John Tormey's project "Haul Ass Dude" could be a good illustration to the lately discussed issues that communications, advertisement, television and digital systems seem gradually to annihilate reality and substitute it for spectacular representations. "Diana's case" has been the recent confirmation of this idea.

Today, it has become obvious that the penetration of the media into human psychology and social relationship has reached a new level (Hal Foster). This means that culture and artistic events can only be deemed as existing if they succeed in being represented in the media or happen to be in principle reproducible through the media. However, the media, in its turn, is merely a means for the creation of a spectacle which is not barely a collection of images but in fact a form of social relationship between people that is mediated by images (Guy Debord). The spectacle seeks to achieve hegemony over the media by transforming the latter into a purely technical means of image transmittance, though in fact both the media and the spectacle are merely two aspects of one and the same process.

The history of Modernism, especially its post-1968 revolution period, is a history of struggle against medialization and spectacularization. Today, contemporary art continues this struggle inventing "contemporary forms of non-spectacular dramatization" (Catherine David). In fact, these inventions seek no distanciation from either the media or the spectacle. Rather, the idea is liberation from the dictate of both, to find forms for independence from, and, by the same token, methods of "co-operation" with, these powerful forces. Besides, today's artists refuse to be dominated by mass-culture (which is synonymous to spectacle), a domination that can be found in Andy Warhol's pop art. Nowadays artists wish to be the creators of mass culture, which is only feasible through the mass media. At the close of the century, there is no substantial difference left between high culture and mass culture, relevant and fashionable art. Contemporary art has itself transformed into an element of cultural industry and is actively used for the purposes of social manipulation. The only strategy for contemporary art to apply today is, while being incorporated into the body of the Spectacle, to create "zones of increased discursivity" within this body. Zone like this is found in John Tormey's installation.