ARTIST COMMITS SUICIDE ONLINE AS A WORK OF ART (WELL…, SORT OF)

On May 1st in the popular website Chatroulette thousands of people watched a man hanging from the ceiling, slowly swinging, for hours and hours. It was not a real suicide but a performance by Brooklyn-based artist Franco Mattes.

Eva and Franco Mattes are already known in the contemporary art world for similar interventions done under the name 0100101110101101.ORG. This time what they wanted to achieve with their challenging ‘online performance’, as they call it, is not clear. ‘Since we live online’ declared Franco Mattes ‘than we should get used to die online’.

The action provoked many and diverse reactions: some laughed – believing it was a joke, some insulted, some took pictures,and apparently, only one called the police.

An interesting discussion on the meaning of a piece of art as such, hyperreality and spectacularization of daily life is followed on this discussion thread on rhizome.org.

To watch ‘No Fun’ go here

http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/nofun/images.html

Still from online performance No Fun by Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG

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