The world at my feet

The German artist Gregor Schneider is seeking volunteers for his last performance-art piece, a work in which terminal patients will die as part of the exhibition. A private clinic in Düsseldorf has agreed to help him find volunteers for the project.

At the Wellcome Collection in London there is an exhibition of photos of ordinary people pictured before and after death by the German photographers Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta.

25 million people have seen Ghunter von Hagen’s Body World’s exhibition, in which real cadavers are conserved in various states of dissection.

Man, you must die, and art reminds you about it. Maybe von Hagen’s cadavers are interesting, maybe Schels and Lakotta’s portraits are touching, but I think Schneider is overstepping the line. Perhaps I’m wrong, I often don’t understand contemporary art. I’m only sure of one thing: Germans should enjoy life a little more.

Photo by Cayusa

Have you ever seen the Italian film Boccaccio 70? It’s a old film framed in four episodes. One (La Riffa, directed by Vittorio De Sica) tells of a lottery that has a beautiful Sophia Loren as a prize. Like it often happens, reality surpasses fiction. But the times change and instead of a lottery there is an online auction.

Prostitution is legal in Germany and there are websites that put up at auction attractive girls. The participants are protected by a nickname and the best bidder wins a hot night with his “prize”. But not all goes smoothly. These twits worry so much to safeguard their identities, but not to have safe sex. A girl gets pregnant and wants to know the true identity of six clients who might be the father. The website doesn’t want to provide her with the information but the Stuttgart court admits she’s right. So, our modern fable ends with a DNA test: our baby will hug his daddy. But it’s better his mummy changes job.

Do you remember the iconoclastic, lecher, over zonked Fritz the Cat, the comic character created by Robert Crumb? Well, there is another cat named Fritz that is going to dwarf the predecessor’s fame. In Germany it’s a little celebrity and the poor bear Klut begins to shudder. But what does this cat do? Fritz is a reporter and goes around with a digital camera, programmed for automatic shots, hung to the neck. The mistress puts the photos in this site that, to be blunt, is quite ugly and the mainstream media create a case. The world in the eyes of a cat: what a big idea! Nowadays any boob can become a case, however these photos are better than mine, I’m a dog as photographer. An interesting experiment would be to stuff Fritz with beer, Viagra and marijuana. The world in the eyes of an iconoclastic, lecher, over- zonked cat: that’s a big idea!