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Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game by Hunter Jonakin

“What if you were locked in an art museum overnight, with a rocket launcher, during a Jeff Koons retrospective.”  So begins the video preview for the videogame Jeff Koons Must Die!!!  MFA candidate Hunter Jonakin‘s 2011 sculpture, is a stand-up arcade cabinet where the viewer can play a video game in which the protagonist walk around an art museum during a Jeff Koons retrospective and is given the choice to destroy the work with a rocket launcher.  In choosing the virtuous path by not doing so, they merely wander the museum, see the work, and then the game ends. However, if they do destroy more than one work (and there’s the choice of puppies, basketballs, La Cicciolina paintings, etc.), Koons will appear and the game takes on the more familiar violent nature of popular first-person shooters, with enemy combatants being replaced with museum guards, curators, lawyers and studio assistants. The important action of the game is not the destruction itself, but which decision the player makes regarding whether to destroy Koons’ work. “Jeff Koons Must Die” clearly pays homage to one of the art world’s entrenched stars while also allowing its player to enact a virtual catharsis if they so choose.

Hunter Jonakin, Jeff Koons Must Die (2011), via Hunter Jonakin.com

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