Death Bear

Back in 2009, New York City performance artist Nate Hill went from home to home in Brooklyn wearing a black jumpsuit and boots, with a black bag, and wearing a large scary black bear mask, collecting things from people that had experienced some sort of heartbreak, pain, or rejection in their life. He would ring their doorbell, come in, and take a seat, listening to a short summary of the pain his summoners had experienced. Afterwards, he would collect items associated with the summoners' grief in a bag and take his leave.


Death Bear Gets Sad So You Don't Have To from Mary Plummer on Vimeo.

According to Nate, it was not an easy job absorbing someone else's negative energy and taking these significant objects from people. Among the things he collected were failed novels, old love letters, postcards, gifts, and other things. Even for such an imposing creepy creature as Death Bear, it was at times overwhelmingly sad.

However, perhaps the craziest part of this experiment came when Death Bear was making a stop at a place he did not recognize and unknowingly walked in on a goth/witch ritual that one of his ex-girlfriends had set up with her friends who were all part of their own performance art group. After some truly hard-to-believe antics and in a true Brooklyn fashion, the girl handed him her own box of stuff and told Death Bear to get the fuck out. Some of the contents of that box are pretty great, such as Nate Hill's old tied off condom with crystallized sperm. You can read the read about the encounter in detail here.

You can also read about Nate Hill and his other projects here.

And finally, of course, here is the awesome story in Vice about the person behind the costume.

I have my own old box of shit that once meant the world that I would love to give to Death Bear, but maybe the poor creature has suffered enough on others' accounts. Maybe I'll just finally burn it.