Category:
Performance Art
Performance Art
The Automatic Human Jukebox
For many years, beginning around 1972, Grimes Poznikov entertained crowds at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf by transforming himself into the "Automatic Human Jukebox."
source: wikipedia
Some details about him from a 1975 syndicated article by reporter Philip Hager (The Spokane Spokesman-Review - Sep 14, 1975):
Grimes Poznikov is the Automatic Human Jukebox — a statement that somehow renders anything that follows it anticlimatic.
For three years, he has been delighting the throngs of visitors to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiardelli Square, popping out of a box the size of a telephone booth to offer such selections as "Sentimental Journey," "When the Saints Go Marching In," and, inevitably, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
But even as a minor institution in a city with a deserved reputation for unorthodoxy, Grimes Poznikov, the Automatic Human Jukebox, has found himself facing an unceremonious eviction from the streets of San Francisco.
Poznikov's problem is that he has been cited for occupying a public street without a permit, a charge he intends to fight before a jury.
In recent weeks, seeking that elusive permit, he has been turned down by the city's Public Works Department, the Recreation and Parks Department, the Art Commission and, finally, the Board of Permit Appeals.
As a streetcorner jukebox, he doesn't fit into a tidy official category.
"I'm in a gray area, somewhere between a musician and a street artist," he explained. "The Public Works Department pointed out that under their rules I wasn't a building either."
For three years, he has been delighting the throngs of visitors to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiardelli Square, popping out of a box the size of a telephone booth to offer such selections as "Sentimental Journey," "When the Saints Go Marching In," and, inevitably, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
But even as a minor institution in a city with a deserved reputation for unorthodoxy, Grimes Poznikov, the Automatic Human Jukebox, has found himself facing an unceremonious eviction from the streets of San Francisco.
Poznikov's problem is that he has been cited for occupying a public street without a permit, a charge he intends to fight before a jury.
In recent weeks, seeking that elusive permit, he has been turned down by the city's Public Works Department, the Recreation and Parks Department, the Art Commission and, finally, the Board of Permit Appeals.
As a streetcorner jukebox, he doesn't fit into a tidy official category.
"I'm in a gray area, somewhere between a musician and a street artist," he explained. "The Public Works Department pointed out that under their rules I wasn't a building either."
The concept of the Automatic Human Jukebox occurred to him in the early '70s when he read of a poll listing "jukeboxes" as one of the things Europeans liked most about America.
During the height of the tourist season, Poznikov almost every day erects his seven-foot-high jukebox on the corner of Beach and Larkin, using a wire cord to anchor the structure to a nearby maple tree.
Passersby are invited to make a selection from a list of tunes Poznikov has mastered and drop in a coin. ("AHJ practices no economic discrimination," a sign announces. "However, quality... will vary automatically with the quantity of coins inserted.")
During the height of the tourist season, Poznikov almost every day erects his seven-foot-high jukebox on the corner of Beach and Larkin, using a wire cord to anchor the structure to a nearby maple tree.
Passersby are invited to make a selection from a list of tunes Poznikov has mastered and drop in a coin. ("AHJ practices no economic discrimination," a sign announces. "However, quality... will vary automatically with the quantity of coins inserted.")
Few of them realize it, but Poznikov has been peering right back at the crowds who peer in at him. He occasionally takes their photographs and, as a student of psychology, he has written a scholarly paper entitled "Deinstitutionalization of Psychotherapy Through Mass Psychotherepeutic Implementation — Automatic Human Jukebox, a Case in Point."
In his paper Poznikov has recorded his observations of his customers during what he calls three years worth of "ongoing demonstration of mass psychotherepeutic implementation," noting such details as "... a five to 35 second raucous laughter follows most AJH actuations."
Passersby, he has written, first refer to the jukebox in "non-personified pronoun terms" ("it") then, upon his emergence horn in hand, they speak of it as a "living component" ("he").
Poznikov regards the Automatic Human Jukebox as an experimental art form, patiently explaining to a puzzled questioner, "I want to legitimize and advance the system of non-verbal communication... the people who come here can interact with the jukebox, participate in the process of making music."
In his paper Poznikov has recorded his observations of his customers during what he calls three years worth of "ongoing demonstration of mass psychotherepeutic implementation," noting such details as "... a five to 35 second raucous laughter follows most AJH actuations."
Passersby, he has written, first refer to the jukebox in "non-personified pronoun terms" ("it") then, upon his emergence horn in hand, they speak of it as a "living component" ("he").
Poznikov regards the Automatic Human Jukebox as an experimental art form, patiently explaining to a puzzled questioner, "I want to legitimize and advance the system of non-verbal communication... the people who come here can interact with the jukebox, participate in the process of making music."
According to wikipedia, he ended up dying homeless on the streets in 2005. His life inspired a short opera titled Broken Jukebox which premiered in Jan 2008 at College of Marin.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 21, 2022 -
Comments (2)
Category: Eccentrics, Outsiders, Marginals, the Excluded and Low-castes, Music, Performance Art, 1970s
Yoko Ono, “Cut Piece”
To accompany Alex's Patty Chang post from yesterday.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Jun 21, 2021 -
Comments (0)
Category: Fashion, Performance Art, 1960s
The art of Patty Chang
A few highlights from Patty Chang's career as a performance artist:- Eating raw onions with her parents
- Having an eel crawl inside her shirt
- Cutting through her bra (stuffed with melons) while ritualistically discussing her aunt's death
- shaving her pubic hair with seltzer water
- creating urinary devices with plastic bottles while traveling across an aqueduct in China
- having women pump their breast milk while reading lists of worries submitted by anonymous people in Hong Kong and the U.S.
It seems that Chang is deliberately trying to be weird. She says, "Humor is a strategy that makes people aware and also uncomfortable... There are a lot of strange things that we don’t pay attention to, but I try to extract them."
More info: artnet
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 20, 2021 -
Comments (0)
Category: Performance Art
Lys Chelys, French Female Fakir
Modern performers like David Blaine, who entomb themselves in glass boxes, are carrying on an old tradition, as seen below in the first video with Lys Chelys.The still photo shows her exiting her "sarcophage" after 57 days without eating.
After her items, we have a full movie utilizing the same theme.
Photo source.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 05, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Food, Magic and Illusions and Sleight of Hand, Performance Art, 1950s, Europe, United Kingdom
Finding a needle in a haystack
ARTnews reports that the artist Sven Sachsalber recently died at the young age of 33. Sachsalber's most famous work, which Chuck posted about in 2014, was when he spent two days searching for, and eventually finding, a needle hidden in a haystack.
Some of Sachsalber's other works (or 'performances') included:
- Completing, with his father, a 13,200-piece puzzle of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam
- Eating a poisonous mushroom
- Spending 24 hours in a room with a cow
For whatever it's worth, Sachsalber wasn't the first person to try and find a needle in a haystack. Legendary publicist Jim Moran did the exact same stunt back in 1939.
Popular Science - July 1939
Note: despite what the caption says, Moran did find the needle.
He then sent it to the Smithsonian.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 22, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Publicity Stunts, Homages, Pastiches, Tributes and Borrowings, Performance Art, Obituaries
The Rain
The film shows Marcel Broodthaers trying to write while the rain constantly washes away the ink. In the final scene, during which the artist gives up and drops his pen, the inscription “Projet pour un texte” (Project for a text) appears.
Is that actually rain, or is someone spraying him with a hose?
Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 21, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Performance Art, Absurdism and Dadaism, Writers, 1960s
An Intentional Cannibal
There's an old urban legend, which folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand refers to as 'The Accidental Cannibals,' about people who accidentally eat the cremated remains of a loved one:the story circulated about how postwar food packages from the United States led to a gruesome confusion. When one package arrived containing an unlabeled dark powder, people assumed it was some kind of instant soup or drink, or perhaps a condiment. Only after most of the powder had been consumed did a letter from the United States arrive explaining that the powder was the ashes of their emigrant grandmother who had died during the war and who wanted her remains returned to Romanian soil...
A recent version of the legend describes the cremains of a relative shipped home from Australia to England and mixed there into the Christmas pudding. Half the pudding has been consumed by the time the letter of explanation anives.
A recent version of the legend describes the cremains of a relative shipped home from Australia to England and mixed there into the Christmas pudding. Half the pudding has been consumed by the time the letter of explanation anives.
In a case of urban-legend-becomes-real-life, performance artist Eva Margarita has announced that she'll be mixing the cremated remains of her father into three different entrees and then eating them. She'll be doing this "to not only honor his spirit but to show how communities pass on knowledge through a practice in eating and conjuring with one another."
Her performance will be broadcast live on the Internet. It's happening today (Sep 23, 2020), from 8 AM to 8 PM (eastern time).
In an interview on timeout.com, Margarita offers some details about how she'll prepare her father's cremains:
I'm taking just the bone pieces. I'm grinding them down in a molcajete, or a mortar and pestle, and then I'm adding them into the food. I'm grinding them down in a metaphorical sense to help grind down the body and flesh, but also it's almost to subvert the grinding that we do in real life, and all the beating that we've taken throughout, but now it's done out of love.
Thanks to Gerald Sacks!
Posted By: Alex - Wed Sep 23, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Cannibalism, Food, Performance Art
Sybil Brintrup, RIP
Alas, the world will get no more performances like this one.Obit in Spanish.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 14, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art
Lunar Striptease
Edited to stop short of bare bosoms.
Posted By: Paul - Fri May 22, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Aliens, Body, Entertainment, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Performance Art
Ulay & Abramovic
Alas, Ulay is no more.Marina is still with us.
Enjoy 2.5 hours of their art.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 05, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Body, Entertainment, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers
| Who We Are |
|---|
| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |