LONDON, UK.- The Centre of Attention presents Swansong (Schwanengesang), an installation and webcast with works from Benedict Carpenter, House of O'Dwyer, Damien Roach and Wolfgang Tillmans. Exhibition: 12 June to 6 November 2005 at the Arsenale, Venice, Italy. For Swansong (Schwanengesang) the gallery space meets the chapel of rest in a work that offers the audience an opportunity to rehearse one's own funeral.

First the participant selects a song for the ceremony, which is webcast from the web; they then lay on a plinth, performing death, while the song is played.

Increasing use of popular songs at funerals means one can make strong statements literally (with lyrics) or atmospherically. Here we contrast the idea of music as shorthand for complex statements and emotional concepts with the banality of the funeral and the service.

Formally with Swansong (Schwanengesang), we wanted to reverse the viewer/art-object dynamic, while allowing also a statement to be generated and examined by the audience itself.

Audience, artist, collaboration; life and death; visual, aural and performance are disrupted and recombined. References to the art genres of still life or nature morte, the vanitas portrait, and the death mask can also be made.

With Swansong (Schwanengesang), the Centre of Attention functions as a pseudopodia reaching tentatively for Venice, with the reminder that you must die.