During one week in October of 1969, WDR 3 television in Germany inserted into its programming a series of nine photographs depicting artist Keith Arnatt (1930–2008) gradually sinking into the ground. Two consecutive photos were shown each evening, the first one at 8.15 p.m., directly after the main news broadcast, the second one in the middle of whatever program was running at 9:15 p.m. As Arnatt explained, the series was not created specifically for TV transmission: “It was originally made as a comment upon the notion of the ‘disappearance of the art object.’ It seemed a logical corollary that the artist should also disappear.”
Reproduced in Esopus with the co-operation of the Keith Arnatt Estate.