Project Proposal 2014-1221: "Finally Waking Up"
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2014 Three-Ports Galleria Exhibit

Certificate of Recognition

Award: The Salvatore Prize

Recipient: Elisabeth Arturo

Aim: To recognize anartists who utilize the anomalous to create a silly, funny, or comical piece.



Project Proposal 2014-1221: Finally Waking Up

Title: Finally Waking Up

Material Requirements:
One Projector (connected to a power outlet)
One Laptop computer (to connect to the projector)
USB Stick with specially selected images (already in my possession)
One blank canvas
One wooden stool
One liquid proof tarp
An assistant
A loaded handgun (Only one bullet is necessary)
Myself

Abstract: As soon as the gallery opens, I will urge as many visitors to come to observe my performance at my booth. Once a large enough crowd has gathered (enough so that word of my actions will spread), I will take a seat on the provided stool beside the canvas, which will serve as the screen for the projector for now.

I will then deliver the following monologue, with the assistant changing the images on my mark.

This was me when I was seven and fell off my bike. Cut up my knee real bad, I've never seen my dad laugh so hard.

Here's a picture of me doing stand up. I got a nosebleed. The audience was in stitches, but not at the jokes.

This one is from when I tried to teach first graders! The kids were angels, but I had trouble making it to second period without a paper cut. Principal sure got a kick out of my excessive band-aid usage.

Here's me giving birth. The doctor thought it was a real gag. Never got a chance to name the kid.

The projection will then end, and the assistant will prepare the tarp while the audience continues to laugh. While this happens, I will stand in front of the canvas and place the gun between my teeth.

I will then pull the trigger.

The bullet will then exit my skull alongside a whole lot of blood and some chunks of my brain. My blood will splatter onto the canvas to write the message: "wowwee im kill mysefl :(". Seeing as my thoughts always came out exactly as I wanted them to through ink, it figures my blood will be no different. After this, my body will fall lifeless to the floor, and my assistant will then drape the tarp over my corpse so it does not distract from the core of the piece.

Any people who witnessed the creation of this piece will refer to it in condescending tones and viciously mock its artistic merits, me, and my death. Anyone who comes by to examine the piece after the fact will do the same.

This performance will not be repeated, and the canvas is to then be displayed as the focus of the piece for the remainder of the exhibit.

Intent: The piece is meant to encapsulate the suffering I have endured for having "unusual" blood. A "cognition effect," they call it.

Ever since the first time I went to the doctor as a child to have blood drawn, they laughed and mocked me at the sight of it. My mother, my brother, the nurse, everyone. I don't know what it is about my blood that's so funny, but I really don't see it. At all.

As someone prone to nosebleeds and papercuts, I have been the butt of mockery and laughter for all my years on this earth. I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask to be stuck in this nightmare.

By creating this piece I hope to be able to do the two things I've desired the most:

  1. Wake up from this nightmare.
  2. Leave people with something to remember me by.

Maybe after I'm dead my blood will stop being weird. Maybe everyone will understand the shit I've gone through then. Maybe they'll understand my hatred for the very thing that kept me alive. Maybe. But I doubt it. This submission, my public self-execution, and the piece will probably be seen as a joke. Because that's all I ever was.

A bloody joke.




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