...lunch notes on the artsy-fartsy thread.
Just remember that because its in the Tate doesn't make it any more art than it would be out of the Tate. What the Tate represents, as do most other museums of art is the gaze of the haute bourgoisie. The origin of the avant-guard or what western art history has called advanced art derives from the French Revolution when its most advanced style was the neo-classicism of David, Ingre, Houdan and Canova which was immediately answered by Goya, Gericalt, Delacroix, Rodin--or Romanticism. We forget that the neoclassical architecture of Wash DC was once an emblem of the Enlightenment and revolution.
Those were the beginning dialogues of modernity and they more or less came to an end sometime in the mid-20thC. An audio tape of a fart is only art because it is on `display' in a museum and therefore engages those historical dialogues for the pleasure, humor, or distain of the haute bourgeoisie who pay to hear it.
As a curator, I would have preferred the audio was placed in a large room of 18thC furnishings with Sir Joshua Reyolds painting Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Other possible locations would be in the Oval Office reception room, or in the Capital, House Chambers.
CG