IOCOSE: In the Long Run

<p>In 2010, drawing on Richard Grusin’s theory of “premediation”, the Italian artist collective IOCOSE – specializing in pranks and hoaxes – released the video <i>In the Long Run</i>. 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. <br class="autobr" />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. <i>In the Long Run</i>, 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.</p>