The Art Experiment 11 DAYS

The white lab rat, threatened by a weapon that could be triggered via the internet, was to live in Florian Mehnert's art installation for eleven days. The internet world followed the livestream in an uproar. A worldwide shitstorm and numerous death threats followed. The art experiment `11 DAYS went around the world. How did the interactive art experiment work? Why was the experiment ended on the seventh day instead of the eleventh? Was the audience itself the lab rat in the end? The German Artist Florian Mehnert publishes for the first time what really happened. 11 DAYS gives a frightening insight into a society controlled by aggression and hatred.

The German artist Florian Mehnert gained international attention with many art projects. In his art project Waldprotokolle (2013), he bugged paths and clearings in forests with microphones as a statement on the NSA affair. In his video installation Menschentracks (2014), he showed 42 video sequences of acked smartphones whose cameras and microphones were activated remotely. His photo series REFUGEE STACKS (2015) in which he stacked African refugees on top of each other was his reaction to the situation of refugee flows and an examination of post-colonialism and migration. With FREEDOM 2.0 (2016/2018) Florian Mehnert realised a participatory art installation in public space that asked about an influence of society on BIG DATA. During the pandemic, he created his globally acclaimed photo project Social Distance Stacks in which he photographed, among others, dancers of the Stuttgart Ballet in bubbles (2020/2021). Florian Mehnert deals with social and current political issues. In doing so, he works with an expanded concept of art that often focuses on the participation of the recipients.