If you’ve always secretly thought modern art is just a pile of crap, well, you’re finally right. This year’s Ars Electronica competition featured Cloaca, which received an Award of Distinction in the Hybrid Art category:
Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca is a complex installation that simulates the human digestive process. The machine is fed with everyday foodstuffs. The mechanically produced end product is–even under scientific examination–impossible to differentiate from human excrement.
We’re not sure how rigorously this ‘scientific examination’ was conducted — but then again, sometimes it’s just better to take the artist’s word for it. Wikipedia has an entry on artist Wim Delvoye, and links to an informative interview with him about Cloaca — which answers the questions — “what if you feed it chili?” and “who buys this crap?”
We also like how Cloaca’s website blends elements from the logos of Coca-Cola, Ford, Mr. Clean, Arm & Hammer, and how artist Wim Delvoye borrows from Disney and Warner Brothers…
All the different installations of Cloaca…
Via Regine at We-Make-Money-Not-Art
One NSFW “output” image, after the jump:
From the interview at Lacanian Ink 19:
WD: You would have to look up the exact number, but for some 40 billion years human beings have been eating and shitting. And what do most people do except reproduce, eat and shit
WD: Yeah. But you also have to imagine that your shit is fine to publish. That my shit is fine because I also produce art. But most people are not here with a drive to do something. They don’t want to do anything.
…
JA: All this human time involved, and people thinking about shit… It’s only shit. But there is a product, even though it’s a leftover that you’re going to throw away
JA: Somebody buys it?
WD: Oh yeah. We sold all the shit. The shit is famous because Cloaca is famous. And Cloaca is famous because all of the TV people, all the journalists, are all there pushing one another to have the place near the honors, with the anus near the camera. And what are they filming? The same shit as every individual human being flushed away in their own house. If you bring the shit to the university and have them test to see if this is a human shit, they will say yes madame hum, uh, yes sir! This is biochemically exact shit
WD: Yes sir! As an addition, as an art-piece. I’ve been working on it mentally for eight years, and I’ve been working on it technically for two years.
JA: For shit it’s a lot of money… you know.
WD: There’s an artist that used to sell his shit…
JA: Manzoni!
WD: Manzoni is about the nineteenth century idea of the signature and the handwriting of the artist. Also about the nineteenth century personal touch. His own hands, he’s done it with his own hands. Yeah? But, this is a machine who does it.
