Aram Bartholl (German, b. 1972) 15 Seconds of Fame, 2010
4C print, framed — documentation of a performance recorded by a Google Street View camera car
58 × 87 cm
Collection of Bre Pettis
CA.2016.003
Description
On the morning of 13 October 2009, Bartholl was having his usual coffee at Café Mörder in Berlin-Mitte when a Google Street View camera car turned into Borsigstraße. He dropped his spoon, went out the door and ran after it, arms raised, until the car's cameras had him. When Street View launched in Germany on 18 November 2010 — after a long public argument over privacy that left the country's imagery dotted with blurred houses — the chase was there in the published panorama: an uninvited, spontaneous performance lodged inside the most complete photographic map of the world. The print reproduces that Street View frame as Google published it, Bartholl running up the middle of the street with faces and licence plates smeared and a neighbouring building blurred out, as German households could request.
The work exists as performance, video, photo series and print. It was shown in Infosphäre at ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2015) and in From Cosmos to Commons: Between Stars and Signals at Kunsthaus Hamburg (2025).
