The Resurrection of Piss Christ, 2011
Last week at AFC HQ we spent much time toiling away on a press release for an anonymous project we very much believe in. Remember the recent hoo-hah about Andres Serrano’s infamous photograph Piss Christ being destroyed in Paris? Well, we worked with a well-known artist to help get the word out about his response: a knowingly derivative, downloadable image of Christ in a different bottle of piss. This willfully anti-market, anti-collective profiteering from controversy, and anti-fundamentalist has produced a pseudo-immortal net based work: The Resurrection of Piss Christ. It begs your ability to download a file. The project launched yesterday, the day of Jesus Christ’s rising.
In the words of the artist:
Duplicating the same fate as its star subject, [Serrano's] Immersion (Piss Christ) is subjected to the artificial immortality we now wield through the Internet. Our interconnectedness now transforms an act of destruction – through communication and distribution – into an act of preservation.
As a statement against fundamentalism, The Resurrection will fuel it.
As a statement against the commercial value of an intentionally contentious work, The Resurrection will feed and inflate it.
I denounce any act that attempts to silence an individuals thought or speech or expression. Simultaneously, I question the integrity of a work that provokes so ineloquently.
The Resurrection flaunts its infinite reproducibility. Coupled with my anonymity, it ignores the archaic mechanism upon which the art market balances itself.
The Resurrection exists beyond the marketplace. Do what you want with it.
Download the image here. Plan to remix the image? Send the results to artfagcity@gmail.com and we’ll post the highlights. We want to change the terms of this conversation. Live the dream of the net — short-lived immortality — and make a statement with this image.
