This is one of the weirder conceptual art pieces I’ve heard of in a while. At first glance, Caleb Larsen’s A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter is just an unassuming, if slightly sinister looking, black cube. It is, in fact, pretty boring… until you realize that every ten minutes, the cube sends out a signal that connects it to the internet, at which point it puts itself up for sale on eBay. This little quirk is, according to its creator, what makes A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter art; it is also what makes it uniquely appealing to the art collectors who are constantly purchasing, losing, and repurchasing this piece of uncollectable art.
The piece brings up interesting questions about what it means to own something, and what counts as property in the current age of digital media. A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter is tangibly linked, via Ethernet, to the intangible world of taste, aesthetics and worth. Even if the work becomes astronomically valuable, it’s “owner” is alway inescapably forced to let it perpetually relist itself for auction on eBay until someone else buys it. The argument is you can’t own anything conceptual, neither in copyright or theoretical terms, and the artwork’s logistics ensure that no third party—even the art market itself—can change that.
It’s definitely a cool idea, even if it is a little infuriating to think about something unownable “selling” for thousands of dollars. For more info, check out Larsen’s site HERE.
