Ummm.

So... Richard Whitehouse, an artist from Ohio is constructing a piece called The Rape Tunnel. It's an installation in a gallery, a long narrowing tunnel that can be walked through, and he's promising that anybody who enters it during the exhibition, he'll attempt to rape.

In 2007 at the Seward Projects Space in Columbus, I had my first breakthrough with an installation that was to be the prototype for this current one. It was called THE PUNCH-YOU-IN-THE-FACE TUNNEL. It was the same set-up as THE RAPE TUNNEL except at the end of the tunnel I’d punch the subject in the face instead of raping him or her. The impetus was completely reactionary to the current state of art, and motivated by pure frustration.



As it turns out, I ended up breaking the nose of the third person to crawl through the tunnel, an aspiring model. She went to the hospital and eventually sued me. Her modeling career was put on hold. The civil case was long and drawn out and the matter still hasn’t been resolved. To this day she still has unpaid medical bills. The point of this long aside is that all this took place two years ago, and I’m still having an impact on this young lady’s life, something not many other artists could claim about their work



Rape seemed like the next logical step.

There's more of this on the Artlurker site, including a Q&A where the artist goes into pretty graphic detail about his intention. It's clear from the piece that part of his objective is to generate discussion, protest, anger and debate, and I'm more than willing to play my part by posting a link here. But I think I'll forgo the show itself.

Let's discuss, on a range of subjects from morality, taste and art to internet hoaxes.