Artist or sick bastard

Xero Cool Down · Post by **Xero Cool Down** » 2005-06-17 09:09am

You decide! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8245204

Personally I think it's kinda sick, not because of what he's doing, but his reason for doing it. If he was doing it for a documentary or somesuch I would understand, but his reason is that it is his "artistic response" to the images of 9/11.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-06-17 09:17am

I can understand it also, but still it is pretty tasteless especially for people who lost family members in 9/11

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-06-17 09:22am

“What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels,” Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. “He’s an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something.”

Amen to that. I don't see how this has any artistic value other than that which exists in the minds of this asshole and trendy idiots like him.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2005-06-17 10:31am

Could someone paste the article i can´t view it.

felineki · Post by **felineki** » 2005-06-17 10:59am

I don't really even see how this constitutes art... it's just a publicity stunt, and one that is intentionally based on a theme that's going to get people upset. It's really just a waste of time. As an artist wannabe (if that's what you can call someone who enjoys drawing random crap every now and then), I have to say that I'm ashamed. Can't he find something better to do?

felineki · Post by **felineki** » 2005-06-17 11:00am

salm wrote:Could someone paste the article i can´t view it.

MSNBC wrote:Bloomberg describes artist’s stunt as ‘nauseatingly offensive’
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:46 p.m. ET June 16, 2005

CHICAGO - A performance artist wearing a business suit and safety harnesses jumped repeatedly from a museum roof to create photographs that recall scenes from the World Trade Center attack, but his spectacle was scorned by some onlookers and victims’ relatives.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it “nauseatingly offensive.”

Collaborating photographers snapped away as Kerry Skarbakka fell more than 30 times from the five-story Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday. The photographs will be retouched to erase the pulleys and wires that kept Skarbakka from hitting the pavement.

Skarbakka, 34, said he started thinking about falling after watching on television as workers jumped to their deaths from the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, he says he sees falling as a metaphor for life.

“Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself,” he said.

'Sick individual'
Skarbakka, who lives in New York and was named by ArtReview magazine last fall as an outstanding young photographer, has exhibited similar images of previous jumps.

His antics on Tuesday attracted a crowd of gawkers, who became sidewalk critics.

“It was fabulous,” said Darlene Schuff, 56. “I just wanted to be a part of it. It’s a happening.”

Others in the crowd said Skarbakka’s effort was too staged to have meaning while some who lost family and friends at the trade center were very upset.

“What kind of a sick individual is he? Tell him to go jump off the Empire State Building and see how it feels,” Rosemarie Giallombardo, whose son Paul Salvio died in the terrorist attack, told the (New York) Daily News. “He’s an artist? Go paint a bowl of fruit or something.”

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-06-17 01:59pm

Where the fuck did he get the funds for the harness and the cameras and his crew? Was there someone out there who said "Let me get this straight. You want to offend victims of the 9/11 attacks, pull some grand-standing publicity stunt where you superimpose images of yourself over the greatest civilian tragedy in recent memory for shits and gigles, and you want to call it art despite the fact that it communicates nothing and requires no talent? And to top it all off you want me to cough up $50,000 to pay for it. You got yourself a deal!"

Why couldn't this hack sign a toilet bowl or scribble the name he calls his anus on a tampon and nail it to the wall like every other talentless hack of an "artist"? I guess it was inevitable that these people would move away from smearing religious icons with doo-doo in order to offend even more people, but it's still terrible.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2005-06-17 02:15pm

I think it would be great art to set this guy on fire and throw him, screaming, from the roof of a large building.

Now that's art!

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2005-06-17 02:37pm

Frank Hipper wrote:I think it would be great art to set this guy on fire and throw him, screaming, from the roof of a large building.

Now that's art!

No, its art once we pull up the side walk slab and hang it on a wall.

Silly person, it has to be on a wall to be art.

felineki · Post by **felineki** » 2005-06-17 02:39pm

Frank Hipper wrote:I think it would be great art to set this guy on fire and throw him, screaming, from the roof of a large building.

Now that's art!

Except not only should he be on fire, he should be bound to a wheelchair, and carrying a tape recording in which he renounces his stupid little attention-whoring stunt.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-17 02:40pm

He's a brilliant artist... if you consider attention-whoring an art.

Mobiboros · Post by **Mobiboros** » 2005-06-17 02:45pm

Whatever. One more hack artist in NY with no taste who floods a trade already abundent in hacks. What makes this newsworthy is anyone bothered to react to this guys tasteless art as oppossed to the thousands of tasteless artists who people ignore.

All this news does is give this guy press to let him continue thinking he has talent.

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2005-06-17 03:52pm

This is exactly what he wants. You will find nothing so powerful in the new art world as being hated with a passion to feed your own status among 'artists.' He's dong this for art, man. He's suffering for art. Those non-artists will never understand!

Mad · Post by **Mad** » 2005-06-17 04:56pm

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:You want to offend victims of the 9/11 attacks, pull some grand-standing publicity stunt where you superimpose images of yourself over the greatest civilian tragedy in recent memory

Uh, where was that stated? From what I gathered, he's just taking pictures of himself falling. The setting for the pictures isn't even in New York. Given the content of the pictures, this could just as easily be imagery reminicient of the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression. "Oh no! It's a guy in a suit falling offa building! It must be related to 9/11!"

Of course, he did say that 9/11 gave him the idea. That wasn't bright at all on his part, so his motives and/or intelligence may be suspect.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2005-06-17 05:57pm

Zed Snardbody wrote:
Frank Hipper wrote:I think it would be great art to set this guy on fire and throw him, screaming, from the roof of a large building.

Now that's art!
No, its art once we pull up the side walk slab and hang it on a wall.

Silly person, it has to be on a wall to be art.

You forget, he's a performance artist.

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2005-06-17 06:15pm

Frank Hipper wrote:
Zed Snardbody wrote:
Frank Hipper wrote:I think it would be great art to set this guy on fire and throw him, screaming, from the roof of a large building.

Now that's art!
No, its art once we pull up the side walk slab and hang it on a wall.

Silly person, it has to be on a wall to be art.
You forget, he's a performance artist.

Simple then, he preforms on the wall then, we build a steel cage, then light him on fire. It's not art unless its on a wall damnit!

salm · Post by **salm** » 2005-06-17 07:20pm

Thank´s Felineki.

I don´t know. It´s not like he´s ridicouling 9/11. It´s more like performing an abstract version of what happened. It´s similar to painting an abstract picture of the people jumping out of the WTC.
I can´t see why it´s so offensive.

This metaphor about falling being a symbol of life is meaningless blah, ok, but that´s how art is. All art comes with some sort of meaningless blah.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-17 07:46pm

I can´t see why it´s so offensive.

I don't necessarily see it as offensive so much as pompous and stupid. I think using 9/11 in a work or speech or whatever, even a few years after the event, is a cheap way to inject emotional impact into the work.

I feel it's more sensationalism than art. Some might feel differently, and if they want to enjoy this guy's work, more power to 'em. But I just don't think it's very interesting or impressive.

wilfulton · Post by **wilfulton** » 2005-06-17 08:14pm

I'm still not exactly sure how to consider a photographer an artist. I've always been of the mind that an artist creates an image freehanded, without using a camera to take a picture of a real world image. That's cheating.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-06-17 08:28pm

Has he actually said that this has anything to do with WTC? Or are people just being over-sensitive and linking it to it? Because I can't see a single thing to show that the artist has set out to intentionally recreate it. I'd just say to the people, stop fucking whinging.

And, I'll be damned if I don't give that guy credit for his art - those photos could look pretty damn cool. Does anyone know where I could find an example? Because if they did look good, I'd have one with a faux inspirational slogan on it...

salm · Post by **salm** » 2005-06-17 08:32pm

SPOOFE wrote: I don't necessarily see it as offensive so much as pompous and stupid. I think using 9/11 in a work or speech or whatever, even a few years after the event, is a cheap way to inject emotional impact into the work.

You think that it´s impossible to make any art involving 9/11 without being cheap? Why should art not deal with serious contemporary issues? Should art only deal with irrelevant tralala topics like fruit in bowls?

I feel it's more sensationalism than art.

Why?

To me it looks like this: Many people percieve anything you do with the event 9/11 as mocking the dead for some reason. They think that this guy is celebrating the death of these people which he´s most likely not doing. Where the fuck do people even get the idea that he´s disrespecting the victims? It´s not like he´s wearing a t-shirt which says: "Hey, i´m the moron that jumped from a skyscraper in order to save my life".

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2005-06-17 08:44pm

salm wrote:To me it looks like this: Many people percieve anything you do with the event 9/11 as mocking the dead for some reason. They think that this guy is celebrating the death of these people which he´s most likely not doing. Where the fuck do people even get the idea that he´s disrespecting the victims? It´s not like he´s wearing a t-shirt which says: "Hey, i´m the moron that jumped from a skyscraper in order to save my life".

He's having photographs taken of himself posed as if he's jumping out of the World Trade Center; at best it's in exceedingly poor taste, at worst it's mockery.

What artistic statement is there to this that commentary on a photo of an actual jumper wouldn't provide?

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-17 08:44pm

You think that it´s impossible to make any art involving 9/11 without being cheap?

Nope, just that the bar is a lot higher given how relatively recent it was.

Why should art not deal with serious contemporary issues?

I love how that was exactly what I wrote in my post, except that it wasn't. Excellent exploration of dichotomy, that.

To me it looks like this: Many people percieve anything you do with the event 9/11 as mocking the dead for some reason.

I certainly don't. However, given how a significant amount of art is an emotional, visceral reaction, using such powerful emotional imagery as a backdrop for your work requires a certain amount of delicacy and reverence without coming off as crude and clumsy.

What really set my bullshit meter off was his explanation:

“Mentally, physically and emotionally, from day to day, we fall. Even walking is falling: You take a step, fall and catch yourself,”

Essentially, he's taken a very specific, very traumatic incident and applied it in a very general, vague, New-Agey bullshit way, and mentioned the 9/11 connection simply for publicity. Frankly, it reeks of artist masturbation, to me.

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-06-17 08:53pm

Frank Hipper wrote:He's having photographs taken of himself posed as if he's jumping out of the World Trade Center; at best it's in exceedingly poor taste, at worst it's mockery.

What artistic statement is there to this that commentary on a photo of an actual jumper wouldn't provide?

BUT- Is he actually doing it to recreate the WTC jumpers, or have people just drawn that conclusion!

Like I've said, the only thing that links it at all with the WTC is what victims families, Bloomberg and media commentators have been saying. Which, to me sounds more like: "wah wah wah, WTC, wah wah wah 9/11, wah wah wah." than any reliable commentary from the artist.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2005-06-17 09:17pm

Someone should have cut his harness. The sight of his dead body on the ground would be our "artistic response" to his "art"

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin