Escape Vehicle no.6 (chair in space), Simon Faithfull, 2004, 4min extract

from YouTube description:

“Escape Vehicle no.6 presents the journey of a domestic chair from the earth to the edge of space. The film started as a live event in a disused aircraft testing site. The live audience first witnessed the launching of a weather balloon with a domestic chair dangling in beneath it. Once the apparatus had disappeared into the sky they then watched a live video relay from the weather balloon as it journeyed from the ground to the edge of space (30km up).

Now presented as a video work, the footage shows the chair first rush away from the fields and roads, ascend through clouds and finally (against the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space) begin to disintegrate. The chilling nature of the film is that the empty chair invites the audience to imagine taking a journey to an uninhabitable realm where it is impossible to breath, the temperature is minus 60 below and the sky now resembles the blackness of space.”

Via article from Art Monthly:

AD MEN
Anna Dezeuze on the appropriation of art by advertising
Another day, another example of an ad agency ripping off an artist; this time it is Simon Faithfull who has seen his work remade by the ad men. But what is it about conceptual art that makes it so appealing to advertisers?

'It is because their works are reducible to simple ideas, it has been suggested, that conceptual artists are so easy to "rip off" - indeed, by protecting "expression" rather than "ideas", copyright laws seem to privilege visual appearance over concept.'

(Article not available online)

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