Piero Manzoni once canned his own shit, called it art, and sold it for its weight in gold. It was part of an early sixties backlash against the art market. A whole movement of artists tried to be unsellable, or just piss of the bourgeoisie. Instead, art collectors wanted to prove they were in on the joke, and spent piles of money on art that was supposed to insult them, presumably taking all the fun out of it.
Things have changed. This amazingly bad-ass essay by Chris Bachelder explains how the conversation moved from “integrity, (selling out), to savvy (playing the game well).” It is about reality outpacing satire and whether art should be political. It is mind-blowing. Read it. Then read his books.
It is fashionable, in these days of threatened Kindle piracy, to assert things like “Shakespeare wrote for money.” But there remains art fertilized not by profit, but by whimsy. (Banksy, for example. And it is worth checking out this project of sidewalk shadows, also.)
All this artistic history finally led to this: an epic, three year prank to try to convince a young man that he is destined to save the human race. It is benign. It is impossible to sell. It incorporates a combination of mediums, including the internet. And it is awesome.
You can read the summary of it in the link above, or check out this website, in which the savior of all humanity tells the story himself and shows the source documents. He uses more adjectives than I’d prefer, and the piece is longer, (as three years of adventure deserve.)
This is what some art should be: having fun with a stranger because we’re dying too fast to be serious, and expressing love for humanity in whatever odd way possible. Or maybe it’s just a couple of assholes going to extraordinary effort to confuse a poor young nerd. Either way you have to be impressed.
