complimentary drinks and access to our fruit display. We ask you to queue up ahead of time as we do anticipate wait times.”

None of this was necessary, especially not the reminder to leave promptly once the “experience” was over. Almost as soon as we entered through the plastic sheet doubled funhouse doors and glimpsed the sparse, uninspired installation, we were ready to go—or flee, more like. Which we did, climbing up wooden stairs into Invisible Dog’s lovely back garden to gaze into this dark cavernous pumpkin Carcosa sculpture (clearly where pagan types gather to assemble and raise the dead) that outshined the actual event we signed up for inside.

Invisible Dog’s space lends itself well to a dungeon fun house meeting Midsommar-like garden, that one need only imagine the squandered possibilities for spectacle. And hello, this is NYC, we could think of countless performing artists, or heck just regular old crazies readily available on Craigslist, who’d be up for a human petting open casting call. 

Though labeling this dejected furry puppet show “the most magical event in American history” and pushing farther into promises like “Almost a sinful treat, ‘Human Petting Zoo’ will have you begging for more” in that same email is beyond absurd (we were begging for less), we can forgive some over-exaggeration. Whiteley is an artist whose main medium seems to be stunts. He’s impersonated Justin Bieber with such intensity and enthusiasm that he earned himself a lawsuit from Biebz himself. He’s lurked around graveyards in a clown suit, sparking a “creepy clown pandemic.” And he’s made a whole lot of Trump art, a genre we both loathe, including a Trump gravestone that caught the attention—and interrogation—of the Secret Service. If only they had some questions about Human Petting Zoo too! At least some of these stunts seem to have a sense of humor, namely all the clown-based work. In contrast, Human Petting Zoo had none; all of the sculptures, fountains, projections, and music came off as serious, as pitiful as they were. And none of them were good enough to rest on their artistic merit alone. 

After our deflated experience was complete, we lurked near Invisible Dog’s entrance, curious about how the attendees waiting in line for the 7 PM slot would react to this Brooklyn version of the Glasgow Wonka. Thankfully, unlike that scam, this was free. While hovering, we got distracted by voyeuristically and not-too-subtly listening in to an interview a reporter was conducting with Whiteley nearby. We overheard Whiteley describe his installation as “A choose-your-own-adventure” type of thing. That’s one way to put it. What adventure did we choose? Laugh until we cried at the photos we took and then, board the F train home.