tagged w/ Performance Art
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“Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes” is a retrospective celebration of the underground films, art and photography created by the legendary American artist, filmmaker and actor Jack Smith (1932-1989). Working in New York from the 1950s until his death in 1989, Smith resolutely resisted and upturned accepted conventions, whether artistic, moral or legal. Irreverent in tone and delirious in effect, Smith’s films are both wildly camp and subtly polemical. Smith was described by Andy Warhol as the only person he would ever copy and by John Waters as “the only true underground filmmaker.” While Smith is best known for his contributions to underground cinema, his influence extends across performance art, photography and experimental theater.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and two films, including the full version of Smith's rarely seen trippy, sexually decadent 1963 underground film classic, “Flaming Creatures.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-decadently-delirious-art-of-jack-smith-a-feast-for-open-eyes/“Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes” is a retrospective celebration of the... more
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“Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of collected works by China’s renowned dissident artist Ai Weiwei, currently on display at Zurich’s Fotomuseum Winterthur. The collection consists of an extensive selection of photographs, videos and explanatory essays that present the interweaving artist as a network, company, activist, political voice, social container and agent provocateur.
Ai Weiwei is a generalist, conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction with/and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life. Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world in ways that have captured an international audience.
In 2003, Ai Weiwei played a major role, together with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, in the construction of the Olympic stadium, the so-called “Bird’s Nest.” Subsequently, he publicly repudiated the project and the whole Olympic buildup as a preposterous fraud to put on a “good face” for the international community. In 2007, 1001 Chinese visitors traveled, at his instigation, to “Documenta 12” (Fairytale) in Kassel, Germany. In 2010, the world marveled at his large, yet formally minimal carpet of millions of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern.
Chinese officials announced in May, 2011, that the authorities were investigating Ai Weiwei on suspicion of tax evasion, after police officers had taken him from the main Beijing airport on April 3rd as he prepared to board a flight to Hong Kong. A global outcry went out, blasting the Chinese government for what was deemed a politically motivated move, claiming that the tax inquiry was a pretext to silence one of the most vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese legal authorities finally released Ai Weiwei on June 22nd, after a three-month detention, apparently ending a prosecution that had become a focal point of criticism of China’s eroding human rights record. Nevertheless, the terms of his release may silence him for months or even years.
This piece includes a number of photographs, a photo-gallery and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/ai-weiweis-interlacing-a-chinese-activists-photographs-and-videos/“Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of collected works by... more
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It's Friday and the sun is shining in London and it made me think of nature, or the lack there of. So here, in the name of performance art is a woman with a bushy tail pretending to be a squirrel.It's Friday and the sun is shining in London and it made me think of nature, or... more
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You are invited to our major new exhibition Modern Panic.
A surreal, provocative and controversial collection of modern artists.
We will be opening the exhibition with a special live art happening on Friday 3rd June 2011 - 'Panic Ephemeral' - An art happening, where many of the artists will be producing their work live in front of your eyes. This will be a mixture of powerful and unforgetable live art, surreal dadaist music and sonic sounds designs to access the 'other side' and shudderingly mind bending performance art.
Get your tickets here : www.guerrillazoo.com/modern-panic
Modern Panic is featuring such artists as infamous prisoner Charles Bronson (who's been in solitary confinement for 32 years), Bolivian enfant terrible Gastón Ugalde with his impressive coca leaf art, taxidermy artist Iris Schieferstein who's hoof boots have been sought after by the likes of Lady Gaga, provocative Kira O'Reilly, Tank Girl comic artist Rufus Dayglo and over 50 others!
OPEN TO PUBLIC :
SAT 4TH JUNE - SUN 12TH JUNE 201
11am - 7pm
Read more here -
http://ymlp.com/zR53DuYou are invited to our major new exhibition Modern Panic.
A surreal, provocative and... more
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“Never Sorry” is a fascinating 17-minute documentary short film about China’s renowned dissident artist Ai Wei Wei by freelance filmmaker Alison Klayman, who spent several months documenting his work and life, as well as capturing his many provocations and scuffles with the government. So who’s really so afraid of Ai Wei Wei? Well, the Chinese government for one. Ai Wei Wei is China’s most famous contemporary artist, acclaimed for his solo exhibitions the world-over.
Much to the Chinese government authorities’ chagrin, Ai Wei Wei has vociferously used his fame to speak his mind. A prolific blogger and tweeter, Wei Wei often publishes angry writings against injustice, corruption and abuse, which the Chinese censors invariably take down. Most famously, after assisting in the design of China’s renowned 2008 Olympic Stadium (the Bird’s Nest), Ai Wei Wei publicly repudiated the project and the whole Olympic buildup as a preposterous fraud to put on a “good face” for the international community.
A mere 5 days after the PBS television airing on March 29th of this short film, Ai Wei Wei was detained by police at Beijing airport, and proceeded to vanish. No word was given about where he was taken, only a vague statement from authorities that he had committed “economic crimes.” His associates and lawyer were also targeted and disappeared. A global outcry went out, blasting the Chinese government for what was deemed a politically motivated move; however, the protests appeared to have no effect. Youth culture began to assert itself, and based on the title of this short film, stencil graffiti and light tags imaging Ai Wei Wei went up all around Hong Kong and mainland China, in spite of extraordinary risks.
After 43 days of silence, Ai Wei Wei’s wife was finally allowed to visit him on May 15th. She has confirmed that he had not been maltreated and appeared to be in good health, but his imprisonment does not look as though it will be overturned any time soon. So for the time being, Ai Wei Wei is now China’s best known detainee.
This piece includes a number of color photographs, as well as the fascinating documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/never-sorry-whos-so-afraid-of-ai-wei-wei/“Never Sorry” is a fascinating 17-minute documentary short film about... more
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“Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960” presents a wide range of images focusing on performance art that were expressly made for the artist’s camera, which was recently on exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Performance art is usually experienced live, but what documents it and ensures its enduring life is, above all, photography. Yet photography plays a constitutive role, not merely a documentary one, when the performance is staged expressly for the camera (often in the absence of an audience), and the images that result are recordings of an event but also autonomous works of art. The pictures in this exhibition exemplify the complex and varied uses artists have devised for photography in the field of performance art since the 1960s.
Many artists have experimented with the camera to test the physical and psychological limits of the body. Other artists have enlisted the camera as an accomplice in experiments with identity, suggesting the plasticity or mutability of identity itself. They have engaged the production of the self as positional rather than fixed and often played with shifting ideas of gender and/or sexual identity. The exhibition also includes both off-the-cuff and staged performative gestures of political dissent, as well as explorations of the dualities of consumerism and dispossession.
“Staging Action” demonstrates the complex ways in which photography, confronting us with its ability to both freeze and extend a moment in time, pushes against the grain of mere documentation to create performance art as a conceptual exercise that can be appreciated in the absence of a performing body. Often the technology of the camera is able to open up new space for performance, isolating exhibitionist, arresting, spectacular and just plain wacky moments. For every strenuous performance in this collection that challenges physical and psychological limits, there’s also a very playful one.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage photographs, an engrossing photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/performance-in-photography-since-1960-an-audience-of-one/“Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960” presents a wide... more
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Does Morgan Spurlock's latest effort "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" seem familiar?" It may be because it happened 13 years ago.
Conceptual artists The Art Guys (Michael Galbreath, Jack Massing) and designer Todd Oldham created this fusion of art and advertising. The Art Guys sold advertising on their suits and wore them for a year in this art project that puts marketing, branding, celebrity and pop culture under the microscope.
The similarities between this project created in 1998 and 1999 and Spurlocks Greatest Movie are eerie. At times situations and dialogue are virtually identical. There are many coincidences in the content. You be the judge... submitted for your approval.
http://www.thegreatestmovieeverstolen.comDoes Morgan Spurlock's latest effort "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"... more
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Triiibe is a performance collective that originated in 2006 when performance artists and identical triplets, Alicia, Kelly and Sara Casilio joined creative forces with noted documentary photographer, Cary Wolinsky. Together, Triiibe creates political and social commentary through art using performance, video and photography. They explore diverse ideas together and their collective voice allows them to reach a broad audience. The images their exhibitions are carefully constructed observations on identity and the politics of identity. The works ask questions such as: How are we the same? How are we different? What is feminine? What is masculine? What role goes gender play in politics?
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a slide show and two documentary short films by Triiibe.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/tripling-playing-dress-up-to-disrupt-identity-politics/Triiibe is a performance collective that originated in 2006 when performance artists... more
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New York Film Academy faculty member Kevin Laibson (along with production company Magic Futurebox) is one of the producers responsible for the frenetic and futuristic multimedia adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s the Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, entertaining audiences through January 30th at New York City’s The Tank.
http://blog.nyfa.edu/post/2684483827/nyfa-faculty-futuristic-take-on-faustNew York Film Academy faculty member Kevin Laibson (along with production company... more
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Chronicling the groundbreaking performance of Another Evening: I Bow Down by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.Chronicling the groundbreaking performance of Another Evening: I Bow Down by Bill T.... more
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That Houdini, who was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continues to inspire twenty-first century visual artists such as Matthew Barney, Petah Coyne, Jane Hammond, Vik Muniz, Deborah Oropallo, and Raymond Pettibon (see the slideshow in the left column) speaks to his enduring power of his prowess and personality.That Houdini, who was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... more
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The "Taller Than the Sky" show, from the 2010 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. That was absolutely a stunning performance, never seen anything like it before.The "Taller Than the Sky" show, from the 2010 CCTV Spring Festival Gala.... more
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Take a sneak peak at Katy Perry's sexy new ad for her perfume PURR. You be the judge: Purrfectly great or Purrfectly awful?Take a sneak peak at Katy Perry's sexy new ad for her perfume PURR. You be the... more
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This video is a time-lapse rendering of an Apple ipad fingerpainting demo that was streamed live from artist David Kassan's Brooklyn studio on Monday, 21 June 2010. The model sat for 3 hours as Mr Kassan painted and answered questions on how he uses the iThis video is a time-lapse rendering of an Apple ipad fingerpainting demo that was... more
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Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "America's Got Talent." She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII. This is the most unique piece of performance art I've ever seen.Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of... more
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May 30, 2010
700-Hour Silent Opera Reaches Finale at MoMA
By HOLLAND COTTER
At 5 p.m. Monday the longest piece of performance art on record, and certainly the one with the largest audience, comes to an end. Since her retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art on March 14, the artist Marina Abramovic has been sitting, six days a week, seven hours a day in a plain chair, under bright klieg lights, in MoMA’s towering atrium. When she leaves that chair Monday for the last time, she will have clocked 700 hours of sitting.
During that time her routine seldom varied. Every day she took her place just before the museum doors opened and left it after they closed. Her wardrobe was consistent: a sort of concert gown with a long train, in one of three colors (red, blue and white).
Always her hair, in a braided plait, was pulled forward over her left shoulder. Always her skin was an odd pasty white, as if the blood had drained away. Her pose rarely changed: her body slightly bent forward, she stared silently and intently straight ahead.
There was one variable, a big one: her audience.
Visitors to the museum were invited, first come first served, to sit in a chair facing her and silently return her gaze. The chair has rarely, if ever, been empty. Close to 1,400 people have occupied it, some for only a minute or two, a few for an entire day.
Sitting with Ms. Abramovic has been the hot event of the spring art season. Celebrities — Bjork, Marisa Tomei, Isabella Rossellini, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright — did a stint. Young performance artists seized a moment in the limelight. One appeared in his own version of an Abramovic gown to propose marriage. Certain repeat sitters became mini-celebrities, though long-time waiters on line stared daggers at those who sat too long.
Thanks to the Internet many people saw all of this without being there. A daily live feed on MoMA’s Web site, moma.org, has had close to 800,000 hits. A Flickr site with head shots of every sitter has been accessed close to 600,000 times. Yet foot traffic has been heavy. By the museum’s estimate, half a million people have visited all or part of the Abramovic retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” of which the atrium piece is a small part.
The rest of the show, installed on the museum’s sixth floor, is a problem. It is made up primarily of videos and photographs of the artist’s performances over nearly 40 years, beginning when she was a student in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she was born in 1946.
Her solo work from the early 1970s was hair-raisingly nervy. She stabbed herself, took knockout drugs, played with fire. For one piece she stood silent in a gallery for six hours, having announced that visitors could do anything they wanted to her physically. At one point a man held a gun to her neck. Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t flinch.
In 1976 she started collaborating with the German artist Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay. Some of their performances were punishing athletic events, as they slammed their bodies together or into walls. Others were almost aggressively passive. For a piece called “Imponderabilia” they stood facing each other, nude, in a narrow doorway in a museum. Anyone wanting to go from one gallery to another had no choice but to squeeze awkwardly and intimately between them.
Ms. Abramovic restaged “Imponderabilia,” along with some other works, for the MoMA show using actors. And although the nudity caused a buzz, the restaging fell flat. Two elements that originally defined performance art as a medium, unpredictability and ephemerality, were missing. Without them you get misrepresented history and bad theater.
Evidently Ms. Abramovic doesn’t agree. In 2005, at the Guggenheim Museum, she restaged vintage performance pieces by other artists (Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys) with herself in the leading roles. She recently established the Marina Abramovic Institute for Preservation of Performance Art, to be housed in upstate New York.
In the near future she will be collaborating with the director Robert Wilson on a stage work based on her life. By the sound of it, this project will mark her furthest departure yet from old-school performance art and into the realm of closely scripted theater. What it will have, however, is her charismatic personal presence, and that means a lot. That presence is probably the most important ingredient missing from the restagings. It is what makes the atrium performance compelling. For better and worse, it has carried Ms. Abramovic’s career.
One of her lifelong heroes is the opera singer Maria Callas, to whom she can bear a striking physical resemblance. Callas was a disciplined, risk-oriented musician, made vulnerable by a voice that began to disintegrate early. Increasingly, as she aged, every performance became an ordeal, an invitation to failure. Her willingness to face failure became the prevailing drama of her life. It was a drama of survival, and her fans had a part in it: she needed them to need her, so they did.
That’s that classic diva dynamic. And what we’re seeing in the MoMA atrium is basically a 700-hour silent opera. Ms. Abramovic, with her extravagant costume, her bent shoulders and her mournful gaze, is the prima donna. Visitors are cast as rapt audience, commenting chorus, supporting soloists. Unpredictability is in the air: Will she make it through the day? Will she faint from pain? Will she cancel at the last minute?
When I dropped by last week, one sitter, a repeater, sat across from Ms. Abramovic with his hands clasped to his chest, like a tenor about to burst into song or a worshiper transported in prayer. Perfect. That Ms. Abramovic will be collaborating with Mr. Wilson, a once-radical creator of epic experimental works and now best known for his ritualistic productions of Puccini and Wagner, is also perfect.
Of restagings I remain an unbeliever. Of Ms. Abramovic’s recent overblown solo pieces, seen in video in the sixth-floor installation, I’m not a fan. But the atrium performance works because she is simply, persistently, uncomfortably there. As of 5 p.m., she won’t be, though. The klieg lights will dim. The audience will move on. Something big will be gone, and being gone will be part of the bigness.
Photo Caption: Marina Abramovic in the MoMA atrium. In her performance piece “The Artist Is Present,” visitors sit in a chair silently facing her. More Photos: Click on Link.May 30, 2010
700-Hour Silent Opera Reaches Finale at MoMA
By HOLLAND COTTER
At 5... more
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