The Slap aka He Who Gets Slapped is a performance and a series of digital artworks presented for the first time in 2015 at the Supermarket Art Fair in Stockholm, Sweden. The online element of this artwork presented on eBay is part of the extrange exhibition. The performance is part of a larger collection of artworks titled Soma which is inspired by the contemporary social tensions and labor crises that have characterized authoritarian regimes and post-democracies across the world.
The Slap was conceived by the artist, Lanfranco Aceti, as a moment of action, response and reflection and provided the public with the ‘opportunity’ to physically slap, for a fee of $500, ‘a worker, a protester, a Muslim and a migrant,’ who will be standing on a Nineteenth century ‘preaching’ box (also known as soap box).
The artwork was also posted online via eBay where people could purchase a slap for $500. They could witness the slap via FaceTime and/or Skype.
The artwork, inspired by globally internationalized conflicts, reflects not solely on the violence and isolationism of contemporary nationalisms but also on the misgivings of a globalization process in name of economics mainly, which has completely discarded socio-political and cultural-ethical issues.
In 2015 it was possible to buy a slap on eBay and bid for it. This performance – sold online in the form of a receipt – has been re-presented in 2017. It is possible, once again, to order a slap and punish a person that embodies and is the cause of all that is supposed to be wrong with our contemporary societies: ‘a student, a worker, a protester, a Muslim and a migrant.’ To access the eBay page please click here.
“For years I have been working on the absurdity of contemporary societies, their ideological contradictions and the perversity of our political systems which, in the name of money, have abandoned any ethical underpinnings and are indistinguishable from criminal organizations.” Lanfranco Aceti explains his artworks as hellish visions derived from a Kafkian and Orwellian understanding of societies, institutions and religions. “Now reality is surpassing the absurdity of my own work, in many ways making it look almost like a mild documentation of contemporary societies.”
The Slap aka He Who Gets Slapped: video triptych.
The Slap – 3 of 3
The Slap – 3 of 3 from Lanfranco Aceti on Vimeo.
The Slap – 2 of 3
The Slap – 2 of 3 from Lanfranco Aceti on Vimeo.
The Slap – 1 of 3
The Slap – 1 of 3 from Lanfranco Aceti on Vimeo.