The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'marco evaristti'
2008/9/5
A condemned prisoner in Texas has requested for his body to be made into fish food as part of an art installation. Gene Hathorn, who is on death row for murdering his father, stepmother and stepbrother, wants to donate his body to a project by Chilean-born artist Marco Evaristti:
Mr Evaristti, 45, a Chilean-born artist who lives in Denmark, said he would first deep-freeze Hathorn's body and then turn it into fish food which visitors at the exhibition could feed to a shoal of goldfish.
"One of the reasons I chose the theme of fish food is because in his court papers, they considered him a piece of 'human trash'. This is what the court papers called him, with regards to eliminating human trash. He wants to be a part of this art. It's the last thing he can do for society and he views it as positive," he said.
It will be part of a wider project by Mr Evaristti, who, in August, presented a clothing collection called "The Last Fashion", in which 15 models wore outfits designed by him. He stated that those garments were for death-row prisoners to wear on their execution day, to be offered by mail order to prisoners whose execution dates are imminent.Meanwhile, Evaristti is helping Hathorn mount an appeal. If the name "Marco Evaristti" sounds familiar, it may be because of his previous project, in which he placed living goldfish in blenders, giving gallery patrons the power to kill them at the flick of a switch.
2003/5/13
Interactive art vs. animal rights A Danish art gallery director is facing trial for animal cruelty after hosting an exhibit featuring goldfish swimming in a blender. The artist who created the exhibit, Marco Evaristtis, said that he wanted to make people "do battle with their conscience" when confronted with the switch. Throughout the course of the exhibition, two members of the public decided to press the switch (out of curiosity, disbelief that the blender could be live, or sheer sociopathic callousness; who knows?), killing the live goldfish. The gallery director is being sued for failing to cut off the electricity supply to the blender, which he says he didn't do as not to interfere with the artist's vision.