In recent months, works by titans of the stature of Picasso, Rembrandt and Andy Warhol, as well as others by contemporary artists such as Andrés Serrano, Santiago Sierra or Sarah Lucas. They have been voluntarily sent by their owners, collectors and creators, and in their new status as hostages, Molodkin keeps them under four keys inside a thirty-two-ton strong room. If Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, dies in prison, the artist will destroy them. Only if he is freed, will he return them to his owners. That is the deal.
The project, revealed by The New Yorker over the weekend, is titled The Dead Man’s Switch, and indeed the safe contains a pneumatic pump connected to two barrels, one with acid powder and the other with an accelerant that could cause a chemical reaction strong enough to turn its contents into waste. The artist does not reveal the identity of the 16 works, but estimates the value of the set at 45 million dollars.
The countdown will begin on the 20th and 21st, when the appeal hearing will be held for what may be Assange’s last attempt to avoid being extradited to the United States, where he faces criminal charges under the Espionage Act that could lead to his arrest. spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison. The journalist has now been isolated in a London prison for almost five years for obtaining and disseminating secret documents that uncovered cases of corruption, diplomatic scandals and espionage entanglements on an international scale. The noose tightens around his neck. At the moment the procedural action begins, Molodkin will activate two cameras, one inside the safe and one outside, which will broadcast live the fate that the heroic artistic shields will suffer from now on through his YouTube channel .
“Which is the greatest taboo: destroying art or destroying human life? “Asks Stella Assange. And the owner of the Picasso, the Italian gallery owner Giampaolo Abbondio, assures that, after overcoming initial reluctance, he decided to accept from the conviction that “it is more relevant for the world to have an Assange than an extra Picasso.” Art is a zone of enchantment and resistance. The works can be crushed, burned, buried or even cried (the artists themselves do it), but what is transcendental about them is not found in the moment of their creation or in their own existence, but in the way they circulate through our world. Even if we can no longer see them and they function as a rumor or a footnote to warn us of the disorder that a life without freedom means.
