Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/07/artist-secretly-shares-meals.html
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I have mixed feelings about this. We also live in an area where cars with unlocked doors get “invaded”, as we come out the next day to find the contents of our glove compartment emptied, but nothing (other than the change) taken.
But it’s this part that bothered me:
I’m aware that I’m an artist with the creative luxury to design an experience. And this person is unknowingly involved in that experience.
It seems unethical to enlist any person in your art experiment without their knowledge or consent. But to surreptitiously enlist a (hungry and homeless) person in this endeavor for your amusement moves into the area of cruelty.
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This… is a very odd sort of art. I don’t usually waste much time trying to say what is or isn’t art, but I do tend to think artistic expression should… well express something to an audience. I’m not sure what the audience here is. As performance art, there was exactly one person involved in the whole thing who actually knew the full picture. So it seems like the only person who actually got to enjoy the art was the artist. Unless the true medium is the artist telling us about this via the internet. I don’t think so though, as he refers to it as “designing an experience.” Which, again, is an experience entirely for him. That seems less like art and more like doing something unusual for a lark.
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It’s astonishingly creepy. In a way even porn would be more normal than food.
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Busy fella. Here’s the startup sequence for another of his projects…
At the End of alley, guests confront a man, covered in trash & discarded bibles. He is awoken, moves slowly, disoriented, then starts spreading peanut butter on pages of the Bible and Torah. He then eats the pages.
Yadda yadda nom nom.
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I’d much prefer “Meals Left Out in the Open for People who Need Them.”
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Yeah “thieves” strikes me as the wrong word. He’s leaving the car door open, thus attracting passerby who might have had no interest in breaking into a vehicle. He might as well have just left it on the hood.
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I just finished reading My Friend Dahmer so I might just be in that place, but and I gotta agree, the “I sat and secretly listened intently to a homeless person eating a meal, and ate along with them” really feels like early stage serial killer “I just wanted to conect with another human being” stuff
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Later he plans on leaving pron out and he will well…something, along with whoever does that.
This is oddly creepy… Could get the artist well and truly sued also if someone has food allergies or gets sick off his meal.
And don’t think most likely someone won’t sue just because they stole it. This having been made public, it’s no longer going to be classed as theft as the intent of the artist was to have someone eat the meal. Tort lawyers will charter special flights to come and try to be the one who gets to do the suing on the “victim’s” behalf…
“Mr. Artist, what training do you have in food safety, preparation, handling and storage…”
“Mr. Artist, were you aware that many people have serious, even life threatening food allergies? Did you place any sort of warning sign in your little art installation to alert someone they might be risking their life if they took your bait”
These must be some very hungry or not bright people given much of the social and political mood in this country. Not totally unreasonable to wonder if food so obviously left out has been poisoned.
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I believe someone needed a few more hugs, growing up. Or something . . .
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Isn’t this how the anti-theft sandwich works? You put a club sandwich on the front seat of your car in the morning. The club sandwich goes bad in the hot car during the day. In the evening, the car thief eats the club before stealing your car and gets too sick to steal your car. I’m sure that’s how it works. I remember seeing ads for “The Club” when I was a kid.
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This is just legitimizing your sexual fetish as art. Which is fine, but surely there’s got to be a nicer way to accomplish it.
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And then things got weird…
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