Annals of transgression. (Notes & Comments: January 2003).(women's suicide mistaken for performance art in Germany)

"Is it a hoax?" Why is it that some variation of this anxious question accompanies so much of our experience of contemporary art? Why is it, to speak bluntly, that so much of what we are called upon to admire as art has the smirking, rebarbative quality of a bad joke?

These are not, alas, new questions. They are an integral part of cultural life in the aftermath of the avant-garde. From one point of view, such questions are a sign of decadence, for they underscore the extent to which we have lost our bearings in the cultural landscape. How odd, after all, that we must frequently ask ourselves: Is it art? Is it a hoax? Is it both art and a hoax?

From another point of view, however, the prevalence of such confusion is a sign of health, for it suggests that we are still alive to essential distinctions between art and non-art. In this sense, the nagging questions that insinuate themselves into much of our experience of contemporary art are signs of vitality: they speak of an immune system robust enough to recognize and challenge nonsense. At a moment when the violation of the boundary between art and life figures so prominently in the practice of art, any hesitation, any qualm, any pause or rejoinder provides a welcome opportunity for reappraisal. As long as one can meet absurdity with the tonic skepticism of disbelief--"Is this some sort of hoax?"--all is not lost.

It was with such modified consolation that we greeted the December 5 headline from Reuters: "Suicide Mistaken for Art Performance." So much for violating the boundary between art and life, we thought: someone has gone further and decided to violate the boundary between art and death.

Well, not exactly. As the wire story explained, visitors to an "off-beat Berlin arts center"--it would be a German establishment--mistook a dead woman on the ground for a performance art act. It transpired that a twenty-four-year-old woman who had discussed suicide on videotape with a group of artists at the gallery decided to underscore her words with action: she returned ...