Buried_Alive_(performance)
Buried Alive is an art and lecture performance series by art-tech group monochrom. The basic concept is to offer willing participants the opportunity of being buried alive in a real coffin underground for fifteen to twenty minutes. As a framework program, monochrom offers lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of premature burial. To date, they have buried over 500 people. The series has created controversy[1][2] in some places it has been staged.
monochrom's founder and conceptualist Johannes Grenzfurthner states that the performance series wants to start a conversation about death, culture, medical and scientific myths and mass media.[3] Grenzfurthner says that one of the inspirations for the performance series was the wish to deal with his claustrophobic tendencies.[4]
Over the years the performance has attracted a lot of mainstream media coverage like the popular German TV show Joko gegen Klaas[5] on Pro7 and the Austrian TV series Herr Ostrowski sucht das Glück[6][7] on ORF.