The room is poorly lit, except for the spotlight beaming down from the gun metal lighting rack bolted to the concrete ceiling. The exhibition space is huge yet the small pool of light from the spot creates a threatening, claustrophobic atmopshere. The chair in the centre is bolted to the floor just like the lighting rack. The effect is austere, utilitarian. The invite only audience barely breathes.
The figure strapped to the chair has stopped shaking now. His blood mixes with the body paint to form a muddy brown colour, like earth or shit. The spotlight glares down like God as he breathes his last. The chair has done it’s job, the mechanism triggered by the application of body weight to the seat panel.
The idea behind it is not dissimilar to an Iron Maiden or any number of other torture devices, in execution though this has greater subtlety. The blood appears to have been literally squeezed out of him though in truth what we have just witnessed involves the application of almost invisible blades to the various major arteries and veins. The whole thing took just minutes.
We, the invited, stand together in silence until the architect of this vision steps forward into the spotlight and takes his bow. We applaud and he places his hands flat into the blood then wipes them liberally across his white suit. He has done this every night of the show. Each night a new suit. They will be preserved, along with each of the chairs and their volunteer occupants, treated and displayed, viewed for years to come.
Brian, my plus one, says, ‘Well, that wasn’t a patch on the Tate’s Roadcrash exhibition last month.’
I stare at the dead man strapped to a chair designed to literally cut the life from him and I say what everyone here is thinking.
‘Indeed, there’s no denying the visceral thrill of this installation series, but really, is it Art?’
Dan Powell 
7 Responses to Is It Art? – #fridayflash
Chilling! I hope we don’t go down that road, but you never know. You had me emotionally pinned down. Great story!
Very cool story. Though I could tell from your title it likely wasn’t, I was thinking it was a new form of death penalty. Until it was stated that the dead person volunteered for the art of it. The title and last line of the story ask a terrific question, “Is it art?”
What’s really scary Dan is that there is a line of thinking that can lead to something like this. Oh people may not be sitting there all blase in a formal setting, but terrorism or some other form of murder could be committed in the name of art, and there will be sick souls who will support it. The same feeling of deep sickness that your story conveys is what I feel sometimes when I think about some of the things being done in the name of art.
Dear lord. Art meets dystopia. What next? LOL. My all-time fave winner of a major art prize was the green garbage bag full of air. Maybe that artist should be put in your chair 🙂
very creepy. I just recently read another story about death as art, from a different angle though. The idea is quite disturbing. Well done.
Would give a whoel new angle on the artist work is normally worth more when they are dead angle
good stuff.
Good stuff as ever Dan, consider my thoughts well and truly provoked!
Comments are closed.