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We talked to the guy who made a painting of Google's Eric Schmidt out of poop to find out why

Eric Schmidt shit
Eric Schmidt shit

(Business Insider) A close-up of the portrait of Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt made out of human feces by the artist Katsu.

A portrait of Eric Schmidt smiled back at me. Except Schmidt was made of feces, and was one of three done in a series of "shitheads" by the artist Katsu.

The other two? Mark Zuckerberg and Katsu's pet cocker spaniel, which qualified because it always barked, he said.

"They are the titans of the cloud. They may be worse than the worst oil tycoons," Katsu said.

It was Mark Zuckerberg (not made out of feces) that drew me into this exhibit. I was walking on Mission St. in the eponymous neighborhood of San Francisco when I noticed the poster marquees in front of the Gray Area Grand Theater had Mark Zuckerberg's face surrounded by doves with a giant R.I.P. 1984-2015.

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As much as the Mission neighborhood has made a stink over its new techie neighbors, portraits made of feces and Zuckerberg marquees are not its normal mode of protest.

Mark Zuckerberg marquees
Mark Zuckerberg marquees

(Business Insider) The Mark Zuckerberg posters outside the FAT Labs art show.

These were not the neighborhood's usual activists, as I realized when I entered the theater to find techies and artists taking photos in front of a giant backdrop of the National Security Agency's PRISM slides.

The theater is putting on the last show of an artist collective known as Free Art and Technology Lab, or FAT Lab, which once boasted Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti as a member. The New York-based group came to San Francisco to lament how technology has changed.

NSA Prism slide
NSA Prism slide

(Business Insider) Attendees could take photos in front of the NSA Prism slide as they entered. Evan Roth, Fat Lab's cofounder, liked that the tech culture had to confront their role from the beginning of the show: "For a split second, they have to stand in front of it."


"When I see cat videos, I don't see cats anymore," said Evan Roth, who co-founded the lab in 2007 just as the viral internet and sites such as KnowYourMeme.com were taking off. The open, viral culture of the internet changed, and now he views cat videos as Google tracking him with cookies and selling him to advertisers rather than the pure source of entertainment it once was.

Even Kim Kardashian is in on the act, as an art piece.

In a back room, she cried clouds and the FAT Lab logo over the audience.

Kim Kardashian FAT lab
Kim Kardashian FAT lab

(Business Insider) Kim Kardashian as an art piece cries over the crowd.


Below her was a performance art piece from Katsu.

He had gone to the Tenderloin neighborhood, a low-income part of San Francisco that's now home to Twitter, and purchased $250 of crack cocaine. A 3D printer spent the night replicating his score at a much larger scale for a message about gentrification.

Tenderloin crack printer
Tenderloin crack printer

(Business Insider) A 3D printer prints a replica of the cocaine the artist purchased in the Tenderloin.

A Sepia-toned Eric Schmidt was flashing with neon lights nearby.

As Katsu explained the art to me, someone went to up to his other work and tried to take a hit from it.

It was a hacked Star Wars toy that measures your brain waves. He'd set it up so that it heats up a bong. And in true San Francisco fashion, people were ignoring the signs and trying to smoke from it.

At least they were leaving their own weed behind.

The headset at right is hacked so that it sends a signal to the bong to heat up.
The headset at right is hacked so that it sends a signal to the bong to heat up.

(Business Insider)

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