The Artist Is Present: Sitting With Marina

This woman lasted 391 minutes, the longest of all

I’ve wanted to mention this for a while, but haven’t for some reason or the other. The latest performance art piece by Marina Abramovic is quite striking. You basically sit down with her and you stare at her. She stares back at you. The end result is that you cry. It varies from person to person, but most people who participate in this piece end up crying.

OK, so that’s probably not true. I honestly have got no idea what the percentages are. Still, there’s a tumblr blog dedicated to the people who Maria made cry.

It’s probably an incredibly moving experience. It’s too bad that I’m in Taipei and the Museum of Modern Art is in NYC.

Aliza Shvarts Redux

Turns out that it was all a fake. (This is what I’m talking about)

Aliza Shvarts

Aliza Shvarts is an art student. She supposedly got artificially inseminated as many times as possible over a 9 month period, and took abortifacient drugs to miscarry as many times as possible. The documented this and is launching her exhibit.

This is some kind of performance art thing. I’m not sure it actually happened. But other media have picked up the news.

Warren Ellis on the Eliza Shvarts thing. Some more from Ellis. Some of Shvarts’ art.