Rape Tunnel: Art aficionados enter here →
Monday, October 12th, 2009
I'll make more sense in a minute...
I like to think of myself as somewhat erudite bastion of civility and culture… even though in person I speak like a highschool drop out and generally wear the kind of clothing that would have to have a Kmart label in it to get ranked as “fashionable”. Hey, I drink wine, and I can tell the difference between a Gamay and a Bordeaux. That’s pretty fucking classy compared to some of the people I know.
Part of being classy is keeping up with the artworld, outside of comics and album covers, and to that end, I keep my eye open on various news feeds here and there.
I’m also a consummate prankster, and know a good one when I see one.
A few days ago, Artlurker, one of the contemporary zones of wankery that insists it’s at the forefront of all that is avant gardè, edgy, and filled with suppressed didactic meaning, gamed its readers in a rather large way, and thus the art world got gamed along with it.
The supposed rape tunnel. Doesn't even look large enough for a decent amount of rape... and the splinters!!
They posted a story about a gallery work called “The Rape Tunnel”. Whilst the original story and comments have been taken down, Google remembers all, and cleverly cached it here.
When I read this story in early October, my bullshit-o-meter went through the roof. Initially, I thought this was another one of those stupid projects, like the artist that intended to chain a dog with the water bowl just out of reach and let it die if no one moved the bowl. Then I realised there is no way this would go ahead, as the supposed artists “Richard Whitehurst”, and the gallery director are basically conspiring to commit rape.
2 minutes of Googlefu revealed no previous gallery, no art journalist named Sheila Zareno, no artist named Richard Whitehurst, and no former tunnels of any kind, let alone punching people in the face.
However, looking at some of the reactive comments, it makes it bloody tempting to perhaps start one, and have some wanky description of how art is imitating life that imitated non-existent art, inner rage at soceity and the homoerhey is that more chenin blanc for free at my opening night that was paid for with my government grant? Sweet!
But I digress from the main point. This story got covered in actual news papers, because no supposedly real journalist bothered to do a damn bit of fact checking. It got published somewhere else, so holy shit, we better publish it too! How is it that none of them even wanted to talk to the artist or gallery owner about the work?!
And this goes to show how easy it has actually become to game certain segments of society, and gain a few fleeting moments of notoriety. No doubt, the original writer of this article is likely to be able to come forward, and get a decent job at a real paper, having done what the majority of papers now consider their primary business… outraging readership enough that they might consider looking at the news.
The outcry from the general public, both over the original fake article, and Artlurker exposing their ignorance when it was revealed to be a hoax is amazing. It ranges the whole gamut from people insisting that they’re retracting a failed publicity stunt, to others saying how the editors are worse than Hitler because rape is something we should never talk about… ever… except inside our therapy circles… and it’s not funny!!! (unless you’re raping a clown)
It makes me think that not only will the general public be pretty easy to game, but I could probably pull off a massive hoax of my own, and not just get away with it, but probably make some money on the side.
I’m thinking of selling off franchises in my religion…
