How to be buried aliveEDITORIAL
TheStar.com -
http://www.thestar.com/article/178430
TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR
The coffin closes on reporter Erin Kobayashi, who immediately channels
Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Part II, in order to stay strong.First, you have to sign a waiver. And then someone else does the shovelling as you just sit back and contemplate life for the next 15 minutesFeb 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Erin Kobayashi
It's not often that you get to shake the hand of the person who buries your coffin.
Johannes Grenzfurthner, one of nine members of an Austrian art collective called monochrom, greets me at the Blackwood Gallery on the campus of the University of Toronto at Mississauga.
His first words: "I am going to bury you today."
As I enter the exhibition, I immediately see the coffin and hear Austrian funeral music.
For 15 minutes, I have volunteered to participate in monochrom's performance piece "#2: Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities."
Essentially, I am required to lie in a pitch black coffin beneath soil. The experience will hopefully inspire me to think more critically about my relationship with death, urban legends and TV carnage like
Fear Factor.
The gravediggers are Grenzfurthner, 31, and fellow monochrom member Daniel Fabry, 27. Two other members of monochrom, Gunther Friesinger, 34, and Anika Kronberger, 25, as well as Blackwood Gallery curator Seamus Kealy, are also present for my burial. Not exactly who I imagined would attend this momentous occasion.
Kealy is adamant that I sign the waiver that reads: "I hereby agree to accept any and all risks of property damage, personal injury, post-traumatic stress, or death."
As I sign on the line, I hear Grenzfurthner's voice pop into my head, "Many, many people in medieval times were buried alive because they didn't know that you had to check for breathing. Premature burials happen."
Grenzfurthner's voice morbidly continues and he talks about how the piece was inspired by 19th-century German newspapers that sensationalized premature burials, claiming that every 10th person was buried alive.
"Of course, it was wrong," he says. "It was just media hype, because people love to read the creepy things in newspapers about people being buried alive."
Still reading?
With all of this information, one would think I would prepare for my burial with an oxygen tank. Instead I've brought a tape recorder, flashlight, iPod, digital camera and cellphone. But I decide to leave it all behind as monochrom recommends participants have a puritanical relationship with their premature burial.
The coffin is then ceremoniously closed (if you've ever had a door slammed in your face, the emotional impact of having a coffin shut over your head is 100 times harsher).
The last words I hear are from Kealy: "So the Irish beat the Welsh ..."
And with that, a load of soil is heaved onto the coffin and crashes onto the lid like thunder. All light and nearly all sound are sealed out. Once you are dead, life and rugby go on apparently.
Inside the coffin, a closed-circuit video camera monitors participants. After awhile, I feel like a victim in a demented X-Files episode. And then it hits me. Boredom.
Counting down, as minutes turn into seconds, I become more relaxed (perhaps it is the carbon monoxide) and hear scraping and see light overhead.
I am being excavated. Fame and death are overrated I decide, happy that my 15 minutes are finally up.
ID@thestar.ca=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Alarm raised over burial performancehttp://www.thestar.com/Article/178428Feb 06, 2007 04:30 AM
A University of Toronto staff member is protesting that the experience of Austrian art collective monochrom's performance piece "#2: Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities" may be too extreme for some volunteer participants.
The live art piece, to be performed tomorrow at the University of Toronto at Mississauga's Blackwood Gallery, buries volunteers in a coffin for up to 15 minutes.
Elizabeth Olszewska, community outreach co-ordinator in UTM's psychology department, says she was shocked when she received an email from the gallery inviting faculty, staff and students to get buried alive.
"I am totally against it," she says. "I would not go through it for the cheap thrill and then suffer consequences. Take it somewhere else. I am against doing it on the college grounds."
Olszewska is concerned that students could suffer claustrophobia, a mental breakdown, or panic and anxiety attacks during or after they have experienced being buried in the coffin.
"They better have psychologists and paramedics waiting," she warns.
The coffin in monochrom's gallery piece is above ground with fluffy, porous soil being used to bury it. The Austrian art collective claims that in these conditions, someone would be able to last in the coffin for days.
But without an oxygen supply, Olszewska fears the worst.
"There is art and garbage. Everything that brings me down is garbage, it's not the type of art I would like to be involved in," she says.
Blackwood Gallery curator Seamus Kealy was surprised by Olszewska's negative reaction. The performance piece, formerly titled "Being Buried Alive" during a 2005 Canada-U.S. tour, has never been received negatively before when it appeared in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver. In previous exhibitions, some participants had immediate reactions and refused to be buried.
Compared to bungee jumping, skydiving and extreme sports, Kealy thinks the physical risks are extremely low.
"It's a parody and a critique of the North American drive for extreme experience," he says.
"It's a worldwide tendency to want to experience everything."
Volunteers must also sign a waiver and cannot be under the influence of drugs or alcohol if they participate in the burial.
"Her main concern was that this was a spectacular event that was exploiting something that was a serious phenomenon, traumatizing the students and shouldn't be done because in terms of her opinion as a psychologist, the effect it would have on students would be too dangerous for the psyche," Kealy says of a 45-minute conversation he had with Olszewska.
"She didn't think it was funny. She was wondering what kind of monsters would be making this kind of a project."
Despite Olszewska's protests, the Blackwood Gallery is continuing with the planned performance. Kealy says that the majority of participants signed up for the event are students and that space is limited for the live burials.
He hopes that monochrom's live burials will make participants think about the political and philosophical undertones of the piece and how it makes an ironic and morbid reference to Viennese identity and culture.
ERIN KOBAYASHI
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