Selected by Mike Tree

Performance is a genre in which art is presented “live,” usually by the artist but sometimes with collaborators or performers. It has had a role in avant-garde art throughout the 20th century. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent.

1) The Unknown Rebel or the Tank Man, (王維林 Wang Weilin)

The Unknown Protester or Unknown Rebel) is the nickname of an unidentified man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. Not born with artistic intention, this performance was able to conquer the attention of the whole world and to influence the course of the Chinese History.

2) Vito Acconci

Seedbed. For this performance, visitors entered a room on a low wooden ramp. Acconci, who lay hidden under the ramp, masturbated while whispering sexual fantasies about the guests walking around above him. Acconci defined the intention of this performance solely political as a protest against the Vietnam War.

3) Marina Abramovic

In 2010, during an installation at MOMA in New York in which Abramović sat in a chair in a gallery for eight hours a day and invited strangers to sit opposite her and look into her eyes. When Ulay unexpectedly took a seat, she began to cry and reached across to hold his hands; the video of the encounter has been viewed by millions on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=xlf68X2qEpM

4) Mo Kong

Without saying a word, the Chinese artist Mo Kong in is performance titled I wanna talk to the government, shut up!! is able to create an aesthetic vision of the power of censorship of any authority. You can forbid a citizen to act, to talk, but you cannot forbid anyone to think.

5) Chris Burden

In many of his early 1970’s performance pieces, Burden put himself in danger, thus placing the viewer in a difficult position, caught between a humanitarian instinct to intervene and the taboo against touching and interacting with art pieces. To perform the work “Shoot”, Burden stood in front of a wall while one friend shot him in the arm with a .22 long rifle, and another friend documented the event with a camera.

6) Saburo Murakami

With the performance Passing Through, Japan,1956, Saburo Murakami hurled himself through layers of paper. To enter in the art performance history, he stretched several layers of packaging paper over two sets of wooden frames. He tore through the paper six times on the opening day, and the resulting work remained on view in the first room of the exhibition hall.

7) Yves Klein

Klein employed female models as “living paintbrushes” to make this work and others in his Anthropometry series, named after the study of human body measurements. “In this way,” the artist said, “I stayed clean. I no longer dirtied myself with color, not even the tips of my fingers.” Klein directed the models, covered in International Klein Blue—his patented blue paint—to make imprints of their bodies on large sheets of paper.

8) Pyotr (or Petr) Pavlensky

Pyotr Pavlensky has used extreme performance art to bring attention to corruption in the Russian government and of his qualms with Russian society. In one of his most extreme ‘living pain’ performances, Pavlensky stripped his clothes off and nailed his scrotum to the floor of the Red Square, a central city square in Moscow, and he remained there for an hour and a half. He said this performance was “a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of modern Russian society.

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Artiholics is proud to present The Madness of Art. An online show, which the Huff Post calls “hilarious,” follows the chaotic life of a New York City gallery owner who can never seem to catch a break. With its slogan, “What’s so funny about the art world?”

You have just watched an episode of The Madness of Art as Chelsea art dealer Jim Kempner and his gallery staff interact with New York’s eccentric art world. New episodes will post every Tuesday at 3pm on Artiholics.

Posted August 12, 2014 by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post The Madness of Art: Episode (023) Bite The Hand appeared first on Artiholics.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Thursday, April 3, 2014

After a hectic week, traipsing from venue to venue, being part of panel talks, exhibiting my paintings during “Art Dubai” week along with interviewing artists and chatting with galleries, I find myself at the last leg of the “Art Dubai” events. This is by far the grandest and most coveted event to date, the one that truly caters for the serious art collector and lover.

Held at the Madinat Jumeirah, the venue that epitomizes the ‘oasis in the desert’, a luxurious beachside resort, where a wealthy and elite clientele flock to dine and ‘be seen’. This venue plays host to one of the highly renowned global and innovative art fairs in the region, an essential gathering of museum directors, curators, art collectors, artistes and art professionals.

Art Dubai, in its 8^th year, has continued to develop, this year offering visitors access to three gallery programs:  Contemporary, Marker and new in 2014, Modern. This new section to Art Dubai included 11 galleries, led by well-known curators and historians Savita Apte, Catherine David, Kristine Khouri and Nada Shabout.

The event, showcasing the work of over 500 artistes spanning from more than 80 plus galleries from over 35 countries, partnered with the Abraaj Group and sponsored by Cartier, was open to public from 19^th to 22^nd March 2014.

The extensive program included commissioned projects and performances, artists’ and curators’ residencies, educational workshops and the unveiling of the works of the winners of the annual Abraaj Group Art Prize by the critically acclaimed Global Art Forum.

The Abraaj Group Art Prize section was curated by Nada Raza, bringing five winning artist’s projects together in a poetic and meaningful way. Each artist was paired with one of the region’s poets or novelists who responded to their work with a piece of creative writing.

One of the firm favorites was Abbas Akhavan’s “Study for a Hanging Garden” which is a floor-based sculptural work that was cast in bronze flowers and leaves on a white sheet looks towards the vegetation native to Iraq. A powerful piece that draws the visitor to the juxtaposition between the inherent natural beauty of an area which has been scarred by war in the modern age.

My invitation to the ‘Art Dubai’ VIP event arrived a couple of weeks before. The pre-selected international clientele list is a strictly invitation only affair and aims to bring together the crème de la crème of renowned curators, artistes and art collectors of the highest caliber.

Visitors are invited to enjoy the unlimited champagne and cocktails establishing this final soiree as the ultimate social event on the art calendar.

Delectable intercontinental nibbles grace the huge array on offer from sushi, pasta, to middle-eastern was enjoyed by the guests whilst mingling with the ‘artsy’ crowd to discuss and share thoughts on the commissions on display.

People from all countries were in attendance and amidst the fashion parade was an interesting diversity: from flowing chiffon evening dresses, fancy hats to short skirts.

Locals (Emiratis) were also present, sashaying elegantly in their traditional long black abayas while the men, pristine in their white thobes, looked sharp to represent their cultural identity.

Many of the galleries hosted a common theme that echoed the region: “key moments in history”. One explored the artistic cross-fertilization between Iran and Dubai and looked closely at links of centuries of trade and migration, currently separated by politics. Another looked at what Kuwait might have been, judging by political and cultural developments from 1942 to 1982. This insight allowed the visitor to experience the development of culture within historic Asia and ironically the positive and negative social effects of migration.

As the sun descended over the clear Arabian Gulf, the elegant crowd drifted to an after-party on the other side of the ‘man made lakes’ to the “Absolute ART Bar”. The complimentary liquor bar entertained with great music ranging from house, techno to pop and entertained the chic crowd who danced and lounged around on plush sofas discussing the future of Art in Dubai.

The night morphed into a networking scene where passionate discussions of topics of “Alternative Futures of Art History between Iran and Dubai” could be heard over the throbbing beats.

While my narrative may paint a picture of the Dubian art lover as a whimsical consort with too much money and not enough depth, this illusion could not be farther from the truth.

Dubai is a melting pot of diversity, it homes the hardworking construction workers to western Bedouin, the curious voyeur and the well traveled.

These individuals spin a dense network of invisible threads linking countries and cultures as almost no one comes from just one place. This blend brings ‘new blood’ to the art table which gives rise to intellectually stimulating prose as the combination of art and thinkers is different from any that you find in the West.

In many cases the intellectual climate in their own countries may prove too stifling or acutely political. In any case, the concept of the clash of civilizations is absurd here, rather the stimulus to expand and explore is endless.

Antonia Carver, Art Dubai’s director, noted that “Successful fairs should take on the characteristics of their host cities, which for Dubai means embracing its cosmopolitanism and bringing in art from parts of the world that aren’t necessarily well-represented on the global circuit.

Dubai’s trading spirit is increasingly entering the cultural sphere”, she said, “making the city a point of exchange for ideas, not just goods. Art Dubai’s development over the past eight years reflects the extraordinary growth of the UAE arts scene and the fair has acted as a catalyst, expediting Dubai’s role as a bona fide cultural hub for the region and beyond”

The events over the past week, together with this glamorous affair, have proved the Art platform in Dubai to be striking, and progressive.

The events have attracted a plethora of nationalities and professionals from the art world to share and cross-pollinate ideas, to brainstorm and create new initiatives.

The potent images and pieces tell the difficult and somewhat controversial message in a non-threatening manner within an environment that is conducive to healthy dialogue. It is in these gatherings where the mentor is introduced to the student, the novice to the art scene and the serious art collector to like-minded lovers.

The art scene in Dubai may be in its incunabulum, but it is this ‘renaissance’ that seems to see tastes and styles growing at an exponential rate. Watch this space, events such as this will develop the city into a respected and developing hub in the Middle East. This is the city from which the artisan of tomorrow will transpire.

Written by Qinza Najm
Photos by Photographer Sarath Raj  Video by Euro News.  Additional photos by Art Dubai Media

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New York – Monday, February 17, 2014

On Tuesday, February 4th, at Bizarre in Bushwick, a variety of performance artists paid homage to Marina Abramović. Curated and hosted by Scary Ben, LIMITLESS: A Marina Abramović Tribute was a chewed up stew of pretty things and visceral bloody meat of the human body and the human condition.

Tapping into the esoteric side of performance art, Scary Ben  asked his performers to channel the ideas & influences of Marina Abramović. They reinterpreted her art pieces with their own personal meanings mixed with vaudeville fanfare. “We are the creators of our own limits, and therefore we hold our own power to become without limitations.”

There was a great variety of glitter, glamor, humor, and spectacle. However, the highlight of the evening was the very guttural and vulnerable performance of Melody Jane, in her homage to Lips of Thomas.

In Marina Abramović’s 1975 version of the piece, the artist arrives naked before you. Slowly, spoonful after spoonful, she consumes over two pounds of honey and drinks a liter of red wine. She breaks the glass, carving a pentagram onto her abdomen with a shard, and ends the scene flogging herself numb, as she lay down on a cross of ice, bleeding upon it. It is Abramović’s comment on the love, the denial, and the hedonism of the human body.

The piece reflects on ritual, and how women of power are seen as pagans and witches. Melody Jane begins her seduction as the soft mysterious glow of a glittering burlesque strip tease, seen through a plastic curtain diffusing the lights of the stage. The sheet drops away and she slowly pulls off glittering jewelry, gloves, pasties, undoes her wig.

She takes off her panties, to reveal gauze taped over her vagina. She lights a candle, undoes the bandage, and pulls out a razor blade hidden between the soft cotton and her body. She cuts off a lock of hair off from her head, kneels down and ignites it in an offering ceremony.

The smell of burnt hair pervades the front row. She proceeds to carve a symbol of the heart into her skin, deep enough so it bleeds freely across her chest, down her waist, over her vulva. The same heart can be seen as a tattoo on her right forearm. She holds up a small ceramic dish, taking a pinch of salt, rubbing it into her fresh wound.

She stands still, then moves off of the stage onto a platform where she remains for the rest of the show, her hands holding out a vessel of salt, and a vessel of water. Spectators examine her up close, some taking the salt, sprinkling it onto her. One aroused spectator took it upon himself to smile at her as he aggressively rubbed the salt into her skin with his sausage-like unwashed fingers. I found him a bit more disturbing than the pieces themselves, but hey I hope he appreciates art.

Abramović often let the spectator decide upon the boundaries of spectator and fetish voyeur, and their limits on taking from her, offering her body as the vulnerable object for the audience to love or dismember.

One piece she did was so disturbing that it had to be stopped because the participants were worked up into a violent frenzy, forgetting that Abramović is human, and that there are no tricks here. She does feel the pain, the only difference from you and me and her is only that she is enduring it.

Melody Jane’s piece can also be seen as a nod to Abramović’s Rhythm 0. Performed in 1974, Abramović had 72 objects on a table that people could use in any way that they chose to interact with her. Among the objects were items that could bring pleasure or inflict pain, even death. A rose, a feather, honey, grapes, a whip, scissors, a saw, a gun, and a single bullet were among the items present. The artist endured whatever the audience members did to her, and her body for six hours.

“What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” “I felt really violated; they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the (loaded) gun at my head, and another took it away”– Marina Abramović

There are many things that move us and reasons that bring us together: that strange mixture of vulnerability and strength, and the oddity of someone who is wiling and wanting, to let us watch. That is the magic of the mystic hierophant Abramović. She makes us remember, that our life is not passive, it is moved by a series of our intentions. Disturbing or beautiful, self-made, or allowed to be worked on by participants, our intentions are what we become, are our work of art.

Darlinda Just Darlinda & Karl Giant

Adriana Echandi & Rush Hicks

  Bombazeen Bean, Balkan Erotic Epic. Sex Magik

Kitty KaBoom The Onion

Matt Knife. Johnny Panic. Breathing In/Breathing Out (Death Itself)

Eric Schmalenberger and Kae Burke

Me (Betty T. Kao) and Joe Che.

Gin Minsky and Poppy Tart. Relation in Time

The show also featured works presented by:
Rosabelle Salevey &  Zoe Ziegfeld

Written and Photographed by Betty T. Kao

The post [NSFW] Marina Abramovic Tribute, A Limitless Chewed Up Stew Of Pretty Things, Bloody Meat, And Humanity appeared first on Artiholics.

When proposing a building design, an architect will draft a realistic architectural rendering.  This is a fiction, the illusion of a 3-D concept model of a building which only exists on paper.  This sort of rendering makes it easier for a client to “picture it” as a finished structure in relation to the existing architecture and being a physical fixture in the world around it as very little is left to the imagination.

If you are an entrepreneurial mogul such as Jay Z setting out to launch and brand a previously unknown Cognac, you find yourself with a unique challenge. How do you go about giving something that didn’t previously exist in the marketplace a chance to compete with other high-end alcohols, all of which already have a strong foothold on the nightclub’s coveted top shelves?

Aside from paying top dollar for that shelf placement, you can also skew your advertising with some fantasy. You realistically render it into reality.  Place the liquor in an atmosphere in which your product “should” exist.  A beautiful photograph of the largest musician in the world sitting in his massive Tribeca penthouse with a $6,850,000.00 view, wearing a $4,000 Tom Ford suit, smoking a $45 cigar, while admiring his print of Basquiat Untitled (1983).

This “Insta-cred” elevates the alcohol to the level of all that is around it, as we (as well as products) are judged by the company we keep. It’s validated as an intrinsically high status liquor because of its dominant placement in a world of previously validated status symbols.

So with this in mind, let’s come up with a further proposition. You are Jay Z.  You love the fine art world, are a collector of the arts, and seek acceptance by the upper crust fine art elite as an artist.  You feel like the modern day Basquiat, like the modern day Picasso, yet you aren’t garnering any fine art respect.

You would like to be dually embraced as an entity that exists outside of the “Mtv Rap World” as well as continue to be looked upon by rap fans as somewhat of a god among men.  How do you bridge the gap between a hip hop performance and performance art?

By using the business model of selling an unknown Cognac to a high-end consumer. The key would be to craft a narrative that places you into a position of power as a reputable performance artist.  A lot of art world players would have to be precisely aligned “in the same picture” to give the illusion of uniformity, so that your product — in this case “Jay Z” himself — is not only integrated into the fine art performance art world as a supporting element, but as a powerful entity with dominant placement (the glowing bottle in the foreground).

Throughout this new album Magna Carta Holy Grail Jay Z sings about the various art pieces he wants to own, or currently owns.  If you want to build an art collection of that scale, it would total slightly less than $500 Million dollars, which if he had his heart set on it, he could buy up all the pieces he mentions and still have $500 Million left in the bank.  There are some things money can’t buy, and apparently art world Insta-cred isn’t one of them.  Let’s examine in detail.

Because this song is so fine-art-centric, Picasso Baby director Mark Romanek is quoted as saying he was directly inspired by the documentary The Artist Is Present. The film chronicles Marina Abramović ‘s retrospective at MoMA which was highlighted by her daily “duration performance piece” whereupon she would sit facing members of the public one-by-one, making a lot of them cry.  The artist was present, and you were eye level, an equal.

To “sample” this performance (with a few tweaks) and jump into duration performance art piece without having previously existed in the fine art performance world takes balls, but if you have a nice warm glowing bottle- it’s part skill, part psychology, part who you know, and a lot of creative fine tuned editing.

A few months ago the Internet blew up because Jay Z was in Chelsea secretly filming (not so secret to the art world twitter heads) a six hour performance art piece at a small white wall gallery reminiscent of the Marina piece- and Marina was invited. This was edited down to a 7-minute (11 minute with credits) “Performance Art Film” aka Music Video which “isn’t a video.” Watch the HBO film Picasso Baby (above), and as you do, think about Jay Z’s positioning, posturing, and the way it’s cut.

As the performance was going on in real time, the internet buzz from people watching the vines and reading the live tweets were mixed between “this is an amazing piece of performance art” and “this isn’t art.”

A musician on a stage in front of an audience is performing, and Jay Z is a hip hop artist, so yes, this is performance art… if you do it in front of 60,000 people (his normal audience size) or 60, it doesn’t detract from the art of performing, so I don’t see what the beef is.

You might have thought you were coming to view or participate in a performance art piece, but you were also unwittingly invited to a sparring match. A shootout at high noon.

A Matrix duel in a white dojo, and tough luck, you are Morphius- oh, and you have to sit on a bench……against Bruce Lee…

…with slight of hand skills.

I’ve got 99 Problems and Marina ain’t one.

and fists……forming invisible guns… you are no match.  Because you aren’t the cowboy in the white hat, he is, and you also don’t have a voice. There are a lot of people with pure white shirts in the crowd, but he never squares off with any of them. There is a lot of subliminal shit happening here.

A one-sided rap battle in which you have literally no chance of winning or even anything close to looking superior.  Not because you are an inferior artist, but because you don’t get a chance to defend yourself.

If you have ever seen 8 mile, or watched any Rap Battles on Youtube, you will have noticed that the protocol is very much the same as this performance.  One rapper gets the opportunity to get up in the other rapper’s face, tearing them down with rhymes as an audience reacts.

They have to just stand there silently and take it… but the beauty of the rap battle is that the person taking the punishment gets a chance to retaliate with their own rhymes, while the initial rapper takes his turn remaining silent as the audience reacts.  Not so in this case, as the only one with a mic is Jay Z.

Was this a duration performance?  Yes.  Was it one where the artist stands above you, yelling down at you from a white pedestal, directly into your face,  in an all white room, wearing white, while you sit there and have your reaction filmed from multiple angles and by dozens of smart phones? Yes again.

I wondered about how Marina might have felt in accepting the invitation to be upstaged at a performance which would be ripping off her own performance, knowing it would be edited.

There was a lot of subliminal psychological stuff going on in this film, to position Jay Z as an authority figure in the fine art high-brow performance art world.

For one, the constant battle for height with Marina.  We reduce our height to show subordination to others and increase height to gain status.

Shaking a finger “no” at her, and laughing when she pushed her face on his… very weird shit happening.  I’m really breaking this down, probably too much, but 6 hours was edited to 7 minutes. These exact seven in this exact way. Pretty sure they thought about every second of footage.

In editing this tight, there are no accidents or misplaced frames.

I’d imagined Marina might have felt something like the former The Police front man Sting to P.Diddy.

Do you remember when P.Diddy and Faith Evans did a tribute song to the Notorious B.I.G. and they “sampled” Sting’s I’ll be watching you, with “I’ll be Missing You?”

Later, after there was no signs of this going away, Sting showed up on stage in a (If you can’t beat em’ join em’) appearance to sing the hook underneath Puffy literally talking over what was once his song. Although it appeared as though Sting refused to change the lyrics from I’ll be Watching You to I’ll Be Missing You, it still seemed to be giving P.Diddy the OK, even if it was reluctantly.

Marina looks like Sting.  This is her world, but Jay Z is more famous.

It seems like people were kind of enamored.  Some people danced and played along, others were being beat down by shadowboxing and words being thrown in their face.

You know when you are on the subway and those groups of 3 kids with a boombox get on, and they start the music super loud and then start spinning around the poles, doing flips and stuff very close to you, where they almost hit people?  It’s the proximity that makes it uncomfortable, and if you embrace it and let yourself be impressed, you will be part of the show, but if you bury your head in your phone and don’t want to participate, it becomes more awkward.  And when you look awkward, you get dominated.

Jay Z came off looking like Jesus Christ walking into the room giving out gold bars.  Yes, if he wasn’t famous nobody would give a shit about a guy talking in rhyme about what art pieces he “wants to line his castle” with.

Yeah, the discomfiture is probably what sets it apart from being a rap concert. Plus having all those alpha art-world personalities in the room and basically making them sit on a bench.
The balls behind the concept: I’m going to rhyme talk at your face, about how I want to own artwork – really loud, and you will sit there awkwardly, and this is art.

Were they swept up in the moment? They felt like they were special, because they were invited to be there, and in the room with one of the most famous musicians currently on the planet.  Like the Marina piece, they got to look into his eyes and connect.  They got to be performed to one-on-one.

Actors, film makers, painters, gallerists, art critics etc..

It is a very strange little art video, and there is a lot to be learned behind the psychology at play here. To put it in the rap musician mindset… If I sign with a record label that already has a lot of big named acts on their label, that makes me legit, and makes me on their level, a big name act – so when Jay Z throws these big performance artists into his video and they dance around with him, it’s fake legitimacy. But since they are into it, do they in fact make it legit?

I did like that there is a line in the song about him being the next Jean-Michel, and that’s one of the only lines where you don’t actually see him saying it. That would be too pompous a line to come out of his mouth on camera, and he felt that, and edited appropriately.

All this said, I think Jay Z is a genius.  To say he isn’t  an artist is absurd.  When it comes to marketing, making hit music,  and the business of art – he is on par with Andy Warhol.  Andy once said:

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” – Andy Warhol

Jay Z has got that part of the art game on lock.

The post Jay Z’s Empire State Of Mind: The Hip Hop Picasso is Present Baby appeared first on Artiholics.

Performance artist Marina Abramović’s recent run of what could be called part performance art, part opera in Manhattan had great reviews.  It only played from December 12 – 21 at the Park Avenue Armory so I didn’t get a chance to experience it, and see if I could make it through without crying.  In this exclusive interview (video above) acclaimed director Robert Wilson talks about taking on the role of undertaker in the Life and Death of Marina Abramović – a funeral served three ways.

I have no expertise on judging good from bad performance art, but I do enjoy a good show.  Sad that I missed this.

Actor Willem DaFoe looks crazy as fuck.  This should have been the tagline for the show. “Life and Death of Marina Abramović – Co-Starring Crazy As Fuck Actor, Willem DaFoe .”

Written by Cojo Art Juggernaut
Video & Stills Provided by Crane.tv

The post The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic : Directing A Funeral for The Stage (Video) appeared first on Artiholics.