The Rape Tunnel

This isn’t actually a tunnel somewhere in NYC where a lot of women get raped, but rather a piece of art.

The artist plans to place himself in a room, the only entrance or exit being a 22 ft long plywood tunnel constructed by Whitehurst himself. Then he says that for the duration of the gallery’s opening (from 7:00 p.m. to midnight) he will rape anyone who travels through the tunnel into that room.

This isn’t his first time. The Rape Tunnel comes after The Punch-You-In-The-Face Tunnel. I kid you not:

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.

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For some reason, this seems completely ludicrous, but I can’t help chuckling about The Punch-You-In-The-Face Tunnel. The question is, will he rape someone? Does that person want to be raped? And is he going to be arrested for rape? Is anyone going to go through the tunnel, even if they know that they will be raped? All of these questions will be answered during the opening of the gallery.

Update: it’s fake. The whole interview was a work of fiction which was written by Victor Barrenechea.

(via kottke)