A University of Toronto staff member is protesting that the experience of Austrian art collective monochrom's performance piece "#2: Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities" may be too extreme for some volunteer participants.
The live art piece, to be performed tomorrow at the University of Toronto at Mississauga's Blackwood Gallery, buries volunteers in a coffin for up to 15 minutes.
Elizabeth Olszewska, community outreach co-ordinator in UTM's psychology department, says she was shocked when she received an email from the gallery inviting faculty, staff and students to get buried alive.
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The Austrian art collective claims that in these conditions, someone would be able to last in the coffin for days.
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"There is art and garbage. Everything that brings me down is garbage, it's not the type of art I would like to be involved in," she says.
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
