Tuesday, September 10th - Marina, Jay Z and You

Jay-Z - Picasso Baby - Clean (Extendz) from DJ Diztracted on Vimeo.

Marina Abramović is a New York-based Serbian performance artist who began her career in the early 1970s. Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the "grandmother of performance art.' Here is Marina's description of performance art. Her show at Musuem of Modern Art (MOMA) in 2010 has been call revolutionary. During the three month show she would sit in silence across from people from the museum audience. Visitors were encouraged to sit silently across from the artist for a duration of their choosing, becoming participants in the artwork. This comprehensive photo gallery contains a record of each participant. You can see the portraits of people who sat across from her and you an amazingly wide range of emotions. The Artist Is Present is Abramovic’s longest performance to date with a total of 750 hours.  Abramović remained silent and still, enduring thirst, hunger, and back pain (and speculation as to how, exactly, she was or was not peeing), while visitors, confronted with her placid gaze, variously wept, vomited, stripped naked, and proposed marriage.  All in all it seems like a crazy affair.  Why? 

Jay-Z decided to present his own take on Abramović’s piece—rapping for six hours in front of a rotating cast of art-world V.I.P.s—viewers’ primary response was to get up and dance.  He  continuously performrf “Picasso Baby,” the second song on his new album, “Magna Carta… Holy Grail,” to a succession of visual artists, museum directors, gallerists, Hollywood folk, and Pablo’s granddaughter Diana Widmaier Picasso.  New Yorker Magazine described it as:

These guests took turns on or near a wooden bench positioned across from a low platform on which the rapper stood, except when he was prowling around. A crowd of less famous art-world denizens and cool-looking people (some of whom had been specially cast) loitered along the walls of the gallery, except when they were invited to scurry right up to Jay-Z. Roving steady-cam operators followed the instructions of Mark Romanek, the director of what will become a music video featuring more middle-aged white people than are usually in rap videos.

When Abramović appeared, serene, in a voluminous black gown, the room fell silent. “I need energy from everybody. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” a member of the production crew barked to the stunned crowd. The artist slunk in, discarding her shoes and her belt along the way, holding her arms out to the side, palms facing forward. What followed was a slow, seductive dance, the artist and the rapper pacing around, staring intently into each other’s eyes, occasionally pressing their foreheads together, the mind-meld complete. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” Abramović said afterward. “I just came here and felt the energy. I love his music, because it’s social issues, it’s political, and really goes to everybody’s heart. It’s so good. It’s like a volcano.”

Check out Marina and Jay Z.

Check out some of the different medias made from the performamnce:
Animated Music Video
Taylor Swift
Performance with Jay-Z Interview

Here is a version with more of the freestyling Jay-Z

jay-z-realartfull from klaus bomax on Vimeo.