What The Hell Are People For? 2014
Video loop.
This was a covert event performed at the University of Maryland, College Park. Construction workers unknowingly buried a letter in a bottle under concrete - destined to find hands in the future.
Eliot Rosewater said it best in this passage from Kurt Vonnegut's "God Bless You MR. Rosewater"
All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up a purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard Johnson's. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Barca-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteen painless ways to die. The suicide parlors were busy places, because so many people felt silly and pointless, and because it was supposed to be an unselfish, patriotic thing to do, to die. The suicides also got free meals next door.
And so on. Trout had a wonderful imagination. One of the characters asked a death stewardess if he would go to Heaven, and she told him that of course he would. He asked if he would see God, and she said, "Certainly, honey."
And he said, "I sure hope so. I want to ask him something I never was able to find out down here."
"What's that?" she said, strapping him in.
"What the hell are people for?"
*R*