COMPANY

HISTORY

I am not a vegetarian. When I was 9 years old I had a friend, a little goat pet. It is true. Sometimes I would put a leash on him and would walk around on the streets of my hometown during a time when many houses still had animals in their barns. I remember I painted the top of its hair pink. And it was beautiful. I named him Punkas. Some kids liked it and some laughed at me. One day, I came back from school and it was clear that my friend was sick. As we later found out he had consumed a blue plastic bag and it was stuck in his stomach. The next day dinner was served. This is the first time I remember being deeply confused. The hunger and the desire to eat versus the history that bound us were both present at the same time. I suffered sitting at the table. I could not eat him. The stress I underwent must have confused me to the point that, after a while, I was no longer sure that I did, or did not have a taste. Yet the deeper sense of me tells me that what I remember must have been my family staring at me and encouraging me to do so. It has haunted me ever since.

Dimitri Kotsaras

ABOUT

The Goat Standard is a socially-engaged artwork initiated by Dimitri Kotsaras, and it operates in the form of a business. It centers around a living goat expressed as a total of 100 voting shares issued by its owner, The Goat Standard LLC. The company’s primary activity is to serve as a legal platform for deciding the future condition of the Company’s single asset, the goat.

The Goat Standard is inspired by the intriguing practices of the world economy and circulation of wealth, including food origins, production, and distribution, which are for the most part unintelligible and misleading; the recovery of the ideas and fellowship of the currently deceased artist Soulis Moustakidis who subverted a widely accepted capitalist tool wherein the market value of his company’s shares, which were printed limited-edition art objects, would enable artists to produce more art; and a condition known as Cognitive Dissonance, or more precisely, Ethical Dissonance. Ethical Dissonance directly informs the company’s operating structure by simultaneously promoting contrasting values: financial gain and the value of life. When the majority chooses the fate of its asset as dinner or life, it challenges the validity of the democratic process to the point of irrelevance. Lucrum  vel Vitam

The Goat Standard, LLC was formed with the irreversible condition to be dissolved on a predetermined date. While in existence, the Company’s purpose was to facilitate its asset’s physical growth and value. The Company website provided an online capacity for trading its shares. These were also transferable by the shareholders to any party and at any price negotiated between them, while all profits could remain with them. A live vote by the shareholders, cast between sunrise and sunset of January 25th in Greece (UTC+2), decided whether the goat would be consumed in an extravagant dinner, Lucrum, or whether the goat would remain alive, Vitam (Profit or Life). VITAM prevailed! 

Since Vitam prevailed, all shareholders agree and are expected to contribute to the well-being of the goat for the rest of its life. On February 28th 2026, in The Rite of Vitam, the asset was named. Long live the goat Zisis! The ritual also initiated the Soulis Society, representing the currently deceased artist and alchemist Mr. Soulis Moustakidis. A few close friends called forth Soulis for the transformation of the printed shares from financial capital into art. Upon signature by the Society, the shares attained a new value, which is now open to interpretation. The dissolution of the company was sealed with the stamp of Zisis’ hoof, concluding the rite.

The Goat Standard explores the psychological discomfort that we feel when our minds entertain two contradictory concepts at the same time often referred to as Cognitive Dissonance. Described in the words of psychologist Leon Festinger who in 1957 he came up with the concept, “Cognitive Dissonance occurs when a person holds two related but contradictory cognitions, or thoughts…”, and also “…the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs.” When the concepts have ethical implications, this discomfort is called Moral Dissonance, or Ethical Dissonance.