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Jay Z’s “Performance Art Film” to Debut on HBO

Earlier this month, Jay-Z set up a daylong operation at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, where he rapped at members of the art world for six hours. Participants included Lawrence Weiner, Mickalene Thomas, Klaus Biesenbach, and the grandmother of performance art, Marina Abramović, among many others. The result, his “Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film,” directed by Mark Romanek, will air this Friday, August 2, at 11 pm Eastern time on HBO.

Posted inArt

The Artist Is Not Present But the Brand Sure Is

CHICAGO — Every performance online and off is essentially about energy. Marina Abramović knows this, and so after her 2010 endurance-based performance at MoMA “The Artist is Present,” she disappeared in order to train with shamans in Brazil where she learned more about energy, and took time to heal. After reading fellow Hyperallergic reporter Jillian Steinhauer’s “Jay-Z Raps at Marina Abramović, or the Day Performance Art Died” last week, however, I’ve been thinking about the idea of the artist’s brand as being present rather than the artist herself, and how that affects Marina’s arguably new-age-y reasonings around “energy” and being present.

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Charlie Rose + Jay-Z Roll With Assyrians at Brooklyn Museum

Yesterday, PBS talk show host, Charlie Rose, interviewed musician Jay-Z at the Brooklyn Museum. The hip hop star is promoting his new book, Decoded, which, in addition to telling his personal story and decoding his lyric, includes unconventional typography, line drawings, and photographs, which according to a review emphasizes “the author’s message that rap is a form that transcends and defies easy categorization.”