Controversy recently struck the General Theologial Seminary in New York after it invited an artist to perform in the college chapel. Details from Church Times:
The Episcopalian seminary had invited the artist Lia Chavez to perform Water the Earth, in which she intended to sit in the college chapel and weep for five hours, as part of an expression of "tears as a sacred act", the press release for the event stated. Ms Chavez said that her performance would be "harnessing and ritualizing the mysteriously regenerative power of releasing emotional tears as an offering to the earth", and watchers would be invited to weep with her.
I know some people can cry on command, but for five hours?
The Episcopalian community thought the event sounded way too weird, forcing the seminary to cancel the performance before it happened.
Brus was a co-founder in 1964 of Viennese Actionism (German: Wiener Aktionismus) with Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. His aggressively presented actionism intentionally disregarded conventions and taboos, with the intent of shocking the viewer. At the Kunst und Revolution event at the University of Vienna in 1968, Brus urinated into a glass then proceeded to cover his body in his own excrement, and during the performance Brus also sang the Austrian National Anthem while masturbating. Brus ended the piece by drinking his own urine and inducing vomiting, and was subsequently arrested. Through this piece and his other performance works, Brus hoped to reveal the still fascist essence of the nation. This performance created a public outrage at the time and the participants were dubbed by the media as uniferkel or "University Piggies." Sentenced to 6 months in prison after the event and subsequent public reactions, he fled to Berlin with his family and returned to Austria in 1976.
Now Spanish artist Alicia Framis has announced she'll also be marrying a hologram. Her holographic partner is a life-size, three-dimensional projection powered by AI. His name is AILex.
Whereas Akihiko Kondo married a hologram because, by his own admission, he had trouble forming relationships with flesh-and-blood women, Framis is marrying a hologram as a piece of performance art which she's titled "The First Woman to Marry a Hologram."
She previously lived with a mannequin named Pierre.
Artists Paul Velick and Francis Shishim joined forces in 1975 to create the personae of "Bob & Bob." As Bob & Bob they engaged in performances such as the following:
A piece called Oh great, now what? consisted of eating lavish meals at expensive restaurants in Beverly Hills, then "discovering" they were broke, saying "Oh great, now what?" and being thrown out.
The Aquamen are part of Machtiern, a French theater company. They wander around in public wearing fishbowl helmets, with live fish swimming around inside the helmets.
In their "bubbles", the artists pose "fundamental questions about our ability to enter into contact with others when barriers are erected".
But wearing a fishbowl is not for the faint-hearted, Mr Manini told the Telegraph.
"It's a bit like wearing a reverse diving bell," he said, adding that it took years to perfect to avoid leaks around the neck with each bowl and suit moulded to the individual performer.
Gina Pane. Today many pronounce her name Gina Pain, turning the Italian word for bread into the English word for suffering. Pane, the queen of European body art, has been having something of a renaissance in the early 21st century art world, in the era of virtual bodies. Her art actions of the late 1970s featured constant demonstrations of pain. Called "that crazy lady with the razor blade" by some ironists, she cut the skin of her palms, hands, back, belly, mouth, tongue, and cheeks.
Some of her pain performances:
Non-Anaethestized Climb (1971): Barefoot, she climbed up and down a ladder-like structure whose rungs were studded with sharp metallic shards. She did this until she was bleeding profusely.
Food/TV News/Fire (1971): While watching news footage of the Vietnam War, with a bright light shining in her eyes, she ate raw ground beef, and later threw it up.
Sentimental Action (1973): Dressed in white, she entered the gallery with a bouquet of roses, removed the thorns from them, and pierced her arm with the thorns. She then began cutting herself with a razor blade, allowing the blood to drip onto the roses.
Conditioning (1973): She lay on a metal bedframe position over two rows of burning candles. She later confessed that the pain started right away and was difficult to master. The audience could see the pain she was in by the intense wringing of her hands.
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.