Wim Delvoye: This Shit is Art

“I could be free after Manzoni’s shit can.” Watch the controversial artist Wim Delvoye on how artist Piero Manzoni paved the way for his installation that turns food into faeces, and how this machine questions human identity by “stealing our most intimate activity.” Delvoye feels that the things Italian artist Piero Manzoni () has done have not only been an inspiration but also a legitimation for the Belgian artist: “Just knowing that this guy got away with canning his own shit into the art world and let it pass as an art piece, that legitimizes all my activities.” Though people like to compare Delvoye’s ‘Cloaca’ – a large installation that turns food into faeces – to Manzoni’s canned shit ‘Artist’s Shit’ (1961), he feels that there is a great difference between the two. Delvoye considers Manzoni a typical 19th-century artist: “He took something from himself – his breath or his shit – and he said: Look I’m an artist, and because I’m an artist, this is art too. This is what I created, so th