90DayJane - Can Suicide be Performance Art?
90DayJane, who claims her suicide countdown blog is art, provokes a huge and often harsh reaction.
90DayJane is an online persona launched Feb. 5 as a countdown blog for a woman, apparently from Los Angeles, claiming she would commit suicide in 90 days – May 5. No good reason was offered. She appears to be young.
If the young, anonymous woman is to be believed, threatening suicide online constitutes art. Others disagree with making the act a performance.
With up to 4,000 Canadians a year committing suicide and more than 100,000 calls being made to distress centres in Toronto, Hill says he puts more of his focus on those truly in trouble than on the suicide countdowns he's seen appear on the Internet from time to time.
"My generation has had no great depression, no great war and our biggest obstacle is beating Halo 3," Jane says in the entry launching 90dayjane.com. "So, if I feel like saying `game over,' why can't I?"
The question generated thousands of responses before the blog was shut down last Tuesday evening, only to re-emerge the next day with a mea culpa and a promise to close for good within days.
"90DayJane is a personal art piece about me," Jane wrote in her Day 83 posting, saying she began the blog "for me and (what I ignorantly thought would be) a small number of people who might find it on Blogspot."
She said the site was meant to be a modern take on the story of Christine Chubbuck, whose on-air suicide at a Florida television station inspired the 1976 movie Network.
"Her story both inspired and terrified me because I can truly empathize with her rage and even her isolation. I wondered how Christine's life and subsequent suicide would play out in our time," Jane wrote.
She has declined media interviews, and posted a request she received from a "huge" TV network to meet with its executives. The network asked: "Can we make this happen very soon?" in the email Jane posted to the site.
"Wow, and people think I'm morbid," says Jane.
Real or not, the performance of a woman saying she would commit suicide is what makes it art, says Joanne Tod, a painter who teaches at the University of Toronto.
"I'm not saying it's good art," Tod adds quickly, labelling the site "narcissistic and exhibitionist."
Tod also doubts the veracity of the art claim, saying a true artist would identify herself. Without that, she says, it's possible someone just claimed the site was art as a way to justify something that very quickly got out of control.
"It gives art a bad name, if that's what she's doing."
The site attracted some 160,000 hits, half in its final 24 hours, and thousands of comments from visitors in its first week. Several egged her on, offering gruesome suggestions on how she might kill herself. Others lashed out, calling her an "attention-seeking whore." Few showed any sympathy.
"I like your idea for sharing your final 90 days. I think you're about to become a little more famous than you expected," someone identifying as Fawkes wrote. "Good luck with offing yourself."
Others told her not to wait.
"Normally I would be adamantly opposed to anyone committing suicide, but in your case I will make an exception," Wizeguyinpa wrote. "Off yourself immediately and quit counting how many people visit your site."
The blog horrified suicide experts. Dr. John Draper of the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline posted a message on the site warning that the blog could encourage others to emulate her.
"She is suggesting that suicide is a reasonable method for those questioning life's meaning, which is just absurd," Draper told the New York Daily News.
He did not think much of the site's artistic merits. "I'm not an art critic but I do wish the student's attempts at learning were more socially responsible," he said.
Throughout, there was speculation the site was a viral marketing tool for a movie or video game, something industry expert Carmi Levy said would likely backfire.
"At some point, a line is crossed," says Levy, a consultant with AR Communications. "Using suicide would likely be seen as going too far."
Tod said the same would likely apply to art.
Within days of the site being launched, other bloggers began linking to it and opening their own discussions about it.
Once something begins to take off on the Internet, Levy says, others jump on board to generate traffic to their own sites as a way to boost revenue.
"There's a self-serving aspect to a lot of the comments, the forum post and the blog posts," he says.
In her post admitting her suicide threat was not real, Jane wrote that she did not want all the attention she received, and expressed "great disappointment with my generation" over the responses.
