Is Killstarter the New Modest Proposal?
For a few days now the dark website 'Assassination Market' has been causing a fuss. It is essentially 'Killstarter' - a crowdfunding platform where anonymous Bitcoin donations go towards fees for executing politicians.
That's right folks, you can now cheerfully donate your digital dollar to end another human's life. Not surprisingly this has quite a few people up in arms, not least the American politicians who make up 'The List' of candidates.
I can imagine it catching on here though...imagine if an iPad with Peter Mandelson's beaming picture were passed around a Tory conference. Once they got over being handed an ungodly, living etch-a-sketch and called a trader grandchild to ask about Bitcoin I can imagine the kill...sorry...cash-o-meter filling like a bucket under Niagara.
The technology Killstarter (let's call it that from now on) lives on may be new enough but the real question about it is old. Is Killstarter art?
Sadly (?) the answer has to be yes. There are precedents for it - a similar project was proposed decades ago by so called Crypto-Anarchists. More recently (and less noted in the current flurry of press) Clay Shirky's university class came up with the prescient 'KickStriker.com' a clever spin on Kickstarter where deadly weapons could be crowdfunded by freedom fighters and fascists alike.
The ambiguous work it really recalls,however, is Swift's 'Modest Proposal' - an essay of 1729 that famously called on the poor to sell their own children as food.
Surely Killstarter is the bleeding edge of the satirical tradition. Look at the smiling photos of the nominees, look at the deadpan status next to their names..."Alive".
It is all too neatly presented and in my head I'm 95% certain that what we have here is an off the cuff piece of digital and political art.
I applaud it actually, it is such a relief from glitch and generative and all the other under emotive genres digital artists serve up. This catches so many waves...the rage of the Tea Party, the push against the 1%, the crowdfunding fad, the cheek of Anonymous and the clicktivism of the Guy Fawkes masqueraders.
The real power though is in the doubt...that five percent that taps you on the shoulder and says hey, this could be real...because it could.
As far as I know it is a working model with perhaps the only problem being verification. How would the paying public know who did the deed? Well just as digital found a way to make this possible, burying it in the faceless folds of the Tor web, there must be ways.
Perhaps the site could link to Thingiverse, where 3D printed bullets with serial numbers could be secretly downloaded. When the slug is pulled from Mandelson's splattered head, beneath the playful engraving of the victim's name would lie the ID code, distributed to a single, newly enriched killer.
I have written of crowdfunding as an 'manifestation engine' of political and global will. I did not imagine such a dark, ambiguous engine/statement as this. After all as far as I know Swift did not hand out basting trays with his notorious essay.
Killstarter leaves me uncomfortable as good art can...that five percent keeps tapping me on the shoulder saying...hey, this could be real.
