A prisoner on death row in Texas is to have have his body turned into fish food and fed to goldfish.
Gene Hathorn, 47, has given his consent to artist Marco Evaristti to use his body as an “art installation” as part of a project on capital punishment.
Should Hathorn’s final appeal fail, Mr Evaristti would deep-freeze Hathorn’s body and then turn it into fish food which visitors at the exhibition could feed to goldfish, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Mr Evaristti, a Chilean-born artist living in Denmark, hopes to begin work within a year if Hathorn is refused an appeal for the third time.
He first visited Hathorn in April this year and when he first suggest the idea to Hathorn, who was convicted of killing his father, stepmother and stepbrother in 1985, he agreed immediately.
Mr Evaristti said: “Gene Hathorn’s story is a powerful one but it is not his story that is as important for me as the system that exists in a society such as America’s in such a vulgar and primitive way, the system, of killing people like this.
“He wants to be a part of this art. It’s the last thing he can do for society and he views it as positive.”
There are doubts Mr Evaristti will be able to use Hathorn’s remains in such a way but he is prepared to go to court.
In the meantime, he is helping raise £125,000 for an investigation into Hathorn’s conviction, in the hope it may lead to an appeal, and has so far raised £52,000.
Mr Evaristti has been involved in a number of controversial exhibitions in the past. He first gained notoriety for a museum display in 2000 when he placed goldfish in electric blenders filled with water and invited visitors to turn them on.
By: Pondskater - 17th December 2008 at 15:05
I think CD has sussed it. An artist with more talent for “shock” promotion than for art.
Of course we’ve heard of him, his “goldfish in a blender” got a lot of publicity – it’s just we remember the incident rather than his name, so maybe he’s not that good at publicity after all.
But then how many living artists can the general public name, beyond the obvious such as Lucien Freud, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Anthony Gormley.
Anybody involved in Contemporary Art can list a lot more which demonstrates my concern that their art talks to other artists and no longer speaks to the public. It is becoming irrelevant.
Marco Evaristti’s latest wheeze has got some attention but is it really about the death penalty or is it about what becomes of a human body after we have finished with it? I’m not sure this project really challenges the use of the death penalty in a civilised society – but he did get us to notice him, briefly.
By: Creaking Door - 17th December 2008 at 11:34
So an ‘artist’ that nobody has ever heard of gets millions of dollars worth of free publicity by proposing to do an ‘art installation’ using the executed remains of a convicted murderer…
…the convicted murderer that nobody has ever heard of gets millions of dollars worth of free publicity and coincidentally he is fund-raising for an appeal.
Assuming they weren’t all murdered…..what do the family of the victims get?
Sounds like a ‘win-win’ situation to me. :rolleyes:
By: Joglo - 17th December 2008 at 08:02
Mr Evaristti said: “Gene Hathorn’s story is a powerful one but it is not his story that is as important for me as the system that exists in a society such as America’s in such a vulgar and primitive way, the system, of killing people like this.
So the calculated, cold blooded murder of three people for gain isn’t vulgar and primitive?
In October 1984, Gene Wilford Hathorn Jr., then 24, resolved to kill his father, stepmother, and half-brother. He was motivated both by animosity and the prospect of an inheritance of around $150,000. He planned to go to the trailer home where his family lived, shoot them, take some valuable items, and plant hairs and cigarette butts from other people, in the hopes of making the crime look like a burglary perpetrated by blacks. He sought the assistance of a few different people, and found an interested party in James Beathard, then 27. Hathorn and Beathard were friends and former co-workers.
http://www.txexecutions.org/reports/197.asp
Not even bizarre.
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December 17, 2008 at 7:36 am