Man Craps On Museum Floor; Staff, Patrons Think It Part Of Exhibit

“Redolent of the social criticism of Sartre.”

Tel Aviv, April 25 – A pile of fresh human excrement in the corner of a gallery room displaying modern sculpture and paintings has sat untouched for six hours, witnesses report, as both visitors and the exhibit curators appear to believe it belongs on display with the objets d’art nearby.

Staff at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art voiced hesitancy this morning when a visitor inquired about the fecal matter, and assured confused, disgusted visitors that in fact the dung constitutes an integral component of the experience created by the juxtaposition of works in the gallery space. In private, the assistant curator and her colleagues sent urgent texts to superiors with the aim of clarifying whether the excreta belonged where it sat and required an accompanying plaque with attribution, or whether it should be cleaned up. While waiting for a definitive answer the assistant curator determined least problematic course of action involved assuming the feculence should remain in place, and patrons could decide on their own how to interpret its presence.

“You don’t want to upset certain people in the art world,” explained Zelo Asla, the assistant curator. “I don’t have ‘Pile of Human Waste’ listed anywhere in my materials, but it might be called something else entirely, such as ‘Brown #2’ or some other nondescript nomenclature. I mean, I know ‘Soften’ is supposed to be that vaguely sponge-like sculpture in the middle of the room, but can you really be sure? It wouldn’t do to have some eccentric but influential artist take umbrage at our removing his work by mistake, so we have to be really careful about this.”

Visitors appeared divided in their assessment of the stool. “I think it’s bold,” stated a woman. “Not so much the use of intestinal output itself, which has basically been done to death and was already cliché by the 1970’s. Rather, I understand that the combination of placing the pile in a corner, as if it was organically deposited where a person would most comfortably produce it in this room, with the insouciance of not having an attribution, is itself commentary on the way art is produced, and, shall we say, consumed and digested in the contemporary milieu, as if it can be nothing but a nameless commodity. It is redolent of the social criticism of Sartre.”

“Eww,” cringed a group of students on a mandatory school trip. A chaperon expressed similar revulsion at having to keep male students away from the ordure to prevent them from using it to harass others.

Similar confusion erupted earlier today when visitors spied a man defecating in the same corner and assumed the act was a piece of performance art.

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