Did video kill the performance art star? The New York Times asks this question in an article that claims that the constant spectacle of YouTube and social media have trumped performance art’s shock value.
Marina Abramovic
Some of the most memorable experiences that I’ve had with art have come about by accident. Last Thursday was one such experience during Myla DalBesio’s “Young Money” performance.
More images from the world’s oldest and largest art biennial event, the Venice Biennale, including photos from the American, Egyptian, Iraqi, Israeli and Polish pavilions, view of various social events and other random sightings.
You may have heard that James Franco and Lady Gaga are performance artists, that their careers themselves are art objects built up over a lifetime. You may also believe that your Uncle Bob farting the alphabet is performance art. And maybe it is! Really, it’s up to you, there’s no quick and easy chart to tell what is performance art and what isn’t. Nevertheless, there are a few guidelines to follow when defining performance, in the context of the medium’s history as well as its current practice. Despite what you’ve heard, there are good reasons that getting carried into the Grammys in an egg isn’t really an act of performance art.
If the art world has been about globalism for quite a while I can say that is more true now than ever — if that’s possible.
There’s the stuff everyone is applauding … yawn … but that’s boring, we want to point out some things that are under most people’s radar and why they deserve some notice. Here’s our list of the 9 Most Underappreciated Art Shows & Events in New York during 2010.
We’re approaching a pivotal point in the progress of performance art in which the once rogue medium is becoming canonized, institutionalized and historicized. If the epic Marina Abramović retrospective at MoMA, The Artist is Present, wasn’t enough to convince you that the early group of performance artists are becoming anointed saints, the recent retrospective at Galerie Lelong of the late Ana Mendieta is another step forward. Yet the two exhibitions present parallel methods of exhibiting historical performance art, the first focused on recreating performances, the second on exhibiting artifacts. I see the latter Mendieta exhibition, Documentation and Artwork, 1972 – 1985, as the far more succesful.
Rob Maguire, who is the founder and editor of Art Threat, a Canadian blog devoted to exploring political art and showcasing artists whose work inspires social change, hurled out this nugget during a recent online “water cooler” hosted by The National Post newspaper about art and ethics:
… artists may break the law to draw attention to such injustice and oppression. Sure, it’ll make some people uncomfortable, especially those people in power whose authority is being challenged, as well as those unfairly privileged by the current set of rules. But artists play an important role in pushing society forward, and progress can be messy. Pardon the crude analogy, but if Rosa Parks were a performance artist, would she not still be a hero?
Read the whole post here.
For the third and final installment in his series of YouTube Essays, called YouTube Archive + Anarchy, blogger and curator Brent Burket pretty much goes for broke. If this doesn’t get you pumped about YouTube, or at least disturbed enough to stop using it for a few days, there’s no hope for you. From black metal to necrophilia, surrealism and Alice Cooper, these are the YouTube videos you only find at 2 in the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Also, Jeffrey Deitch gets punched and bitches out his attackers like Woody Allen in a pink suit.
Starting Wednesday, Brooklyn blogger and curator Brent Burket will be curating a three-day YouTube retrospective that mines the insanity of the online video juggernaut to find gems and germs that are sometimes painful to watch but always entertaining. His mission was to present an array of short videos that would give us a taste of the art world there and wait till you see what he has discovered.
Paul Virilio has written extensively about how advances in technology have changed our relationship to time and space. YouTube has been supremely guilty of that crime, AND it’s allowed us to hit repeat it when necessary. Um, awesome …
