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Performance Art

Performance Art

Laurie Anderson's Beautiful Delusion

By Judy Berman on

“I’ve been asleep for 20 years,” says Laurie Anderson in a video interview (posted below) about her performance piece Delusion, which made its New York premiere last week as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s yearly Next Wave Festival and continues into early October. She doesn’t mean this in the Rip Van Winkle sense. Rather, she’s talking about the cumulative time she’s spent asleep in her 63-year-old life and the dreams that provide much of Delusion’s content. … Read More

Performance Art

Life Advice from World Poetry Slam Champion Buddy Wakefield

By Natasha Blank on

Buddy Wakefield, the two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Champion known for wordplay that stretches reality beyond ordinary limits, has shaped the art of spoken word with a fierce truth that touches the soul. Flavorpill sat down with him recently to get acquainted with the guy who left his position as the executive assistant at a biomedical firm in 2001, gave away everything he owned, moved into his car, and set out to “live for a living,” touring North American poetry venues. One thing led to another, and now he’s one of 20 featured live performers at our Yoga at The Great Lawn event on June 22.

Read on for a hint of what goes into his performances, and if you really want to find out what could make us laugh, cry, and scream simultaneously, get there early to catch him up close next Tuesday in Central Park. … Read More

Performance Art

Video of the Day: A Series of Walks

By Caroline Stanley on

Our friends at Cool Hunting turned us on to a cool thesis project from recent NYU grad Nahanaeli Schelling that’s called “A Series of Walks”; it was inspired by the car-mounted cameras of Google Street View. The twist? Schelling placed 10 cameras on her own body and walked the streets of New York like a robot, hyper-documenting everything that she saw. “We ‘surf’ the internet rather then surf the waves,” she explains in her statement. “And if we ever get that chance to ride the ocean, we perceive the experience through the lenses of what we have already seen on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and other sites.” Now viewers can experience Schelling’s walks secondhand, thanks to a rectangular box and 6 projectors. … Read More

Performance Art

Video of the Day: Ghostbusters at New York Public Library

By Paul Hiebert on

New York City just doesn’t seem safe these days, and people don’t always know where to look for protection. Recently, when the New York Public Library became infested with ghosts, who do you think they called? That’s right, Improv Everywhere. Studious patrons were disturbed during the evacuation, but the team of faux-parapsychologists got the job done and the reading room is better off because of it. At least they hope so. … Read More

Performance Art

Video of the Day: Performing vs. Acting

By Kelsey Keith on

Actor James Franco is taking his campaign to Be Taken Seriously to the next level in this MoMA video matching him with artist Marina Abramović and Klaus Biesenbach, chief curator of MoMA cousin P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. On the occasion of Abramović’s retrospective at the museum, The Artist Is Present, the three sit down for a chat comparing performance art to acting, including the danger of losing oneself in a character and the value of self-expression as a freedom from the strictures of daily life. (And on a sidenote: just look at Marina Abramović’s glowing skin. The woman is 63! What the eff is her secret? Success? Close proximity to Daniel Desario?) Video after the… Read More

Comedy

New Best Frenemies: Vicky & Lysander Throw a Performance Art Dinner Party

By Kelsey Keith on

The art of awkward conversation: role-playing hosts Vicky & Lysander cordially invite you to the dinner party from hell. Unless, of course, your sense of humor borders on the absurd and you find social button-pushing hysterical (we do), in which case get yourself down to the Lower East Side sur le champ. Grand Opening — the revolving art space that previously housed D.I.Y. workshop Trade School — has been remade as a hipster-rustic dining room complete with questionable art and rough-hewn shelves hosting china and leather-bound books. Vicky, a Houston oil heiress, and Lysander, a questionably-straight man about town, are the fictional marrieds who conduct over-the-top conversation while twelve guests chow down on fried chicken and cupcakes. It’s BYOB, and trust me when I say the B considerably helps the proceedings.… Read More

Performance Art

Video of the Day: The Tiger Woods Artist Statement

By Caroline Stanley on

Brooklyn-based video artist Ben Coonley — who you might recognize from previous viral hits Valentine for Perfect Strangers (which is one of the creepiest cat-related things we’ve ever seen) and the more recent Thank You Doctor Zizmor — has done a parody Tiger Woods’ infamous I’m-a-sex-addict press conference as his “Artist Statement” for P.S. 1. Who knew it was possible to make the disgraced golfer’s public apology sound even more ridiculous? … Read More

Performance Art

Video of the Day: Kirsten Dunst in “Akihabara Majokko Princess”

By Andrew Hwang on

This McG-directed Takashi Murakami collaboration (note the rainbow flowers and masked social commentary) has Kirsten Dunst donning a Harajaku schoolgirl outfit, walking the streets of the “anime Mecca” of Japan, Akihabara. It screened as part of the Tate Modern’s “Pop Life: Art In A Material World” exhibit, and features the actress singing “Turning Japanese” by ’80s band, The Vapors, a song that’s arguably about masturbation. Talk about risqué business. … Read More

Music

Last Night’s Concert: Yoko Ono and Plastic Ono Band at BAM

By Kelsey Keith on

Yoko Ono is turning 77 tomorrow. Keep that in mind as you imagine the performance artist shimmying, writhing, caterwauling, and charming the pants off the audience at Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday night. The show began with a montage of Ono recordings, films, interview clips, and photos from her days with husband John Lennon, and ended with a cavalcade of special guests that frankly kind of blew us away. Rundown of the entire performance, plus an image gallery featuring Eric Clapton and the Scissor Sisters, after the… Read More

Art

2010 and Beyond: Trends in Contemporary Art

By Kelsey Keith on

Just in case you thought we were finished with the lists (ha! never), here we go again with one that’s a little more forward thinking, a little less retrograde. After debating public art, defending the New Museum, speculating about Dia, and worshiping Jerry Saltz, wethinks ’tis time to set our lovingly-etched crosshairs on what’s coming in 2010 and the following decade. Not as flippant as Charlie Finch (who teasingly predicts that Damien Hirst will “come out of the closet” and marry Banksy) or as cut-and-dry as TimeOut New York (Matisse and the Whitney Biennial, revolutionary), we like to think our crystal ball is attuned to the frequency of the art world at large. Weigh in after the… Read More