Artist Marina Abramović has been pretty quiet since her 2010 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, The Artist Is Present. But she’s back! She’s here! And she wants you to know where she’s been.
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To tackle the anxiety of online identity and the constant torrential rain of information, artist Toni Dove has orchestrated a ghost story. It’s a spectral experience that spills from video screens that raise from the floor and hover from the ceiling, blending in live soundtracking, robotics, motion-sensing animation, and a whole cavalcade of integrated technology that comes together more like a sci-fi symphony than a replica of all that online noise. I recently visited Dove’s studio in Lower Manhattan, where she demonstrated the technology behind Lucid Possession and discussed her continuously evolving new media-based work.
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There seems to be a particular penchant among famous actors for taking to performance art (we’re looking at you, James Franco). But actress Tilda Swinton’s ongoing escapade at the Museum of Modern Art, in which she sleeps inside a glass box, is actually a re-performance of an older piece done before Swinton’s recent turn in the spotlight.
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Last weekend, I took up the vanguard of #YOLO culture and beat the shit out of my friend, while force-feeding her raw intestines, spitting wine in her eyes, and waterboarding her in a pail of goopy milk. For art.
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Many readers of Hyperallergic know about the art fairs that serve the visual arts community, which seem to expand and replicate themselves at an ever-increasing rate around the globe. But readers may not be aware of the corollary in the world of performance. Of course, a dance work or a work for the stage can’t be bought and sold in quite the same way, and certainly not for remotely the same price tag, as a Jeff Koons or an Agnes Martin. Yet, there is still a clear marketplace around contemporary performance works, even if most performers participating stand to profit very little from it. And one of the hubs of that marketplace is the annual conference in New York City of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP).
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Today’s NRA press conference was repulsive to everyone except the most die-hard gun lovers who don’t see why anyone would do anything to regulate, prohibit, or curb their distribution. Our favorite irreverent anti-war activist group, Code Pink, disrupted the proceeding a number of times, interrupting the staged event (not much of a press conference really since there were no questions) with screams of “The NRA is killing our children” and “The violence begins with the NRA!” (both said by Tighe Barry) and a large banner. It was a surreal event and it was amazing that Barry was able to disrupt the presentation for a significant amount of time. The sign, unfurled clearly for the cameras, strangely didn’t feel out of place. The whole event, in reality, felt artificial.
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At what point does a paying customer become a collaborator? Whether it’s a down-home Fish Fry Truck or a levitating dinner table staffed by mythological creatures, viewers play an integral role in Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw’s lavish performances.
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“Your mind is not here,” she explains. Standing in the center of the room clad in a floor-length black dress, she is a sharp contrast to the stark white walls. The sweeping space feels anything but, packed as it is with onlookers — some seemingly starstruck, others bewildered — sitting closely together on the gallery floor. “We have to figure out how we can put your minds right here.”
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With smoke and fire, blowtorches and red-hot cattle brands, Non Grata has emerged from Estonia as one of the most audacious and evolving performance art groups to regularly come to and perform in the United States. From last month through the end of this one, the group has been guest curating a series of events at Grace Exhibition Space, showing off many talented American performance artists while also giving spectators a view of some of the raw and audacious performance work that Eastern Europe has to offer.
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Standing at the corner on which Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand helped anoint the new Barclays Center at the southern edge of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, it’s possible to feel an air of controversy around the 19,000-seat sports arena and concert venue that opened its doors for the very first time just weeks ago. Meanwhile, over at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the 150-plus-year-old arts institution that has long helped to anchor the area, began inaugurating a new space of its own in September.
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