Metal Band To Play In A Box Until They Run Out Of Oxygen
Yep, that’s right. As part of an art installation by Portuguese artist João Onofre, the UK death metal band Unfathomable Ruination will be playing in an airtight, soundproofed box until they can play in that airtight, soundproofed box no more. So metal! The installation’s description proclaims:
This is the first time that João Onofre’s work, Box sized DIE featuring Unfathomable Ruination, 2007 – 2014 has come to London, having toured extensively through Europe at venues including Palais de Tokyo and MACBA. Influenced by Tony Smith’s pioneering minimalist sculpture Die (1962), the steel box serves as a mobile location for performance. In each location the sculpture travels to, Onofre invites a local Death Metal band to play, on this occasion Unfathomable Ruination. The box is soundproofed, determining and restricting the performance’s duration to the length of time in which the oxygen is expended. Outside the cube, viewers observe its strange vibrations, only viewing the band’s entrance and exit to the performance space.
So if you’re in London and you feel like watching some long-haired dudes enter and then exit a metal box, you’re in luck! The band will be performing outside the Gherkin at 6:00 PM every Wednesday to Friday from 7/3 to 8/1, although I guess you’ll just have to take it on good faith that they’re brutally shredding inside the box and not just chilling and catching up on old seasons of The Wire, which they’ve been meaning to watch for like forever but just never got around to, you know?
On the band’s official Facebook page, they say: “According to the medical professionals who read the Independent, we’re all going to die… Challenge Accepted.” What could go wrong?
Here’s what you definitely won’t see and/or hear at the band’s performance.