THE TURNER PRIZE, OSAMA, THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Mark Steyn brings it all together.
Simon Wilson, communications director, the Tate Gallery, live from London: Well, it was a late entry, but the Turner judges were particularly taken by Osama's almost playful approach to contemporary notions of slaughter and horror.Although he's previously worked with rubble, in his first home video the gleeful attitude to mass murder poses a profound challenge to fundamental societal attitudes about what's funny.
Okay, I know you Telegraph types will say it's just ugly and destructive, but he's actually immensely spiritual when you talk to him about it. He's worked in construction, he's worked in deconstruction, he's edgy, dangerous, explosive, but rarely so in your face.
And there's more where that came from, including "Mullah Omar, Interior Decorator," and "the Guardian Tabernacle Choir, accompanied by the New Statesman Sympathy Orchestra, with George Monbiot on snare drum," featuring Noam Chomsky's rendition of "ac-cen-tchu-ate the negative."
Posted by Dr. Frank at December 15, 2001 02:54 AM | TrackBack