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The Last Request
by Eric Andersen
The Last Request premiered as an 8 hour performance in New York. On this occasion Eric Andersen wrote a letter to the UN asking them to include The Last Request as a human right in its Charter. The UN never answered the letter. The performance took place at the Dia Art Foundation, Bob Whitman’s Studio; now the home of The Kitchen. The public service radio station WBAI broadcast reports from the eight hour performance every half hour. A few thousand people turned out. A dozen or so forms were completed.
A similar eight hour performance was given at the Romanesque church of St. Ib during the Festival of Fantastics. A dozen people showed up and three or four forms were completed. No one, neither from New York nor Roskilde, has so far contacted Eric Andersen to have their requests granted.
Eric Andersen’s The Last Request regarding The Last Request and advert from The Village Voice, October 1984
1985
“TUESDAY, it is possible to have your wish fulfilled at St. Ibs church. One would like to win a million, another would like to meet with the Pope, and a third would like to spend a night with Eric’s girlfriend. But in order to get your wish you must die within 30 days.”
Arild Batzer: Art makes me sad – from a radio reporters’ dairy
1985
“Eric Andersen thinks that The United Nations ought to take “the last wish” up as human right and says that he has had certain correspondence with the organization concerning this particular case. The question though is, as far as we know, it has not yet been clarified.”
- Roskilde Tidende, May 19, 1985
1985
“There was only one condition for participating, that one must be dead within 6 month. If you were not sure of this, Eric Andersen was very generous with dispensations and granting the wishes in advance.”
- Dagbladet May 28, 1985
1985
10-18 PM DET SIDSTE ØNSKE - Eric Andersen.
What happened is, that Eric sat in a church all day from 10-6 and people came to him with their last requests, all of which he will try to fulfill. Pretty heavy stuff!
- Ann Noël in her diary, May 1985
1985
”Fluxus deals with improbabilities, but they mostly reveal themselves as benign. One could point, for example, to the way Eric Andersen sat through a day in a fine old deconsecrated chapel in the midst of a serene, green church-yard patiently assuring everyone who came to visit him that he would take it upon himself to see, if informed that they had but a few months left to live, that their last wish, no matter what it might be, would be fullfilled.”
- Henry Martin, “Festival of Fantastics” in “EAR Magazin of New Music”, p. 16. New York, November/December 1985.