24 Hour Miss South Carolina, net art
In 2007, a teenage beauty pageant contestant made a thirty-second speech that became a media phenomenon, fueled by millions of views on the Internet and a brief but intense outpouring of parodies. 24 Hour Miss South Carolina appropriates directly from YouTube while paying homage to Douglas Gordon's seminal 1993 installation, 24 Hour Psycho. Slowed, stretched, and silenced, the work repositions an object of short-lived attention and mass ridicule to an epic progression of still images. As the resonance of the original performance diminishes, 24 Hour Miss South Carolina silently plays on, carried to an obsessive extreme that invites fresh readings on the nature of celebrity, voyeurism, and entertainment.
