Iocose: In the Long Run

In 2010, drawing on Richard Grusin’s theory of “premediation”, the Italian artist collective IOCOSE – specializing in pranks and hoaxes – released the video In the Long Run. The video is the realistic reconstruction of the media event “death of a star”. It was realized following the ritual rules of news format displayed in such cases, staging the death of Madonna as narrated by the BBC. As the art curator and critic Domenico Quaranta explains, there is a long tradition of fake media events, the most famous being The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. In the Long Run, however, differs from its precedents, as its authors don’t want the audience to believe it true: by screening the video in an art gallery, no ambiguity is left about its status. What the artists are interested in showing is that when a star does die, the news will be mediatized in exactly this way.