Site Hosting Emma Sulkowicz's Latest Work Disabled By Cyberattack

Emma Sulkowicz, recent Columbia University graduate and artist known for Carry That Weight, latest work is a website titled Ceci N’est Pas un Viol (This Is Not a Rape). Our own Natasha Vargas-Cooper reported that the site hosts a graphic eight-minute video that features:

Sulkowicz and a man, his face blurred, engaging in what appears to be consensual sex that turns violent. The unidentified man open-palm slaps Sulkowicz, chokes her, removes the condom, then continues to have very rough sex with Sulkowicz, who whimpers and protests from pain.

The site went viral, stoking controversy online, particularly among those who have been vocal detractors of Sulkowicz’s work. And apparently some anonymous detractors were so incensed by Ceci N’est Pas un Viol, that they launched a cyberattack against the platform that hosts her site. The Guardian reports that the website was temporarily disabled by a series of aggressive cyberattacks:

[The site] was hit by a denial of service (DoS) attack last week, in which hackers attempt to force a targeted website offline, according to Keith Anderson, platform support lead at DigitalOcean, where Sulkowicz site is hosted.

“We can confirm that there was a denial of service attack on Thursday,” Anderson said. “On Friday there was also a spike in outbound bandwidth coming from the website, likely due to a sudden increase in traffic and unrelated to the attack, so we worked with their web team to resolve the issue and their site is back up and running.”

Sulkowicz told The Guardian that she believes the cyberattacks were deliberate, yet she remains steadfastly committed to the project.