Performance art is good and listening to people who don't understand art talk about performance art is a unique type of torture.
Which is probably a thought that could be the core of a pretty fun, masturbatory piece of performance art.
Oh. Oh actually. Actually.
Okay, so the name of the piece is "It's what you make of it" and you have a setup that's a cross between a zoltar fortune-teller machine and a crank penny press. The room the piece is performed in has a warning about recording the performance and cautions the viewer to only interact with the piece of they consent to being recorded and photographed.
The artist is in the box, made up as a marionette and the viewer can use pulleys and switches to position the artist's limbs and to change the background and lighting of the box and can type a short prompt for the artist to repeat and act out verbatim.
The viewer has to drop a token (provided as part of the piece) into a coin slot and work a crank to complete the prompt. While the artist is acting out the prompt, the prompt is printed on a photo strip that includes a picture of the prompter (taken by a hidden webcam on the booth). One copy of the prompt and photo is spit out along with the cranked token (which has the phrase "it's what you make of it" and an image of a clown pressed into it) for the viewer to keep, one copy of the prompt and photo is spit out inside the booth where the artist can collect it after completing the prompt.
What the artist is going to do with the photo strip is not explained, the artist doesn't speak or move except as a response to a prompt.
People will prompt the artist to say "this is stupid." People will prompt the artist say explicit phrases, or to swear incessantly. People will prompt the artist to say slurs.
And they will walk away with their prompt attributed to them with their photo and a coin they used their energy to mint into a reminder that the art is what they made of it. And their creation is documented in the hands of the artist as well. What did they put into the world? What did they decide to say when they had a chance to say anything? What were they comfortable saying before they realized that someone would quote them on it? What did they make of it, and how would they feel if their photo was attached to their prompt in a book or video or somewhere that people might see it?
How did they approach the piece? How would they approach it a second time?
Also the artist goes hog fucking wild on the prompts. They're acted out *loudly* and melodramatically with as much emotion as the artist can put into the performance.
And whenever the machine is not in motion the artist is still and vacant, but the performance of the prompt involves as much eye contact and emoting as possible.
The piece is dead and meaningless until you approach it, and as soon as you start interacting with it it should become disconcertingly alive with your intention.
That sounds like an actual, literal nightmare I had as a kid where I fucked up giving instructions to a mimic-biological construct and didn't say anything b/c I didn't want to get in trouble and the construct was killed for not following the instructions correctly.
I absolutely would never want to be put in a situation where someone couldn't refuse my orders.
Well. Clearly as performance it it works already. I need to go drink of a cup of tea about this to stop being upset. I'm sure it would also make other people feel things they perhaps didn't realize they were going to feel.
Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0 (1974)
This post was directly provoked by stumbling across a reddit thread of non-artsy people reacting to Rhythm 0.
