good morning
2024There are countless impactful artworks about death. This is not one of them.
Good Morning was a well-attended, livestreamed and profusely photographed fake funeral - my own fake funeral. A close friend delivered a eulogy, people took selfies with me, put flowers in my casket, lit candles, wrote in a guestbook and spoke as though I could no longer hear them, all whilst I feigned death - lying motionless in a casket for 2 hours.
The attendees-almost all dressed in black-played along with the known falsity, not because they were deceived, but because the deception was enjoyable. Engaging with the "funeral" on its superficial level was part of the allure, a mirror to our contemporary behavioural economy: a panoptic framework where visibility determines behaviour, and the act of display supersedes private experience.
This mourning microcosm blurs the boundaries between sincerity and the spectacle. It is less an invitation to mourn, and rather, a provocation: one that encourages a consideration of our collective and individual identities under an ever-present gaze, as well as our performances of ritual and intimacy for public consumption as opposed to authentic compulsion.
Good Morning was a well-attended, livestreamed and profusely photographed fake funeral - my own fake funeral. A close friend delivered a eulogy, people took selfies with me, put flowers in my casket, lit candles, wrote in a guestbook and spoke as though I could no longer hear them, all whilst I feigned death - lying motionless in a casket for 2 hours.
The attendees-almost all dressed in black-played along with the known falsity, not because they were deceived, but because the deception was enjoyable. Engaging with the "funeral" on its superficial level was part of the allure, a mirror to our contemporary behavioural economy: a panoptic framework where visibility determines behaviour, and the act of display supersedes private experience.
This mourning microcosm blurs the boundaries between sincerity and the spectacle. It is less an invitation to mourn, and rather, a provocation: one that encourages a consideration of our collective and individual identities under an ever-present gaze, as well as our performances of ritual and intimacy for public consumption as opposed to authentic compulsion.