performance art - The Art of the Prank

June 24, 2011December 15, 2023

Tabloid Performance Art

10 Celebrities Branded “Performance Artists”
Huffington Post
June 24, 2011

“Performance artist” has become a common slur against celebrities who thrive on tastelessness. There’s no way these people could be for real, the argument goes, so it must all be an elaborate ruse. But whether it’s from James Franco, who openly admits this act, or Joaquin Phoenix, who kept it going long enough to make a documentary about it, performance art is becoming a viable career option for established entertainers.

It’s not just that these celebrities’ personas have infiltrated their lives. That’s gone on for decades, from The Beatles and Bob Dylan, who liked to manipulate and mock their interviewers, to Samuel L. Jackson, who became typecast for his enthusiastic use of profanity. But recently, with the likes of Snooki, Soulja Boy and, lest we forget, Sarah Palin, tabloid performance art has thrived. With the entertainment media’s hyper-short attention span, famous people who can continually make a spectacle of themselves can also usually make headlines. [Here’s a] slideshow… of ten celebrities who have been accused of performance art, with varying degrees of truth behind the allegations.

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November 25, 2010December 15, 2023

If You Could See Me Now… Oh, You Can!

Wafaa Bilal, NYU Artist, Gets Camera Implanted In Head
by Ula Ilnytzky
Huffington Post
November 23, 2010

New York “” A New York University arts professor might not have eyes on the back of his head, but he’s coming pretty close. Wafaa Bilal, a visual artist widely recognized for his interactive and performance pieces, had a small digital camera implanted in the back of his head – all in the name of art.

Bilal said Tuesday that he underwent the procedure for an art project that was commissioned by a new museum in Doha, Qatar, in the Arab Gulf.

Titled “The 3rd I,” it is one of 23 contemporary works commissioned for the opening of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art on Dec. 30. The exhibition is entitled “Told/Untold/Retold.”

“I am going about my daily life as I did before the procedure,” the Iraqi-born artist said in a statement.

Bilal, who is teaching three courses this semester at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, will wear the camera for one year. It is 2 inches in diameter and less than an inch thick.

The project will raise “important social, aesthetic, political, technological and artistic questions,” he said.

He declined to say when the camera was implanted or other details of the art installation, saying it “will be revealed to the public as part of the museum preview on Dec. 15” and on a website to be launched on the same day, http://www.3rdi.me.

He said he chose to have it put in the back of the head as an allegorical statement about the things we don’t see and leave behind. Continue reading “If You Could See Me Now… Oh, You Can!”

September 19, 2010December 15, 2023

Joaquin Phoenix & Casey Affleck Expose Themselves

Update from news.softpedia.com, September 21, 2010: David Letterman Was In on the Joaquin Phoenix Hoax

Documentary? Better Call It Performance Art
by Michael Cieply
The New York Times
September 16, 2010

Casey Affleck wants to come clean.

South Pasadena, Calif. His new movie, “I”m Still Here,” was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including Joaquin Phoenix”s disturbing appearance on David Letterman”s late-night show in 2009, Mr. Affleck said in a candid interview at a cafe here on Thursday morning.

“It”s a terrific performance, it”s the performance of his career,” Mr. Affleck said. He was speaking of Mr. Phoenix”s two-year portrayal of himself “” on screen and off “” as a bearded, drug-addled aspiring rap star, who, as Mr. Affleck tells it, put his professional life on the line to star in a bit of “gonzo filmmaking” modeled on the reality-bending journalism of Hunter S. Thompson.

“I”m Still Here” was released last week by Magnolia Pictures to scathing reviews by a number of critics, including Roger Ebert, who wrote that the film was “a sad and painful documentary that serves little useful purpose other than to pound another nail into the coffin.”

“The reviews were so angry,” said Mr. Affleck, who attributed much of the hostility to his own long silence about a film that left more than a few viewers wondering what was real “” The drugs? The hookers? The childhood home-movie sequences in the beginning? “” and what was not. Continue reading “Joaquin Phoenix & Casey Affleck Expose Themselves”

June 3, 2010December 15, 2023

“Audience Experiments: Contemporary Art in the Age of Spectacle” Reviewed

An attempt to intellectualize the institutionalization of interactive performance art, or… how to make a Lincoln log.

Double Play
by Nikki Columbus
Artforum.com
June 1, 2010

In April, the Kitchen presented The Juvenal Players by Pablo Helguera, which theatricalized a panel discussion between a curator, a collector, a critic, an artist, and an arts administrator. Helguera, an artist and the Museum of Modern Art”s director of adult and academic programs, has written extensively on performance, pedagogy, and art-world etiquette (see The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary Art Style), even once complaining: “In my role as programmer, I have frequently been frustrated by the low or nonexistent public-speaking skills of those who lecture and participate in academic discussions.” He clearly relished the chance to create a full cast of panelists speaking eloquently and behaving badly.

It was therefore with some anticipation that I attended a recent forum organized by Helguera, “Audience Experiments: Contemporary Art in the Age of Spectacle,” held at MoMA on May 18. The program was structured in three “acts”: a presentation by artist Andrea Fraser; a roundtable featuring theater and performance practitioners, curator RoseLee Goldberg, and UC Berkeley professor Shannon Jackson; and a performance by artist David Levine. Would the participants turn on one another and reveal their deepest, darkest secrets? Or this time, given the program”s title, would the audience take the lead?

Read the rest of this article here.

January 18, 2010December 15, 2023

Eva and Franco Mattes Perform Live in Plymouth

Submitted by Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org:

I know that it’s all a state of mind
Live in Plymouth and in Second Life

mattes 1

If you happen to be in England next weekend there is a good reason to come to Plymouth. Marina Abramovic is curating a performance event called “The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow” for which we are performing old and new works live at the Slaughterhouse and in Second Life, for 4 days in a row.

Last time we performed in Second Life too many people showed up (thanks!) and many could not attend the performances (sorry!) so this time we’ll try to resist each day as long as we can, luckily for 4 hours, most probably ’till we throw up on the keyboards. As always if you join us in Second Life you can participate (click the link below), if you come to Plymouth you can just watch.

Thursday Jan. 21, 6:30pm (UK time); 10:30am (Second Life time)
Friday Jan. 22, 5pm (UK time); 9am (Second Life time)
Saturday Jan. 23, 5pm (UK time); 9am (Second Life time)
Sunday Jan. 24, 2pm (UK time); 6am (Second Life time)

See you there!

Eva and Franco Mattes