I have posted a similar thread to this before but I found these two pieces of news compelling and had to post to see what you think.
In the first case, we have an artist who will be taking the body of an American convict (who was sentenced to death), freezing it and turning into fish food, that will be fed to fish by exhibition goers in an upcoming art exhibition, as a form of social commentary on the death penalty.
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Originally Posted by The Guardian
Food for the Fishes click to show
Danish artist Marco Evaristti is famous for his subversive art installations, like one in which visitors were invited to puree live goldfish in a blender. His next project: inheriting the corpse of Gene Hathorn, a prisoner on Texas's death row. When Hathorn is executed, his remains will be freeze-dried, and the resulting exhibit will urge spectators to feed Hathorn to aquarium fish. The artist spoke with Charlie Ferro:
Is this project simply an anti-death-penalty statement?
I just want to pose the question "Is it right?" Art must stay ahead of society. I know the things I do create polemics.
So is capital punishment wrong?
I have a mixed opinion about capital punishment, but keeping a man on death row for 24 and a half years? That's not humane ... If they are going to give a death sentence, why not do it on the spot?
Disgust will be most people's likely reaction to this exhibit. Are you trying to augment this reaction, or to subvert it?
I simply want to formulate a question and underscore a double standard: people think it's disgusting to use a corpse, but not disgusting to kill.
Will people really feed the fish with a freeze-dried corpse?
They won't be forced to do it, but if they don't, the fish will die.
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In the 2nd, we have an artist who says she has the supposedly stolen ashes of Kurt Cobain and has made them into a spliff which she will smoke (well, has smoked, by now) as part of her art show.
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Originally Posted by The Guardian
Kurt Cobain's stolen ashes to be smoked in a spliff? click to show
If you've ever been solicited by a drug dealer, then you know what the drill is: he or she offers some cocaine or marijuana, and you politely - or in some cases rudely - decline. But surely no one has ever proffered you the cremated remains of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain on the off-chance you might want to smoke it. But it looks like that's what happened to artist Natascha Stellmach.
It's the final, grotesque component in an installation piece Stellmach contributed to I Just Wanted You to Love Me, a group exhibition at Berlin's Galerie Wagner + Partner. And although all the artists' pieces ruminate on death, Stellmach's work goes rather further than SPAM: the Musical or Peter Dreher's gouache paintings of human skulls.
Natascha Stellmach's Set Me Free is a "death cycle" in five parts, examining themes of suicide and desecration. The first part is a sound piece called Black in Here, pressed on a custom record and played on vintage equipment. Next is a "text-based work", presumably art-speak for "short story", with Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus and the Brothers Grimm meeting in a "hallucinogenic twilight zone", according to the gallery statement. Later there's photography – including a shot of the words "Set Me Free" written out in ash - and finally the pièce de resistance: an antique cigarette case holding a joint made up of hash and the remains of the former Nirvana lead singer.
When the exhibition closes on October 11, the Australian-born artist intends to take the spliff to a secret location in Berlin and, well, smoke it. This will, Stellmach explained airily to Art World Magazine, release Cobain "into the ether from the media circus". And, presumably, give her a headache.
Earlier this year, News of the World made the dubious claim that Cobain's ashes had been stolen from his widow, Courtney Love. The report was never confirmed.
But if Stellmach's Nirvana doobie is indeed legit, she is keeping mum on how it fell into her hands. "That's confidential and kind of magic," she told Art World. "[The ashes] came to me."
Well, that or she has a very eccentric drug dealer.
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Is this art? Well if the social group that validates art conventions it to be, then it won't matter much what I think individually. Is it art to me? What is my personal opinion of these art works/ art projects?
Though I am against the death penalty, I don't see that the first work will have a great effect on changing the opinion of the majority of people who believe there should be a death penalty. It's too direct, gratuitous, and not particularly interesting to me, both visually or psychologically. It will be remembered solely as a provocation piece, something that crossed the line between art and life, so to speak. I also find the artist's thoughts on this incredibly naive and simplistic.
As for the 2nd piece, the only thing that has made it worth mentioning is the fact that they are Kurt Cobain's ashes, and not those of the lady from the corner shop or whatever. It is merely symbolic.
One things is clear: art and life seem to become ever more permeable as time goes on. As artists run out of novel ideas to put into action, they resort to further sensationalist and provocative extremes to get media attention and gain a place in the memory of art. Ironically, the artist who will smoke the joint says that she will, in this way, be releasing Kurt Cobain's soul away from the media circus.
I think art permeating life is a good thing. But to me these appear as perversions of that and I don't see how they bring anything positive or even earth-shattering to the fore that is worth the effort. Art that takes from experience and adds to it I will admire; to me this kind of art is less of a subversion of the norm or the mundane and more of an opportunistic way of playing with that new sense of what art can be today.
I also resent the way artists are portrayed as nutcases who just do what they do because they are "artists". It makes me mad. Give me intelligent, thoughtful art please!