When listening to this week’s lecture on the art piece done with fog, which emphasized the relationship between the living and the dead, I began to think about where I saw this relationship represented today. In today’s culture, mediums have become very prevalent and popular. In particular, the show Long Island Medium is very well known; it documents the life of medium Theresa Caputo who claims she can talk to the dead and connect with their spirits. She aims to help her clients find closure and connect with loved ones who have passed. While this show has been on since 2011 on TLC, E! just premiered a new show called Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry, which documents the life of a younger medium who claims to have similar gifts to Theresa. While these are not art projects, I do feel that they relate to this discussion, as mediums are putting on a performance when they do their readings and it is their job to create this relationship between the dead and the living. While the artist discussed did this through fog that was used to clean the dead bodies at the morgue, mediums do it by transmitting messages. I also wanted to point this out because the success of these two TV shows clearly displays that today’s public is very interested in connecting to the dead. It has become almost a trend for people to speak to mediums, which to me shows that people today are very concerned with the relationship between the dead and the living.
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