Waplington has compiled an outrageous compendium of wacky websites for this highly conceptual piece from one of England's best.
Publisher's Description
Learn How to Die the Easy Way
Nick Waplington
Texts by Carlo McCormick, Nick Waplington
Design by Simon Parkinson
9 3/4 x 8 114 inches,
128 pages
64 colour illustrations
hardcover
Somewhere out there lies the
new unchartered frontier of
cyberspace. In this Babel there
are images, dreams, inert and
vital messages, anonymous
ciphers and calculating incubi.
Because it is faceless, as if
somehow subterranean, human
dialogue and the expression of
ideas can multiply without
responsibility, without the
parameters of authorial
disciplines or social conventions.
Could this be anarchy, of the kind
that artists linger on street
corners for? Nick Waplington,
alert to these possibilities, went
last year with a series of works
to the Venice Biennale, which had
commissioned him to elaborate
on this theme. The result was
undeniably the work of an artist,
one who embraces the limitless
avenues of freedom of expression
on the internet.
For Waplington the medium is
certainly the message, but one
far more profound than
McLuhan's epithet, since this is
a medium not bound by social,
moral or ethical considerations.
It's as if he had found himself
a child again, locked in the
toyshop overnight, where
trainsets would double as
conveyor belts of ideas, and
Action Man as a table leg.
'If, as I suspect' says
Waplington, 'the internet has
broken the stranglehold of
governments and large media
corporations on mass
communication, then we could
be in for a very exciting period of
development on a number
of different levels. Would a
breakdown of current modes
of social, moral and political
cohesion be too much for a man
to ask for?'
Nick Waplington was born Aden
in 1947. He is critically acclaimed
for such photographic works as
Living Room and Safety in
Numbers. The recipient of
numerous photographic awards,
Waplington was further honored
last year by curator Harald
Szeeman with an invitation to
exhibit at the Venice Biennale.
Learn How to Die the Easy Way
is his seventh book. He lives and
works in Port Stanley.
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