SCP-3337
Death Of The Artist
Special Containment Procedures
On May 23, the museum or gallery indicated on the previous year's instance of SCP-3337-3 is to be temporarily closed to the public; an appropriate cover story should be chosen by the Head Containment Specialist at least three months prior to the event. Any possible manifestation sites on the exterior of the building should be made inaccessible; if there are no interior manifestation sites, then an exterior site should be chosen to minimize visibility and the ground beneath the site should be screened from view.
The remains of SCP-3337-2 instances should be examined by a Foundation coroner within at least one week of the event and then incinerated; SCP-3337-3 instances are to be removed, scanned, and stored in Site-28's Minimum Security Document Storage.
Description
SCP-3337 is a phenomenon that occurs every May 23rd in a gallery or museum within the continental United States which meets certain criteria; galleries and museums which meet these criteria are to be considered potential instances of SCP-3337-1. Instances of SCP-3337-1 must primarily exhibit art created in the 20th and 21st centuries; at least one piece of artwork exhibited in an SCP-3337-1 instance must have been the subject of significant controversy at the time of its initial exhibition; and an SCP-3337-1 instance must have a balcony, atrium, open stairwell, or window which is accessible to the public and is at least three stories high, referred to in this document as a manifestation site.
Around 11:30 AM on May 23rd, an instance of SCP-3337-2 will appear in an unobserved location in or around a single SCP-3337-1 instance. Instances of SCP-3337-2 are female humans, genetically and physically identical to Luisa Bellocchio, the presumed creator of SCP-3337, an anomalous artist active in Italy and New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s; each SCP-3337-2 instance is dressed in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, the brand and manufacturer of which vary between instances. If the SCP-3337-2 instance manifests outside of the gallery or museum, it will enter and present a membership card1 or pre-printed entry ticket, where applicable; all instances will proceed to the highest accessible manifestation site, place an instance of SCP-3337-3 on the nearest blank wall, and commit suicide by jumping from the site.
Instances of SCP-3337-3 are curatorial labels, identical in style and material to other curatorial labels within the SCP-3337-1 instance. Apart from slight differences in presentation, each instance of SCP-3337-3 contains essentially the same information2; each instance will also identify the next year's instance of SCP-3337-1, usually as the institution that sold or loaned the artwork to the current year's SCP-3337-1 instance.
Preventing SCP-3337-2 instances from committing suicide has so far proved impossible. SCP-3337-2 instances are partially intangible prior to death; they are able to pass through closed doors and barricades that would prevent them from accessing manifestation sites, although they will choose an accessible site over an inaccessible site if only some sites have been blocked, and once an instance has reached a manifestation site, they can become intangible to any individuals who try to prevent their suicide and to preventative measures such as netting that would prevent their death.
Addendum 3337-A: Sample SCP-3337-3 Text
Instance recovered from the Guggenheim Museum, New York City NY, 23 May 2009.
Luisa Bellocchio
American, 1952-1983Death of the Artist, begun 1983, ongoing
Human remains on concrete3.Death of the Artist was Bellocchio's final work before (and during) her suicide. While Bellocchio was never acknowledged by the mundane art world, she achieved some notoriety in the anomalous art community for her photography series I Went Into The Mountains, the final piece of which, "Morfeo & Euridice", had seventeen confirmed kills at the time of its destruction4. Of this series, three pieces—"Ghoul-Oriented Sexual Behavior", "E Ho Trovato l'Invasor"5, and "Protest against the Protest about the Methods of the Protest"—are still at large6, and one, "Apostasy = Apotheosis", is in a private collection7. None of her other work survives.8
On loan from the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis MN.9
Addendum 3337-B: Recovered Document 3337-1
Recovered on 13 August 1989 from the apartment of POI-33906, Francesco Castaldo10, an associate of Bellochio before her suicide. Believed to be Bellocchio's suicide note. Ink on paper. Translated from Italian to English.
Franco,
We've been killing people with magic and saying that it is for art. My personal body count is almost thirty, and most of that is from one photograph. You haven't killed anyone yet but I know of at least seven suicides in theaters where your movies were playing. Some of the others are in the triple digits.
I can't remember how to take a photo that doesn't eat people.
Goodbye.
Luisa