Earlier this year, Kurt Cobain’s ashes were stolen from Courtney Love’s house in Los Angeles — apparently she kept them in a “pink teddy bear–shaped bag along with a lock of his hair” and would “take them everywhere with [her] just so [she] could feel Kurt was still with [her].” Weird enough, right? Wrong! Australian artist Natascha Stellmach claims to have acquired hijacked ashes and is planning on smoking them in a joint. Don’t you go cringing — this is about ART.
It’s the grand ending for an installation called “Set Me Free,” a “death cycle” exhibit that also features a “six-minute poetic meditation on death’s proximity” and “a text-based work where Kurt Cobain, Adolf Hitler, Diane Arbus and the Brothers Grimm meet in a twilight zone.” The installation’s final element, entitled “Gone,” will feature a glass case containing the alleged Cobain-joint — the artist will light up and smoke it in a “secret Berlin location.”
Asked how she got the ashes, Stellmach said the process was “confidential and kind of magic. They came to me.” Which pretty much means the real ashes are still out there somewhere, perhaps serving an even stranger purpose that we may not be prepared to hear about.
Australian artist plans to smoke Kurt Cobain’s ashes… [The Daily Swarm]
