Content Warning: Fictional discussions of suicide, assault, violence. Also, some very unusual perspectives on life/art that may be upsetting.

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Elliot Brodeur is a French conceptual and performance artist known for his controversial work. Brodeur prides himself on the subversiveness and intensity his art has. His art has been criticized across the world as being meaningless, violent, and harmful ever since he first stepped out on to the scene. But Brodeur’s supporters claim this is the point of his art, according to a fan, Other transgressive conceptual artists are only getting the aesthetic of being offensive without the depth. You can put as many swastikas on a painting as you like, insult as many artists as you like, but none of it causes as much reflection and thought as Brodeur’s work. According to Brodeur himself, he attempts to create the most valuable art, as his professor at Aix-Marseille said Art can be valued by how emotionally effective it is. A painting of a sad face makes me feel nothing, but if your painting can compel the viewer to truly cry, then you have made art.

Brodeur’s art attempts to explore mankind’s connection to negative emotions. The first time he dwelled on this idea was when he watched a play of Macbeth with his father at the age of 11. His father had shown him the play, believing learning to handle negative emotions at a young age would save him from being too sheltered, and make it easier for the boy to handle negative feelings. The tragedy shook the young Elliot, and he cried in the theater, and for years afterwards he would contemplate the main character’s declaration that Life is a tale told by an idiot. Brodeur said of the experience I was affected so deeply, watching Macbeth destroy his life out of fear made me scared I might do the same. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Macbeth.

The second foundational experience for Brodeur was when he went to an experimental punk concert at age 16. The band members played their music in a way that was intentionally unpleasant to listen to, it was unlike anything he had ever heard. At the end of the last song, the band members all destroyed their instruments and then left. As there was no recording of the event, the legacy of it only exists in the minds of the attendants, who said the band had a political message. This was another very important experience for me. As they played, their music grated against my ears, and I felt this terrible anger well up inside of me. I felt rage at the government for its injustices. I felt hateful at the masses idly watching cruelty. I was angry that so many people were suffering. Everyone in the room felt just like that, truly it was an amazing show.

As a young adult, Brodeur took a great interest in art. He was most fascinated by the transgressive artists that pushed the norms far past what society would accept. Once a fan of Picasso, he now became enraptured with Dadaism. His favorite work was “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp, which he went to see in person repeatedly. Simply a urinal with a signature, the piece continues to incite discussions about art to this very day.

Elliot Brodeur’s first piece in a gallery, titled Heil, heil was a painting of several realistically-rendered erect penises, arranged into the shape of a swastika. My figuring was, Brodeur would later explain, you either like penises, and therefore dislike the swastika, or you like the swastika, and therefore dislike the penises. It was an immature work; it was a bad piece of art. After several more shows, Brodeur would found the art collective Activement Offensant”, a group which attempted to push social conventions on what art could be. At its peak, Activement Offensant would have fifty members, but the most active were Elliot Brodeur and his close friends.

In 1993, Brodeur read that the musician Brian Eno had urinated in Duchamp’s Fountain as performance art. The act of peeing into a urinal had become a worldwide art scandal. Initially angry, Brodeur came to realize the genius of this action, attempting to deface it only added to its value. The next time Fountain was sold, its price had nearly doubled as a result of the vandalism. Brodeur now came to believe that truly valuable art would have the impact of this performance piece. Activement Offensant would radically change direction, moving away from the transgressive paintings and sculpturework of before, and would primarily focus on conceptual performance art, and it is at this point that they would achieve the most fame. After this, Brodeur’s newest work titled Echo Chamber had the viewer sit in a small box like an oubliette, while a strobe light flashed at them, and members of Activement Offensant hit pots and pans together near their head. The work was attempting to capture the feeling Brodeur had from going to the concert as a teenager, but after this he would become far more ambitious.

Brodeur’s next work was titled Causation; a electronically-powered sculpture with all of its mechanics available to be seen. On top of it was a red button labeled “Push me” next to a razorblade attached to a piston. When someone would push the red button, the blade would be pushed up, cutting their finger. The piece was rejected from every gallery he showed it to for posing such a clear hazard. The following year he would produce another sculpture, titled Effect. Effect was quite different in appearance, it was a three-foot tall abstract sculpture made out of a combination of plastic, fired clay, and metal, painted so that it all appeared to be the same material. The top half of the sculpture was supported by a piston and springs screwed to the ground, so that the sculpture could be pushed down to chest-height if force was applied. The danger to the sculpture was not apparent on first glance; participants were encouraged by the interactive nature of it to try and push the top part of Effect down. However, the natural places where one would place their hand were rounded and lubricated, and unless extreme care was taken, the participant’s hand would slip, and hit the sharpened edge that ran around the top part of the sculpture, causing their hand to be cut. After the first day, seven people had already had their hands cut by the sculpture, and the gallery staff dismantled it.

Despite its brief appearance, Effect was discussed heavily in art circles around Europe, and Brodeur had amassed a number of critics who didn’t believe it constituted art. In an interview, Brodeur stated that while he was happy with the reception, his piece had not gone far enough, and his dream was to create a piece that was a live firearm attached to a stand with a string, that would allow users to really shoot themselves. After this, he was sent a letter by “The House”, at the time one of the largest galleries in southern France, and approached by the police; told he was not allowed to create any more artworks that physically harmed people.

Frustrated but undeterred, Brodeur worked on a new piece of art with the other members of Activement Offensant. His next piece was titled Kill Yourself. Working carefully with the gallery to not violate his warning, the experience of the piece was explained to the participants before they chose to engage with it. In Kill Yourself, participants would be sat down in a room, in which 3-5 members of Activement Offensant would talk to the participant and make a genuine argument for why they should end their life. While the participant could leave at any time, they were socially pressured by the members of Activement Offensant not to, and so most sessions would last half an hour. The longest session lasted an hour and a half, in which the participant Mefodiy Dmitriev agreed to kill himself. Nothing became of this however, and in three days the piece was shut down.

Years later, Mefodiy Dmitriev would become a popular folk musician, whose tragic songs recount the sadness Dmitrievi> experienced in his own life. In his autobiography, Dmitriev explained that he went through an intense depression after his girlfriend died. Dmitriev only briefly mentions participating in Kill Yourself but says that it made his depression far worse, and made him seriously consider suicide. Brodeur explained in a recent interview that this is the highest honor he could’ve received; to be partially responsible for Dmitriev’s tragic life experiences, and therefore partially responsible for the feelings of his millions of listeners. Dmitriev heard of Brodeur’s opinion of him, and the two exchanged interactions publicly. Fuck you, I made the art and not him, said Dmitriev, I make such pained songs so that others might hear their own pain in my music. What is Brodeur’s art saying? Nothing, it just hurts you. Brodeur would respond, How can you say that as a fellow artist? You have many songs with no lyrics and sad chords, yes? What could you possibly be saying with that, other than telling the audience to feel sad. How is it not up to the audience to decide the meaning of the feeling? To this Dmitriev would not respond, but has repeatedly claimed Brodeur is A criminal and not an artist.

After Kill Yourself, Activement Offensant had a less focussed direction, and Brodeur took a hiatus. One member was arrested after painting on an untitled Rothko, however she had used a very close imitation of the color blue that Rothko used in his work, and so upon inspection it was uncertain exactly how much the painting had been defaced. She called this performance art Untitled. Another member, a quite fast sketch artist, held an interactive piece in which a participant would sit across from him as he sketched. When he was done, he would show them artwork of himself having sex with the participant, and describe in detail what he found attractive about them. Participants weren’t told that the title of the work was Rape. Another member had applied to do a performance art piece about the dangers of addiction in front of a crowd, but had lied to the gallery organizers and intentionally gave himself a real heroin overdose. After recovering, he titled the performance Watching an Overdose.

Galleries across France had already been cautious about hosting Activement Offensant pieces, but after Watching an Overdose, the group was infamous across Europe and banned from virtually every gallery in France. Brodeur, upon hearing how much his group’s work had affected people, left his hiatus to resume art again. For a brief period, they would break into galleries in order to set up pieces, but met with resistance from police and little interest, they stopped. Brodeur grew bored with the gallery scene, and decided they had to take their art to the street. During this period, Activement Offensant’s art was disorganized, and their performance art bordered on assault in most cases. In one work titled A Little Piece of Me, the group set up several large concert speakers outside of the intensive care unit of a large hospital to play music. Their logic being, at least one person in that hospital would have loved ones visiting as they die, and that experience would be changed by the presence of Activement Offensant’s music.

None of this was far enough for Brodeur though, and he revealed his latest piece, titled Shooting Miles Uffelman, when he fatally shot American experimental artist Miles Uffelman one night as he toured France. He narrowly evaded police capture, and was on the run from police for several months. Activement Offensant disbanded, and all but a few quit art shows. Brodeur would showcase his final piece and self-proclaimed magnum opus, titled Boom, in a town near Rennes. Elliot Brodeur had set up a disguised timed explosive to go off during a public event, killing three people and injuring eighteen more. Brodeur was arrested, and in an interview as he was on trial, he said The world will be moved by their absence, and those that experienced the event will be the most moved. He now resides in a prison in Rennes, where he will live out the rest of his life. Being a maximum security prisoner, he is allowed little contact with the outside world, but will still happily give interviews when allowed.

Some of Elliot Brodeur’s contemporaries and ex-members of Activement Offensant include:

• Olivier Bourdillon, who has been in contact with Brodeur for over two decades. Bourdillon disagrees entirely with Brodeur’s perspective on art, though not because of any moral objection. Bourdillon is a Marxist painter, who believes the value of a work is determined by the amount of labor that was put into it. He has been working on his current painting for over ten years.
• Linette Baudin, an artist of many mediums, though mostly sculpture and traditional painting. She partially agrees with Brodeur in that the value of art is determined largely by the effect it has on the viewer. She disagrees with him in that, this value only matters if it is positive. Therefore, all art which produces a negative feeling is bad art. Further, she explains that since she is a Christian, any art that helps one accept God and have their soul saved from hell is automatically the best art. She herself became a Christian when she viewed a still life painted by an atheist. The majesty of the simplest of situations compelled me to accept God. Recognizing that, if she was compelled by an atheist’s painting, then anything could turn someone to God. Meaning, every piece of art has the potential to connect you with God and save you from hell, meaning that every piece of art is the best art.
• Kuno Wehner was briefly in Activement Offensant in its early days, before he left due to creative differences. Wehner doesn’t believe the value of an art piece lies in how powerful its effect is, nor how positive the effect is. Wehner is a self-proclaimed Heideggerist existentialist, and believes that humans do not have any “essence” that defines us, we simply exist. Art, like humans, has no inherent essence even if we try to give it a meaning, and simply exists regardless of what we think about it. Wehner paints various still lifes of the places he visits and people he meets, since I might as well paint the only things that are real.
• Thomas Aguda is an American digital artist, who was never a part of Activement Offensant but is heavily inspired by their work. He believes the real source of an art’s value is its novelty. After submitting nearly a hundred works to art galleries, Aguda believed he had run out of possible concepts, and briefly fell into a depression. However, he exited the depression when he discovered neural networks that could generate pictures from a set of inputs. He experimented with this heavily, and found that the algorithms could generate highly unpredictable results even with the same inputs. He now has a large computer rig, and works with expert programmers to make the “most original” neural network yet. He believes that what makes a neural network’s art so original is that it can’t be predicted by a human being at all, and is therefore far more novel. Aguda hopes one day the machine’s art can exist completely separate from human beings.

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This piece was written on the 27th of June, 2022.

While nearly all of the events described are fictional, Brian Eno peeing in Marcel Duchamp's fountain is a real thing.

Picasso and Rothko are real people too.

I wrote this all in like 2 hours when I first started adderall.