SNIPER

Jakob Boeskov

Concept: An art object that becomes a means to measure reality of the modern world and modern war.

This is an art-project that suddenly provoked a whole range of effects off- and on-line. The project was presented at the Beijing arms-trade fair. The rifle that shoots the ID chips into people. Once under the skin that chip allows the police and special services to control a person, to always localize him. This project arouse a lot of attention in the arms-trade world and the author got many suggestions as to how to start its elaboration and application. His internet-site registered round 5 million clicks. People from all over the world were interested in getting to know more and even acquiring the rifle. It was lucky that the whole project was just a fiction, part of “fictionist” art developed by its author. This concept is an example of the interchange between the game and reality, when the virtual object of a game becomes suddenly a real measurement of the tendencies that take place in our everyday life and stay hidden within it. And in this connection the adventures of the artist at the exhibition and afterwards show him as a conceptual personage, a modern Simpleton who suddenly crosses the borders of his private world and gets engaged into the dangerous games of adults. He is able to divine the main desire of modernity – the desire for the absolute security. If there is no such rifle yet there will be. And we shall enter the new world that looks a bit like those utopias of an absolutely controlled society which now yet exist only in the works of art and fiction.