Critical Writing Index

Hanging out at the electronic café: Vera Frenkel's story of a bar on the Internet uses technology to create a remarkable piece of art.

by John Bentley Mays

The Globe and Mail, Jan. 3, 1996, p. C1

The imaginative and intelligent work, The Body Missing Project, by Canadian artist Vera Frenkel is in progress on the Internet. The piece surrounds and arose from the inquiry begun in Toronto and Linz, in 1994 and continuing, into the Kunstraub (art theft) policies of the Third Reich, the proposed Führermuseum, and the fate of artworks missing after World War II.

The Body Missing Project, is a bar and a novel, architecture and narrative; it is a ritual chamber of initiation into moral knowledge. It leads the visitor through beauty and the exotic into a zone of raw, unanswered questions about responsibility and the contemporary ability to respond.Vera Frenkel's internet piece, The Body Missing, is discussed and critically analysed by the Globe and Mail. The author compares Frenkel to Jan Van Eyck, who re-invented the painting world with oil painting. According to the author, Frenkel has re-invented the internet with The Body Missing.

The viewer visits The Transit Bar, and navigates by clicking on images and text, putting together a story and experience regarding the issues examined in the work.

ITEM 1996.022 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

The Body MissingVera Frenkel