"Things didn’t happen as I imagined. On the one hand, with the situation in Tehran, I expected the police to arrest me. I also thought that the resulting dress wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But it turned out to be more homogenous than I envisaged. Most of the passengers wanted to communicate with me and participate in the project. And I enjoyed this attention and collaboration. The point wasn’t their understanding of the project. I didn’t want anything to be imposed on the audience or participants. I wanted ordinary people to encounter their own personalities without any preconceptions about contemporary art. More than anything, I wanted something to emerge that is shared — between me and everyday metro passengers."
The story of fashion student Shirin Abedinirad who conceived and carried out an unusual (and unusually bold) performance art experiment by asking Tehran metro passengers to donate their rubbish to pin on her dress.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Nov 16, 2011 -
10 comments
Christine Sun Kim is a performance artist working in the realm of sound. She makes beautiful messes. She's also deaf. Todd Selby is a photographer. He's
made a film about her.
[more inside]
posted by artof.mulata
on Nov 12, 2011 -
8 comments
What is the only professional, modern dance company to grow directly out of a college modern dance class? ... What is the only professional modern dance company directed by not a singular choreographer, but rather a group collaboration, using improvisational techniques? The answer to... those questions is the world famous dance company, Pilobolus. (links nsfw - previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Oct 23, 2011 -
8 comments
"Punk-artist-anthropologist Cameron Jamie has made three documentaries on violence; I’ve read about them all and seen
just this one." The author speaks of "Kranky Klaus," LA-born artist Jamie's peek into the Austrian folkloric character
Krampus, a sort of photo-negative of Santa Claus who comes on Christmas to punish bad children.
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Jun 18, 2011 -
12 comments
Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes. Laura Milkins is walking home. Home is Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura lives in Tucson, Arizona. That's 2,000 miles (3,219 km), or about 4,473,976 steps. Right now she's in the shoulder of the road somewhere around Holbrook, Arizona. She has a pack on her back, a
webcam streaming 24 hours strapped to a sun visor on her head, and hopefully, a place to stay tonight. You can follow her every step of the way, by watching live video broadcast from her hat.
Or
walk with her.
[more inside]
posted by Tufa
on May 25, 2011 -
26 comments
A
digital clock made of wood and operated by 70 workers for one continuous 24-hour period.
"Even though the workers are trying hard to construct every single minute, they are constantly on the verge of failing."
posted by freshwater_pr0n
on Dec 27, 2009 -
35 comments
With the wild success of the Guitar Hero series, using video game controllers shaped like guitars is nothing new. However, the duo at
Modal Kombat actually use guitars as video game controllers. They won't reveal all of their tricks, but you can read a bit about their technology
here and at
this interview with Urban Guitar. The results are awfully impressive. View the original Modal Kombat
here, and their newest installment, the admittedly trippy GuitarKart
here.
via
posted by Ufez Jones
on Dec 3, 2007 -
5 comments
Tehching Hsieh – Life Performance Never one to back down from performance art, Tehching Hsieh, a Chinese emigre to the US, has done some pretty impressive things:
-
A year in a cage in his loft without talking;
-
Punching a time clock every hour of every day for a year (and missing tons of REM sleep
and making a film in the process;)
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Spending a year outside, never entering a single building or roofed structure until he was arrested in a scuffle;
Tied together with artist Linda Montano with a 8-foot piece of rope.
Does Tehching Hsieh deserve to be called America's Greatest Performance Artist?
posted by parmanparman
on Aug 18, 2006 -
27 comments
Alexander Calder's Circus. A movie by
Carlos Vilardebo, in four parts:
one two,
three,
four, [YouTube]. Calder developed his own one-man circus, with tiny performers made of "cork, wire, wood, yarn, paper, string, and cloth," carefully engineered to walk tightropes, dance, tame lions, lift weights, and engage in gymnastics and acrobatics in and above the ring. Acting as omniscient ringmaster, Calder would manipulate the wire performers while his wife wound circus music on the gramophone in the background.
via [more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jun 29, 2006 -
17 comments
Nam June Paik passed away on
Sunday. We'll read
educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most
playful ways. His
TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted by bru
on Jan 30, 2006 -
34 comments
17 Minutes is a performance and video blog project by new media artist Chris Barr. It's about suicide. [MI]
posted by sjvilla79
on Nov 22, 2005 -
7 comments
Battle of the "Gypsy"s. There was Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly and Bette Midler. There was even the possibility of Barbra Streisand as Madonna's mother. And now comes
Bernadette Peters in the Sam Mendes production of the show theater guru Frank Rich called his favorite musical. This surely begs the question: who's the swellest, greatest, world-on-a-platiest Mama Rose ever? And who are your top five desert island Mama Roses? (Note: participation weighs significantly on your sexuality...contribute at your own risk.)
posted by adrober
on Apr 22, 2003 -
17 comments
