Let’s say you’re an artist. A hack artist, perhaps. Your work really isn’t very good and under normal circumstances you’d either starve to death or have to go get a real job. What to do? What to do?
This is the post-television age. The iPod age. The iPad age. All an artist need do is figure out a good scam and hornswaggle the media into promoting your “art.”
News24 offers a case in point:
A ten tonne polar bear camping out at Sydney’s majestic Circular Quay isn’t likely to survive for more than a day or two. The bear, made of solid ice, will slowly melt into a great puddle of water under Sydney’s 20°C winter sun, and sculptor Mark Coreth is just fine with that.
In fact, he hopes this slow and painful “death” will remind people of the plight of the real thing.
Here comes the part we love. The part where he tells us he was inspired by the noble native:
“When I was [in the Arctic], the Inuit guides were saying look, you can sculpt a polar bear, that’s fine, but how on earth are you going to sculpt the real issue we got, and that’s the warming arctic?” Coreth said in front of Sydney’s Customs House.
Turns out the Brit has been traveling the world with these frozen polar bear sideshows since 2009. He’s got the spiel down cold, you might say:
“Sitting in the sun, it’s going to melt that bear, that’s the natural warming of the planet, as is happening,” he said.“But when people touch it, when they touch that bear, they melt it, you can feel it melt under your hand, that’s a human impact. Big hard touch, big hard melt.”
But don’t get the impression Coreth is some kind of starving artist. He may love the hell out of the polar bears, but as AFP notes, he’s figured out how to turn a profit by melting hearts with his melting art.
Bypassers can pay Aus$2 to touch the creature, feeling “the ice melting under your hand,” said Coreth, who hopes to raise awareness about global warming and its effect on polar bears, an endangered species.
Touch the creature. Sounds like an online conversation with Anthony Weiner.
H/T: Mike Power
Source: News24, AFP
