July 11, 2007
Living Inside The Box
When you're stuck in a prison tower in Northern Ireland, sometimes all you want is a call from home.
Since June 30, Toronto-based performance artist Astrid Bin has been living in Curfew Tower, a 19th century building that once housed the criminals of Cushendall, County Antrim. Curfew Tower is the property of music industry icon Bill Drummond, who formerly managed bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. Drummond has also had an active career as an artist, infamously burning a million pounds in 1994, and uses the building as a residence for visiting artists.
Tower living has its drawbacks: Astrid has been without television, phone, mobile signal, or internet for two weeks. In fact, nobody in the whole town has the internet, with the exception of the local library. Her residency will culminate in a piece titled Call Me, where she will spend 24 hours living in the red telephone box outside of the tower, waiting for a voice from home.
From 9:00 a.m. EST on July 12 until 9:00 a.m. EST on July 13, you can dial 01144 2821 771 200 and speak to Astrid about any subject for as long as you'd like to talk (and pay for long distance).
Astrid's previous projects have included taping herself naked to a gallery floor, getting her hands caught in mousetraps, and being kissed by hundreds of people. Her last project, My Million Dollar Year, garnered international media attention and fair amount of hate mail.
Photos by ladyflashhh and Jimbofin.
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What a flake. She is a waste of blog content and a poor example of performance art.
wow uvlenz why so much hate?
I really don't get why some people are so absolutely negative about things other people obviously like.
Why so much hate? Because it's idiots like this that give performance art a bad name.
So she traveled to another country and published a phone number for people to call. How is that performance art? Great way to get her friends to pay for overseas calls just to alleviate her self-inflicted boredom.
So she answers the phone - ooooh! I guess I do performance art every day at work, and at home, and on the streetcar, and at the grocery store - and oh my dearest god, look at all of the performance artists around me. There are are thousands of us. Millions even. All around the world.
She's not doing performance art, just because she calls it performance art.
its not obvious that anyone likes it.
its not obvious that anyone likes it.
Good point, guest! Someone has yet to comment on this to say they like it.
I like it. And it's obvious that Karen likes it, cause she, like, wrote the article. So...yeah.
Yeah, what David said.
Nuts to you guys.