35 full-length Viennese Actionist films 1957-1969. *NSFW* (Extreme graphic & scatological situations.) "The term
Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop 'action art' (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.)." Previously:
1,
2. [more inside]
posted by Skygazer
on Jul 14, 2012 -
29 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
Since the late '70s,
Gordon Monahan has been
making a
career of extracting the unheard from pretty much anything he can get his hands on.
Monahan's works for
piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art.
Such pieces include
long string installations activated by wind (Long Aeolian Piano, 1984-88), by
water vortices (Aquaeolian Whirlpool, 1990) and by
indoor air draughts (Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather, 1996). His work for
electronic tone generators and
human speaker swingers (Speaker Swinging, 1982), is a hybrid of science, music, and
performance art, where
minimalistic trance music based on the Doppler Effect contrasts with issues central to
performance art such as physical struggle and '
implied threat'.
John Cage once said, "
At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."
[more inside]
posted by wcfields
on Apr 29, 2011 -
4 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
Are lice art? "Seven young artists from Berlin are trying to stretch the boundaries of art by living in an Israeli museum for three weeks with lice in their hair."
Video.
posted by fleetmouse
on May 2, 2008 -
141 comments
Amber Hawk Swanson was lonely. So, like lonely singles everywhere, she contracted
RealDoll.com, "Home of the World's Finest Love Doll," to provide her with some companionship. But she had one special request - that the doll be made to
look exactly like her. Nine months later,
Amber Doll was born, and the two were
married the next day in a Las Vegas ceremony. Amber documents the wedding, and explores the relationship between
fantasy and reality, in her film
To Have, To Hold, and To Violate, Amber and Doll (5-minute compilation.). (most links nsfw)
[more inside]
posted by granted
on Apr 30, 2008 -
52 comments
A site for artist
Bas Jan Ader (
wikipedia) who was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Site includes his most famous piece,
I'm Too Sad to Tell You.
posted by dobbs
on Dec 23, 2007 -
15 comments
NoSo [embedded audio] is the next stop on the self-referential satire train of Web 2.0.* Going beyond
Useless Account, inspired (kinda) by Flash Mobs, Fight Club ("the first rule..."), and MeFi Meetups, it allows anonymous users the opportunity to organize "NOevents" where members can congregate in selected physical locations
without using their technological connectivity devices and
NOT engage in communication with each other. That's right, no talking allowed at a NOevent. Reading books is OK. You may go home and blog about it, but NO live blogging. Organized by
a San Franciso art group that
may just be using it to get people to show up at their installations (aha!), and who violate the Fight Club rule
in an interview with R.U. Sirius.
(viablame TechCrunch) *Plagiarized with attribution from bhouston.
posted by wendell
on Aug 27, 2007 -
11 comments
Andy Kaufman { Mighty Mouse, Elvis impersonator, Bachelor #3, Latka Gravas/Vic Ferrari, the host of his own TV special, trouble-maker [?], Dostoevsky's Idiot, "born again" Christian, percussionist, inter-gender wrestling/bitch-slap champion, lounge singer Tony Clifton [?], bit player, Elayne Boosler's ex-boyfriend, and the Man On the Moon } RIP [YA RLY]
posted by Poolio
on Aug 20, 2007 -
33 comments
Art Crimes is a fascinating site about the history of vandalism in the fine arts, recently revived by a Frenchwoman who left a
lipstick imprint on a 2 million dollar painting by
Cy Twombly. Other examples include a
British suffragist attacking a Velazquez with a knife, an
installation vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden,
two Chinese performance artists who urinated into Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, and a
Canadian art student who vomited blue gelatin on a Mondrian. Oddly enough, the artwork that has weathered the most attacks is Rembrandt's
The Night Watch, which has survived two knife attacks (one by an unemployed teacher with a butter knife) and an attack by a mental patient who had a compulsion to fling sulfuric acid at fine artworks. Other art vandalism methods, including glass cutters, hammers, scissors, guns, and ink, are discussed
here.
posted by jonp72
on Jul 26, 2007 -
38 comments
The
Black Light Theatre of
Prague ("Černé Divadlo" or simply Black Theatre) is a
Czech performance style characterised by the use of black box theatre augmented by black light trickery. Although this performance style can be found in many places around the world, nowhere is it more prolific or specialized than in Prague. Some sample images:
1 2 3 4. YouTube:
1 2 3.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Feb 8, 2007 -
13 comments
Topor et moi. Roland Topor was the graphic artist behind the beautiful
Planète Sauvage (Cf. a few posts below) but his
body of work also included founding the
Panic Movement with fellow oddballs
Jodorowsky and
Arrabal, writing plays and novels (
The Tenant, turned into a movie by another Paris-born celebrity of Polish extraction and amateur of bizarre, Roman Polanski), and making strange and popular
TV shows for
children (YouTube clips from the 80s). Except for the kids shows, most of the links are
quite NSFW with
abundant sex and/or
violence, though in a
cartoonish,
disturbing,
surreal, or even
political way: Topor
once said (YouTube documentary in French starting with his Phallunculi series) that to renounce sex was to banish oneself from mankind. Topor himself was also a familiar figure of the French cultural landscape, instantly recognisable thanks to his
manic cackle (heard at the beginning of this
video where he explains how to
make art from random pornographic images), that he (over)used to
play the madman Renfield in
Herzog's Nosferatu.
posted by elgilito
on Dec 11, 2006 -
10 comments
We need more artists in politics! In 1969, Canadian performance artist Vincent Trasov constructed a
human-sized peanut costume and took on the familiar identity of
Planters mascot Mr. Peanut. Five years later, Trasov took his performance art persona to the next level as he entered Mr. Peanut into the 1974 Vancouver mayoral election, running on a platform of "
Performance,
Elegance,
Art,
Nonsense,
Uniqueness, and
Talent." Trasov posed a "visual question" to his opponents at the debates via tap dance, received at least one
celebrity endorsement during his campaign, and in the end, garnered 3.4% of the vote. Recently, Trasov (and fellow artist Michael Morris) launched the
Morris/Trasov Archive, where you can find a nice collection of photos from the campaign trail online (Performance -> My Five Years in a Nutshell).
Mr. Peanut
remains a central part of Trasov's art; his "Histories" place Mr. Peanut in the Bamyian Valley of Afghanistan, the Marx-Engels monument at Berlin, and at the entrance to Thebes, playing the role of Oedipus opposite the Sphinx.
posted by duffell
on Dec 10, 2006 -
11 comments
Imagine a massively multiplayer music studio, connected
worldwide over the Internet. Log in, and everyone sees a set of
synths,
effects, sequencers, or
other custom patches. Everyone’s looking at essentially the same screen, and can add beats,
trip out effects,
slide the bpm up and down,
and reprogram synths — all at once. That’s the basic idea of
netpd.
posted by bigmusic
on Oct 25, 2006 -
19 comments
kama3d ~ Made by an anonymous French artist, this series of sculptures of kama sutra positions was supposedly exhibited at the Chambéry Modern Art Museum (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire) recently. Now you can virtually walk around them. Reminscent of that sculpture of Britney giving birth on a bearskin. But are they real?
*NSFW* (Note: FLASH)
posted by crunchland
on Jul 13, 2006 -
36 comments
"Sloppiness is my palette." Neal Medlyn is the self-proclaimed
"Paris Hilton of Performance Art" who looked for "bits and pieces of coolness in normal things or in anything" when he was growing up in small-town Texas.
Now performing regularly in New York City, Medlyn played a nude Dubya shacking up with
Karen Finley's nude Martha Stewart in
George and Martha (here's
a review and
another review; photos NSFW). According to the 2000
Austin Chronicle profile (written by his
future wife) Medlyn came off as a lunatic in his early performances, many of which were sparsely attended, and involved "music, little routines, and group activities, like having everyone sit in the dark and listen very closely to a song he likes." Medlyn has performed, with
Kenny Mellmann, a
show of R. Kelly songs (
watch him performing one; Google Video); he
loves (NSFW) Lionel Richie (whose songs he finds strange and beautiful;
watch mpg here); and he wrote a book inspired by
his own buttocks (NSFW). Medlyn is currently doing, with
Carmine Covelli, a somewhat Peewee Herman-ish video series for
Nerve called
Neal Medlyn's Land of Make-Believe (NSFW; videos depict group sex, performed by various animal puppets). Here is
a 2004 interview with Medlyn. And Medlyn has a
Myspace profile.
posted by jayder
on Jun 17, 2006 -
9 comments
The Six String Sonics are about reinventing the guitar.
The conventional guitar has many limitations. For example, it binds the player to chords that one can hold with one hand, or melodies that can easily be reached with one hand. As a result, guitar compositions have come to sound very similar to each other. We created Six String Sonics to rid the guitar of these limitations, and make room for more possibilities in composition. A
video of their debut perfomance.
[embedded MOV file]
posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Feb 3, 2006 -
43 comments
On Friday, September 2nd, artist Mary Coble will subject herself to a marathon tattoo session that could make a career Marine wince. Beginning at 6 p.m. and likely continuing until dawn the next day, a tattoo artist will etch 400 names of victims of the nation's gay, bisexual and transgender hate crimes into the artist's back, legs and arms. And we're
all invited to watch.
More (WashPo [reg.rqd])
posted by crunchland
on Sep 1, 2005 -
18 comments
