Monday: Kips lecture

The body has always been viewed and used as art. Live art performances have used the human body to interact with the viewer and get a reaction out of them.  Marina Abramovic created this performance were she and a another person stood naked in the gallery that was displaying her art work. Her and the other person would stand so close together that the audience would have to squeeze through them and choose which person to face. Another one of Abramovic's work that I find very interesting was when she displayed a bunch of instruments on a table and stood naked and had the audience use these items on her. One item was a rose with thorns and as the thorns were dragged a crossed her body she began to bleed. This interaction reminds me Yoko Ono's work but taking the interaction between the audience and the performer to the next level. 

Kip's lecture brought to light James Luna's work to me. All of his performance art pieces had such a deep meaning. Being looked at like an artifact and some people thinking that he was not even real is astonishing to me in his piece "The Artifact Piece". It was astonishing to me because people go to galleries and museums to look yet they really are not actually looking because they are to busy reading the little information cards on the side. His work is on the representation of how people have  become objects. And that people have these stereotypes of what certain cultures of people should act and look like. The most interesting piece to me was "End of the Trail". I am part Native American and I feel that I have just become a statistic to people finding out that my great grandfather, grandfather, and father have all had alcoholism and people expect me to be that way to yet I am not. I break the stereotype.