Trolling is a art

In 1973 Chris Burden clad only in bikini crawled through about 50 feet of glass in Los Angeles Pavement at night time and put a footage of this as an ad on late night local TV. Burden called it "TV Ad". I imagine the actual act of crawling through the grass was very painful, however Burden was excited to show it on TV, knowing that thousands of people a night would see his video "stick out like a sore thumb" and "know that something was amiss." His performance was sort of a detournement action which was meant to penetrate the mass media to deflect or redirect attention to social issues or to reinterpret the tools of the institution against itself. In this particular case Burden supposedly referenced the Vietnam War - reminding of a head down army crawl that was a common sight from the news coverage of the War. However, I only came to realize that this is a politically charged performance after watching a video of him explaining why he did it. And I doubted that anybody knew what its really meant for, because there is absolutely no hint of the political reference other then the crawling and the time period - no guns, no army clothing, it is just him crawling through the night. Yet, just like everybody who saw the ad at the time, I had that WTF moment after I watched the video. I wanted to know why is he doing it, what is this, why would anybody do that? And so the whole controversy lies not in the content itself but in the way it was shown on a TV with other commercial ads, and how it was perceived by the audience - that WTF moment that made us think about it and to find out the reason of it because of our curiosity.
To some people it might even cause a negative reaction - even to a height of anger and frustration. This is why I think that Chris Burden's performance could be regarded as one of the first trolling actions well before the invention of the internet. Trolling is defined as a deliberate intent of provoking emotional response through the use of sarcastic, inflammatory, extraneous, or off topic messages in online communities such as newsgroups, forums, chat rooms or blogs.

"trolling is a art"

The statement "trolling is a art" is definitive itself to matters regarding trolling. The deliberate use of "a" where " an" should be is likely to arouse a negative reaction among those concerned with correct English grammar. Such a response would also create an opportunity for observation by others and a following dialogue between the troll, the victims and the observers. So the trolls deliberately use the tools of the victims to find the victims and to indict a response from them. Detrournement is also a form of trolling, since it involves the deliberate use of the tools of the target it is aimed at to bring forward the target or the issue, to get a response from the target, to deliver the target or issue to the audience and to get a response from the audience. Just as trolling can be subjective as someone can characterize a post as trolling, others may regard the same post as legitimate to the discussion even if controversial. In the case of Burden Crawl through the Night, some people might see him making fun of other commercials and commercialism overall, some might see the reference to the Vietnam War, and others will just judge it as an absurd - the response will create a controversy, it will bring forward different sorts of issues, and it will create a dialogue around these issues. So in a way Detrournement is a sort of trolling in the art world.

References
Urban dictionary (2013) Trolling is a art. Retrieved from
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling%20is%20a%20art
Allen Greg (2009, June 6). Starting with Chris Burden's TV ad, Through The Night Softly.  Retrieved from
http://greg.org/archive/2009/06/06/starting_with_chris_burdens_tv_ad_through_the_night_softly.html
Video
Chris Burden - TV Commercials 1973-1977. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelIqsYFu3I