Here's the story: an artist is fascinated by falling. He takes pictures of himself falling off different things: ladders, trees, buildings. He fakes it (just as Yves Klein did), using ropes, harnasses and other security measures. Then he retouches the pictures for a strong a effect. He moves to bigger objects, until he gets to a really big one: a museum. And jumps off it (pretends to). And refers to September 11th, and the tragedy of the people, and the crisis [though from what I had read later on it seems the photo-performances were far from pointing to that reference as the only one]. And all press hell breaks loose, and he is considered the worst of the worst: a horrible, cowardly, stupid and insensible performance artist:That's why performance art is invariably so lousy - it spits in the face of honest human reaction, all those trust fund frauds locking themselves in a bathroom and claiming it is in solidarity with actual prisoners who don't have Guggenheim fellowships.The artist, obviously, defends himself as best he can. It simply isn't enough.
I believe this particular artist to be of fairly poor artistic merit. He seems unconscious of the history of jumps in performance art, as well as unconscious of how delicate a matter he is entering by referring to 9/11. What's more, he acts with very little sensibility to the issues he's addressing: and when you're an artist, that's a cardinal sin.
On the other hand, it shows how fragile the U.S. still appears, how traumatized, to the extent of censoring anything that comes close to Ground Zero.
Technorati:
