Wall of Fame

“One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive.” Friedrich Nietzsche

This artwork is concerned with the immortality that everyman can now achieve through the indefinite preservation of digital imagery. Like the ceramic shards of antiquity that depicted the deeds of gods and heroes, today’s mundane, trivial and often deeply embarrassing image has democratized immortality for all of mankind. The post-digital generation is seemingly oblivious to any need for a personal domain of privacy or need to project a deserved or honorable basis for immortality.

In his writing Nietzsche had anticipated the debasement of immortality when all those undeserving of commemoration would drown out the memory of the noble few whose achievements and exploits alone are worthy of immortality. Nietzsche railed against the pretence that we are all equal and considers this delusion a vicious attack against noble humanity. For Nietzsche, the corrosive cultural effects of commemorating all of humanity would have dire social consequences.

Because we are now arrived at a point in time that will test Nietzsche’s assertions, this artwork is seeking to pose the question whether the mass proliferation and preservation of digital imagery is likely to have a malign, benign or neutral impact on our cultural fabric, which has in the past always distinguished between those deserving of immortality and those who did not.