09/29/08
Text: Nik Mercer
It's hard to imagine a more disgusting example of "performance art" than Set Me Free, a show in which the Berlin-based "artist" Natascha Stellmach will smoke Kurt Cobain's cremated ashes with the intention of "release[ing] Cobain from the media circus and into the ether."
How the dolt got her hands on Cobain's ashes is beyond us, but we suggest you all boycott the thing... and pray that the ashes aren't really the grunge innovator's.
Oh, and that's not all! It gets worse:
"Stellmach's work comprises a 'death cycle' of five pieces. The first, a suicide contemplation, entitled It is Black in Here, is a sound piece, written and read by the artist. It was recorded onto a specifically pressed record and is played on a vintage record player. The six-minute poetic meditation on death's proximity ends with the word 'gone'."
"'Near Death Experience,' is a text-based work where Kurt Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus and the Brothers Grimm meet in a twilight zone. Two more works, 'Black Scan' and 'Untitled,' accentuate the purgatory to which dead celebrities are condemned―a large photographic print has the words “Set me free” written in the ashes of Cobain―preempting the climactic work. In 'Gone,' Stellmach presents a joint containing Cobain's ashes, which is held in an antique case engraved with the work's title. Stellmach intends to smoke this joint at a secret Berlin location with patrons of her work. It represents both the completion of the conceptual project and the final act in an exhibition bound to provoke wide public debate."
