Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Decklas. Here, Julie,
Speaker 1: I take the Marta train here to the office. That's
Speaker 1: a public transportation here in Atlanta. UM, it's kind of
Speaker 1: limited looks. We just go north and south and east
Speaker 1: and west and that's it. But it's public transportation. It's
Speaker 1: the train. It's uh a melting pot of humanity, especially
Speaker 1: when it's hot and uh. And I'm always saying, just
Speaker 1: kind of crazy stuff happening on the train, and occasionally
Speaker 1: it'll be crazy enough that there was a moment where
Speaker 1: I have to question, and it's what I'm seeing legitimate
Speaker 1: human activity. Is this Is this somebody that is adduled,
Speaker 1: that is in danger, that is unhinged, or is this
Speaker 1: performance art This is somebody trying to make a state
Speaker 1: it about human nature right here on the train. Because
Speaker 1: that is the thing about performance artists, right like, they
Speaker 1: completely disenter you. They make you stop and say, is
Speaker 1: this person truly um sort of out of their wits
Speaker 1: or do they have something to say? And that is
Speaker 1: the goal of the performance artists. Right, and as as
Speaker 1: we'll discussed in this episode two, at times it may
Speaker 1: seem that there is a gray line between madness and
Speaker 1: performance art. So absolutely with some definitely some of the
Speaker 1: people were going to cover, like to what extent are
Speaker 1: they going to explore these ideas of our own humanness,
Speaker 1: our frailties are power by doing these these acts that
Speaker 1: sometimes they actually um will do to their bodies. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. They are arguably no same person would
Speaker 1: do no, no, But they are interrogating what it is
Speaker 1: to be human, how we feel, how we think, how
Speaker 1: we act, what is morality? This is, you know, a
Speaker 1: question that we're always grappling with as humans. UM. And
Speaker 1: I really think the artists are are these nice um,
Speaker 1: these nice additions to the scientific mind, to scientific researchers
Speaker 1: out there, because I think that they're doing the same
Speaker 1: thing that scientists arts to some extent they are. They're
Speaker 1: going through the process of UM, Okay, here's this, here's
Speaker 1: the situation, and how can I examine it, and how
Speaker 1: can I peel away the layers to come to some
Speaker 1: sort of truth? What works and what doesn't? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: into what extent do we even have free will? This
Speaker 1: is a question that comes up a life with neuroscientists.
Speaker 1: And I think this is something that performance artists do
Speaker 1: really well, is exploring this topic. Like you said, they
Speaker 1: drop truth bombs. They do to quote Tracy Jordan's there
Speaker 1: what strikes me about the performance artists. With a traditional artist,
Speaker 1: the the art they create is kind of like kind
Speaker 1: of serves as a proxy by which they deliver truth. Two. Like,
Speaker 1: there's truth in the art the artist creates, and that
Speaker 1: is the means by which he or she gets the
Speaker 1: truth into your brain. Um. But the performance artist, there's
Speaker 1: no proxy like they they are they are becoming a
Speaker 1: vessel for that idea. They are becoming an idea, and
Speaker 1: they're forcing you to confront this idea in the flesh.
Speaker 1: Um Often, I mean, there are a lot of new
Speaker 1: performance artists out there, and nudity is often plays into
Speaker 1: I mean, because that is uh, I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: thing itself. There's a line in Shakespeare's King lear Um
Speaker 1: where lear is um. You know, it's a one of
Speaker 1: these seats out in the in the middle of the storm.
Speaker 1: Lear is is mad. There's a there's a fool that's
Speaker 1: pretending to be mad. Uh. And and lear says, is
Speaker 1: man no more than this? Consider him well, thou owest,
Speaker 1: the worm no silk, the beasts no hide, the sheep
Speaker 1: no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha, here's three uns
Speaker 1: are sophisticated, thou art the thing itself accommodated. Man is
Speaker 1: no more but such a poor bear forked animal as
Speaker 1: thou art. Okay, that's that's really interesting because it's about
Speaker 1: stripping away right that the thing. And that's what I
Speaker 1: think is interesting about performance art is it does peel
Speaker 1: away our particular constructs of realities, some of them built
Speaker 1: on how we as a society work right, all these
Speaker 1: sort of rules that are either spoken or unspoken. UM.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to talk about how performance art is
Speaker 1: actually an offshoot of data is M and even UM
Speaker 1: and futurists um. And it has a pretty good Uh,
Speaker 1: it has a pretty good run here UM, particularly from
Speaker 1: the seventies on. Lori Anderson is someone who is associated
Speaker 1: with performance art. And I just wanted to mention this
Speaker 1: because this is a good example of the type of
Speaker 1: performance art that began to be performed. She did duets
Speaker 1: on ice, which she conducted in New York and other
Speaker 1: cities around the World, and it involved her playing the
Speaker 1: violin along with recording while wearing ice skates with blades
Speaker 1: frozen and to a block of ice. Now Lorie Anderson,
Speaker 1: her husband, Uh yes, um yes, because Anderson was also
Speaker 1: NASA's Artist in Residence for a short period of time.
Speaker 1: She is an amazing artist, um and she has I
Speaker 1: believe that she's even if I've got this read, I
Speaker 1: believe she's even invented a couple of instruments as well.
Speaker 1: She's an amazing finger. And so that's what I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting about performance artists is that they're bringing
Speaker 1: all those critical thinking skills to the table and like scientists,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, like, you know, these causal relationships
Speaker 1: and what happens when you, you know, push the needle
Speaker 1: here and there. Her performance, you know, they're no newdating,
Speaker 1: nothing too crazy, nothing blowing up. But her performance ended
Speaker 1: when the ice had melted away. Another artist that people
Speaker 1: might be familiar with this Karen Finley. And I actually
Speaker 1: saw her in American Chestnut here in Atlanta, and that
Speaker 1: was very interesting. That was this interrogation of the missticity
Speaker 1: and a woman's role. And this was after she had
Speaker 1: a child and she was actually using breast milk quite
Speaker 1: a bit too, um express herself, I guess you could say.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that hallmarks of performance art
Speaker 1: to me at least is this lack of documentation. Um.
Speaker 1: This this symbol of the ephemeral nature of life, that
Speaker 1: everything is fleeting. And uh, I wanted to bring this
Speaker 1: little quote out from a book called The Family Fang,
Speaker 1: and this was one of yours in your summer reading
Speaker 1: when my summer picks. It's really good. It's there. In
Speaker 1: some ways it's it didn't quite live up to what
Speaker 1: I what I thought it might be, but other ways
Speaker 1: it really surprised me. Is about a family of performance artists,
Speaker 1: the parents in particular, and um, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: the father talking to child. Be I believe that's his son, um,
Speaker 1: he says, And I'm gonna have to believe this out
Speaker 1: a little bit. Art happens when things effing move around,
Speaker 1: he told them, not when you freeze them in a
Speaker 1: gall durn block of ice. He would then take whatever
Speaker 1: item was closest to him, a glass or a tape recorder,
Speaker 1: and smash it against the wall. That was art, he said,
Speaker 1: And then he would pick up the pieces of the
Speaker 1: shattered object and hold them out for his children to inspect. This,
Speaker 1: he said, offering the remains of the broken thing is
Speaker 1: not so Again, it's this moment that's eliciting these certain
Speaker 1: emotions that I think are most central to performance art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, another thing that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: if we were researching this and as we're discussing now, um,
Speaker 1: there's there's also this line between performance art and just
Speaker 1: someone being a provocateur, you know, or you know that
Speaker 1: someone that's just doing something shocking for the sake of
Speaker 1: shocking and shocking you. Um. And certainly there are some
Speaker 1: individuals out there who just do that and call it
Speaker 1: performance art. But but but when when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: real performance are like performance art of a high caliber,
Speaker 1: um that there's there's that nugget of message in there somewhere, well,
Speaker 1: something that resonates a long time afterwards, Like for instance,
Speaker 1: you could see was it the naked cowboy in New
Speaker 1: York who plays on the side of the street with
Speaker 1: the guitar? Oh yeah, yeah, And I wouldn't call it
Speaker 1: performance art. But I'm just I'm kind of picking on
Speaker 1: him a little bit because I don't think he builds
Speaker 1: himself as a performance artist. But some people might go
Speaker 1: by and say, oh, that's so crazy. There's a you know,
Speaker 1: six ft five dude, he's pretty much naked and the
Speaker 1: cowboy hat. Yeah, various individuals in Atlanta that have become
Speaker 1: famous for like baton Man, the baton guy that would
Speaker 1: march around with the baton. Oh yeah, like like that
Speaker 1: was I mean, he wasn't pretending to be a performance artist.
Speaker 1: He was just doing it because it made him happy.
Speaker 1: But I've seen him in a long time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen him recently either, I have uh you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he uh, maybe he's good now, he didn't need it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe got that baton thing out, um, that baton demon
Speaker 1: that we all have. Um. And then there's the flatuless
Speaker 1: that you you hit me to the other day. Oh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, um, which I didn't even know it was
Speaker 1: a real thing. I was. I was reading a book
Speaker 1: Mary Anne is Sleeping. I believe it's the name of it. Um.
Speaker 1: It was look for a big book prize about a
Speaker 1: decade back, and there was a fart farting artist in
Speaker 1: the book. But the whole book is like cloaked in
Speaker 1: dreams and dreams within dreams so I just assumed it
Speaker 1: was made up, but we discovered yesterday that it is
Speaker 1: not there. There this is a there's a grand tradition
Speaker 1: of individuals using their their their their musical their Actually
Speaker 1: there's Mr. Mythlen Is the name of one of the Flatuless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was on like what Britain's got talent the proud
Speaker 1: moment for the Empire. But but that so that is
Speaker 1: another example something that is not quite performance art. Um.
Speaker 1: But but let's get into start getting into some of
Speaker 1: the examples that we're gonna cover in this this episod
Speaker 1: because we want to we want to hit some high
Speaker 1: points or performance art well. And in some cases you
Speaker 1: could call them it's in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 1: Some of these may be considered low points that performance art,
Speaker 1: depending on where you're coming from. But but the idea
Speaker 1: is that the message is received, there's a there's something
Speaker 1: worth talking about with all of the pieces we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss today. So one of these gold standard UH
Speaker 1: performance artists is Maria Abramovich and she has been doing
Speaker 1: performance up for forties something years. Um. One of her
Speaker 1: most provocative pieces that was called rhythm Oh and UH,
Speaker 1: I just want to mention too. She's a New York
Speaker 1: based Serbian performance artists and she had a very interesting
Speaker 1: upbringing to and believe her parents were in the army,
Speaker 1: both of them very rigid. Um. There's a documentary out
Speaker 1: about her. Yeah, it's gotten a lot of media attention
Speaker 1: playing on HBO. I believe yes it is, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a moment too. Um. That is
Speaker 1: called the Artist is Present. But Rhythmo was performed in
Speaker 1: nineteen four in studio Amora and Naples and Maria Ramovich
Speaker 1: adopted a really passive role with audience as an active
Speaker 1: taking on an active role, and she put seventy two
Speaker 1: objects around her on a table, anywhere from flowers and
Speaker 1: perfume to nails, a knife, a hammer, and a loaded gun,
Speaker 1: and she just she just laid down, was very docile.
Speaker 1: She was naked, and then the members of the audience
Speaker 1: were allowed to use any of those objects on her
Speaker 1: in any way that they wished. And what she saw
Speaker 1: over this six hour period is that people at first
Speaker 1: were pretty modest um, you know, they might pick up
Speaker 1: some perfume and put her on it. By the end
Speaker 1: they were actually attacking her with some of these objects
Speaker 1: like that didn't like one individual point of the guy
Speaker 1: that her head, yes, and another individual took it away.
Speaker 1: So what you're seeing here is the the audience became
Speaker 1: the show essentially, and she, like the artist, as the
Speaker 1: piece becomes this, this mirror in which we perceive ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said, what I learned was that if you leave
Speaker 1: it up to the audience, they can kill you. I
Speaker 1: felt really violated. They cut up my clothes, stuck Rose
Speaker 1: Thorne's in my stomach. One person aimed the gun at
Speaker 1: my head, as you say, and another it took it away.
Speaker 1: It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly six hours, as planned,
Speaker 1: I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone
Speaker 1: ran away to escape an actual confrontation. So it was
Speaker 1: interesting because she had said, here are the rules. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sit here. But after six hours I get up. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that people ran away, uh, sort of
Speaker 1: knowing that whatever this, this false contract was now broken.
Speaker 1: And it made me think about objectification, which is something
Speaker 1: we do on a daily basis, whether or not we
Speaker 1: know it all the time, right for for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, into a variety of things and people. And
Speaker 1: this is from the Atlantic that there's a study that
Speaker 1: came out said study proof that we sexually objectify women,
Speaker 1: and the question of the study everything around. It's interesting
Speaker 1: and it definitely relates back to I think what Abrabam
Speaker 1: which was doing, because there's this idea that especially if
Speaker 1: the artist tells you, well, she didn't you know, explicitly
Speaker 1: tell them, hey, I'm in an object but she did
Speaker 1: set the scene for that to happen to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: to test the limits um of what human behavior was
Speaker 1: like in that instance. But anyway, there is this idea
Speaker 1: of like, straight up, um objectification, can we quantify it?
Speaker 1: And um, do we really look at women differently than
Speaker 1: we do them when it comes to this. So what
Speaker 1: they said is is they okay, They said, We're going
Speaker 1: to give everybody men and women um in our study
Speaker 1: images of average, fully clothed individuals, So no supermodels in bikinis,
Speaker 1: men or women, and these are going to quickly flash
Speaker 1: before the eyes of the participants and then they'll be
Speaker 1: shown two side by side images that zoomed in on
Speaker 1: one what they call sexual aspect. This could be like
Speaker 1: the mid drift of a man or a woman. And
Speaker 1: they asked them to identify the version that hadn't been modified,
Speaker 1: and then experience was also reversed so that participants participants
Speaker 1: first looked at a specific part and then had to
Speaker 1: identify the context of the entire body. So the test
Speaker 1: was actually designed to clue researchers in whether or not
Speaker 1: participants were using what they call global or local cognitive
Speaker 1: processing while leaking at the images, In other words, whether
Speaker 1: or not they perceived individuals as a whole or in parts,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating to me. So the results, regardless of gender,
Speaker 1: participants consistently recognized women's sexual body parts more easily when
Speaker 1: presented in isolation, and men's sexual body parts, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, were more memorable is part of their entire bodies.
Speaker 1: So what they're saying is that the cognitive process behind
Speaker 1: our perception of objects is the same that we have
Speaker 1: been looking at women and both genders. Both genders here
Speaker 1: are sualty of taking in the parts instead of the whole,
Speaker 1: but when we look at men we globally process them
Speaker 1: more fully as people. This is really interesting that we're
Speaker 1: talking about this during the Olympics, because, um, the summer
Speaker 1: Olympics startup and you inevitably start seeing all these pictures
Speaker 1: from women's beach volleyball. Um, and there's there's a great
Speaker 1: little piece. I think it was a blog post that
Speaker 1: was um it was a great idea. I didn't think
Speaker 1: that the execution was was perfect, but um, it brought
Speaker 1: up the idea, what if all sports were photographed the
Speaker 1: way women's beach volleyball is photographed, Because we've all seen
Speaker 1: these like it's the only Olympic sport where it's okay
Speaker 1: for the photo spread of it to be women's hinders
Speaker 1: and uh in mid drifts, you know, without seeing their
Speaker 1: faces or or or necessarily even any sports action like
Speaker 1: you don't see you don't see people shooting Greco Roman
Speaker 1: wrestling like that or or you know, or or various
Speaker 1: Winter Olympic sports. It's uh, it's like sexual objectification theater. Well,
Speaker 1: and this has been talked about a lot um, you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, particularly in terms of um and if
Speaker 1: they never even go swimminghy are they wearing swimsuits? Right?
Speaker 1: I know, I know particularly in gender theory though, because
Speaker 1: that that's what they call the male gaze, right, Like
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, these body parts are being isolated. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about it in terms of like, well,
Speaker 1: this type, these different medias in which women have been
Speaker 1: represented have been in existence for thousands of years, right,
Speaker 1: but more recently in the ways that we know them,
Speaker 1: um through television or through our computer screens. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: if if we know, if we have evidence that a
Speaker 1: search engine like Google can change the way in which
Speaker 1: our memory works, then is it possible that the way
Speaker 1: that women are portrayed in these different types of media
Speaker 1: could change the way that we think about men and
Speaker 1: women um as they say, like the cognitive processing of
Speaker 1: what a woman is or what a man this. And
Speaker 1: so that's why I think it's interesting when you look
Speaker 1: at Maria Abramovich's work that that she is considering, or
Speaker 1: it seems to me and some of the work that
Speaker 1: she's doing, she's considering this idea of objectifying herself or
Speaker 1: being objectified UM. And I think that in her her
Speaker 1: most recent work, which is a retrospective of all of
Speaker 1: her work called The Artist Is Present, she really kind
Speaker 1: of comes full circle with this idea of well, let's
Speaker 1: let's do let's focus more on um acceptance rather than
Speaker 1: in this this holistic putting together of the human form
Speaker 1: as opposed to the objectification. And if you look at
Speaker 1: this documentary called The Artist is Present, you'll see that
Speaker 1: she takes this retrospect of her work, which is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Forty years worth. People go through the exhibit and I
Speaker 1: believe this was at moment right um, And this was
Speaker 1: earlier in this year between March. It for for three
Speaker 1: months with retrospective rand. So you go through this when
Speaker 1: you were in Yeah it was unfortunately, uh, but you
Speaker 1: go through and at the very end, the artist herself,
Speaker 1: as she says, is present. She is sitting at first
Speaker 1: at a table for a couple of months, and you,
Speaker 1: as a participant, are allowed to come and sit across
Speaker 1: from her. And I don't know for how long, um
Speaker 1: you can, but that's really a very simple idea, right
Speaker 1: for the Artist is Present, I'm gonna go and sit
Speaker 1: in front of her. But what we're talking about here
Speaker 1: and this is that when we say people are dedicated
Speaker 1: to their arts, um or to performance art and to
Speaker 1: really seeing this through this concept, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: three month period in which every single day she sat
Speaker 1: at that table and did not get up, and did
Speaker 1: not eat and was absolutely silent. All told, seven hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty six hour and thirty minutes static silent piece
Speaker 1: that is part of her performance. Art is just sitting
Speaker 1: there in and of itself, like the the endurance involved there,
Speaker 1: Like it's not just somebody getting up and on a
Speaker 1: on a stage and being like, oh oh I'm naked.
Speaker 1: It's art now. This is somebody that's sitting there at
Speaker 1: a table for a grueling amount of time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't say it's still for fifteen minutes at a stretch.
Speaker 1: Most days, I can't can't even imagine that seven hours,
Speaker 1: seven hours and individuals coming and sitting in front of you. Um.
Speaker 1: People were waiting for hours every day, by the way,
Speaker 1: just to do this. The reason is is because she
Speaker 1: would For every single person, she would um but like
Speaker 1: before they sat down, she would look at her lap
Speaker 1: and then look up at them, and she said she
Speaker 1: wanted to give them the recognition they deserved as humans,
Speaker 1: as a whole human sitting in front of her, and
Speaker 1: she would say nothing and just stare in her eyes. Okay,
Speaker 1: have you ever stared into someone's eyes for for fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes straight before? UM, Well, my wife, I guess, I
Speaker 1: mean not saying anything, not saying anything, mm hmm. Fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: no no break in eye contact, no breaking eye contact.
Speaker 1: And it's also a stranger, right, mm hmm, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's I may not have, you know, because
Speaker 1: I mean generally, if if it's somebody I really know,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some discussion. And uh, I generally can't.
Speaker 1: I have trouble maintaining eye contact with most people who
Speaker 1: are not my wife. So well, it's such a simple idea,
Speaker 1: but when she did this in front of people, everybody,
Speaker 1: and now I have to look away from your eyes
Speaker 1: just because it's just the way like mine, because they're
Speaker 1: piercing ye with their grace. Still, I started, like, I
Speaker 1: look into someone's eyes and it's like and then I
Speaker 1: start uncomfortuences to look around. But yeah, I mean, so
Speaker 1: we're not really used to doing that, right, We use
Speaker 1: our eyes to connect with other people, but certainly not
Speaker 1: for fifteen minutes with a stranger. The that the sort
Speaker 1: of reactions were so incredible and powerful. People started crying.
Speaker 1: And the reason is because they're projecting all of their
Speaker 1: feelings onto her. She allowed herself to be a blink
Speaker 1: slate and so a lot of people felt absolutely like
Speaker 1: that they fell in love with her some people were
Speaker 1: angry with her or like they just they're there, they're
Speaker 1: imagining the way that Yeah and um, and then this
Speaker 1: documentary is fascinating to watch this happen. And people were
Speaker 1: they just went nuts. And that's why she had people
Speaker 1: waiting for hours. Sometimes they would get there in the
Speaker 1: wee hours of the morning before the museum opened to
Speaker 1: stand in line to do this. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: website called Maria Abravich made me cry. Uh that popped up.
Speaker 1: There are people who just started doing really disruptive things
Speaker 1: in the museum to get her attention. There were there
Speaker 1: was one woman who sent in front of her and
Speaker 1: took her top off because she wanted to try to
Speaker 1: be as raw and as vulnerable as Maria was. So again,
Speaker 1: it's such a simple concept, but here's this woman who
Speaker 1: was really forty years done these incredible things, not with
Speaker 1: her own not just with her body, but really with
Speaker 1: interacting with people. And to me, this really was a
Speaker 1: culmination of ultimate connection with someone I want to like.
Speaker 1: The people who did disruptive things, I mean, I wonder
Speaker 1: if they, I mean, were they familiar with their work
Speaker 1: enough to to realize this is a lady who once uh,
Speaker 1: you know, set there and had a loaded gun next
Speaker 1: to her and allowed members of the audience to to
Speaker 1: point it at her. I'm not going to really disrupt
Speaker 1: her by taking my top off. I think it was
Speaker 1: the way allowed noise is probably not going to cut it.
Speaker 1: I think someone had I can't remember what they wrote
Speaker 1: on the papers, but they took a stack of like
Speaker 1: five papers and threw them from the top of the
Speaker 1: of moment. Do you know, they have an open atrium,
Speaker 1: so all these um papers flee down and there was
Speaker 1: sort of a negative sentiment on that. I can't remember
Speaker 1: off the top of my head what it was, but
Speaker 1: to me, it was someone trying to take a bit
Speaker 1: of that power that she had. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: when when I mean, just like when somebody messes with
Speaker 1: with like someone who's on guard duty or something, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're just trying to I mean, it comes
Speaker 1: down to the whole whole. Like even things like graffiti,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean street art, but just straight up
Speaker 1: like tagging something. I mean, it's about proving that you
Speaker 1: have control over something else and it's petty. Well and
Speaker 1: at this point too in the exhibit, there was like
Speaker 1: this mania epting over her. So it was just it
Speaker 1: was Christian doing. Yeah, but the nunetiness. But again, here's
Speaker 1: that's a powerful work, right, that is eliciting these feelings
Speaker 1: and people and connecting with them on on such an
Speaker 1: incredible level. Um, you probably take a break and then
Speaker 1: we get back. We're going to talk about the crazy dude. Well, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk a little bit brilliant about the crazy
Speaker 1: and the brilliant steel Ar. Yes, the man with the
Speaker 1: ear on his arm. Alright, we're back. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Steeler. This guy is this
Speaker 1: guy is pretty incredible. Um. He's probably most well known
Speaker 1: for the ear on the arm deal, which, um, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you actually this is one of those things that,
Speaker 1: like a lot of things, that gets picked up in
Speaker 1: the media and and gets carried out. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people just have surface level information about it,
Speaker 1: Like their basic level of the story is, oh, there's
Speaker 1: some crazy artist dude and he had an ear so
Speaker 1: zoning on to his arm, which isn't really the case
Speaker 1: at all, um, But but what he did is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And then it, uh, it ties in with with some
Speaker 1: of the things we've discussed in the past about about
Speaker 1: growing organs and UH and you know where we're going
Speaker 1: as far as body modification, cybernetic enhancement, UM, growing human tissue,
Speaker 1: over scaffolding. I mean, all of these things are involved,
Speaker 1: particularly in this piece, but but also in a lot
Speaker 1: of his work, and we've talked about it more in
Speaker 1: the context of survival, either in space or just in
Speaker 1: trying to UM to help with disease or you know,
Speaker 1: even like organ replacement. Yeah. So yeah, along comes this
Speaker 1: guy and he starts to get his thinking even more
Speaker 1: about this topic. Yeah. Now, but before we got to
Speaker 1: this is two thousand six, when he had the year done.
Speaker 1: Before that, he did a lot, like a lot of
Speaker 1: what he was doing was like he would do with
Speaker 1: body suspensions, where he has UH hooks and his skin
Speaker 1: and he's hanging um everyone a little like Jim rose Fercus. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's and a lot of what he does UM. I
Speaker 1: think I read a piece that William Gibson UH wrote.
Speaker 1: It was actually the introduction to UH Steel Arc the monograph,
Speaker 1: which is a collection of his of his work UM
Speaker 1: where he talked about it invoked his work is invoking
Speaker 1: like the side show geek um, you know road show
Speaker 1: kind of vibe and also but but also all these
Speaker 1: other disciplines to make some commentary about you know, where
Speaker 1: we are the people and how we interact with with
Speaker 1: technology and uh and ultimately where we're going. Um. But
Speaker 1: so yeah, he did a lot of that. He did.
Speaker 1: He did a piece where he um swallowed a sculpture,
Speaker 1: a sculpture that kind of opens up in his stomach
Speaker 1: and there was apparently a tricky moment where he wasn't
Speaker 1: sure he's gonna be able to remove it without surgery
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah. Um. He did a piece called Ping Body,
Speaker 1: in which he wired himself to the Internet, um by
Speaker 1: attaching electrodes to various muscles which could then be activated
Speaker 1: by remote users. And uh, I mean and this was
Speaker 1: all about uh, sensory experience and the idea that increasingly
Speaker 1: today and certainly in the future, but our sensory experience
Speaker 1: isn't bound to a particular location or bound by the
Speaker 1: body itself. You know. He's forcing you to to think
Speaker 1: about our modern sense experience as being this uh, this
Speaker 1: international thing you know. I mean it comes back to
Speaker 1: like doing Google image searches of things, and how does
Speaker 1: that change our perception of the world. Um. But then
Speaker 1: the the ear idea came to him, and the ear
Speaker 1: of the idea apparently he had it, you know, back
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties and spent ten years tracking down
Speaker 1: people who had actually performed surgery. I read somewhere he said,
Speaker 1: if the technology would have been present, then I would
Speaker 1: have gone ahead and pursued it, but I had to
Speaker 1: wait until we could actually do this. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean that's something to to say. Surgical technology hasn't really
Speaker 1: caught up with my art yet, you know that is
Speaker 1: that's generally considered the statement of of someone who is
Speaker 1: deeply disturbed, of someone who's is uh, deeply creative and
Speaker 1: uh and yeah. So two thousand six, the day finally arrives. Um,
Speaker 1: a biocombatible scaffold is surgically inserted into his left forearm,
Speaker 1: and it creates the shape of an ear. So it's
Speaker 1: not yet, it's not an ear per se, right, it's
Speaker 1: you know, we mentioned scaffoldings. We can grow tissue, we
Speaker 1: can use stem selves to grow tissues. We can grow
Speaker 1: heart tissue, but we need the shape of a heart
Speaker 1: around which to grow it. Um, And this is a
Speaker 1: scaffolding of an ear. It was just surgically implant under
Speaker 1: the skin. And uh, and it's actually took successive surgeries
Speaker 1: in a in a six about with with with infection.
Speaker 1: He had to take all these antibiotics, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: just a simple procedure of flying it in Like this
Speaker 1: dude suffered for his art um and now has an
Speaker 1: ear shape in his arm and that that that's just
Speaker 1: sort of stage one, right, six years later, he's still
Speaker 1: adding to it, right, like with his own adults, some cells,
Speaker 1: because he wants to give it a lobe. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a proper lobe because that's not really part
Speaker 1: of the scaffolding. Uh, the fleshy lobe is fleshy, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: and so and and he's got an idea about that too,
Speaker 1: because eventually he wants to insert a small microphone that
Speaker 1: connects to a wireless transmitter. And he says that in
Speaker 1: any WiFi spot in the world, he'd be able to
Speaker 1: have that ear become Internet enabled. So he says, if
Speaker 1: you're in San Francisco and I'm in London, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to listen in to what my ear is hearing
Speaker 1: wherever you are and wherever I am. And again, here's
Speaker 1: this idea of it's not just this person doing this
Speaker 1: solo act, and he's really trying to connect with humanity
Speaker 1: in this other way. Yeah, so we can reach a
Speaker 1: point where you can go to a website and you
Speaker 1: can listen through Steve Lark's arm ear, and uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. Um. He apparently gets kind of touchy
Speaker 1: about how it's described as was. There's a Wired magazine
Speaker 1: interview with him in two thousand twelve, and this is
Speaker 1: how he describes the ear. He says, uh quote partially
Speaker 1: surgically constructed, partially cell grown, and this year it's been
Speaker 1: confirmed now we'll be doing the augmentation of the helical
Speaker 1: part of the ear to make it more prominent and
Speaker 1: will also grow a softier load of using my extracted
Speaker 1: adult stem cells. So um, it's uh yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty mind boggling. And that and this is not
Speaker 1: the end. This is not his final piece by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. He has other plans for the future. So,
Speaker 1: and I know it sounds ridiculous, probably tell the listeners like, ah,
Speaker 1: this guy, you know, sculpting and ear so that it
Speaker 1: can then be why but you know, we talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, in a contact lenses of the gods. We
Speaker 1: talked about augmenting our own reality and teasing contact lenses
Speaker 1: that essentially hooked up to the Internet, UM that can
Speaker 1: project to certain images. So when you start to look
Speaker 1: at it in that way, it's not too far along.
Speaker 1: Of course, not all of us are going to graft
Speaker 1: tissue onto ourselves and why are it um? But he
Speaker 1: is exploring this idea of different ways of communicating and
Speaker 1: perceiving the world. Yeah. And and once you get like
Speaker 1: if you it's performance artists to a certain extent, like
Speaker 1: a like all artists kind of like a door to
Speaker 1: a room. Uh. And if you if you just look
Speaker 1: at the door, you don't walk through that door. If
Speaker 1: you just if you just judge it at the face
Speaker 1: dog and be like, oh, I'm crazy to do do you
Speaker 1: put an ear on his arm or somebody painted a
Speaker 1: bunch of colors on a canvas, You're not gonna get anywhere.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna engage with the piece. But once you
Speaker 1: get past that that level, you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: shock level, you think about what you're perceiving and what
Speaker 1: this guy is doing and why he's doing it, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean that's where the performance are really forces you
Speaker 1: to think about the be at times part or or
Speaker 1: fascinating truth regarding human nature or technology in this case. Um.
Speaker 1: He actually said, I really like this quote. He said,
Speaker 1: artists can be early award warning systems, generators of contestable futures,
Speaker 1: possibilities that can be examined, evaluated, perhaps appropriated, often discarded
Speaker 1: without That's a good way to look at it. Because
Speaker 1: we have all these technologies coming online, and we often
Speaker 1: talk about that, how does it How is that going
Speaker 1: to affect us fifty years out? So I want to
Speaker 1: set forth and here's this person who's extrapolated a lot
Speaker 1: of these ideas onto his own being, William Gibson. In
Speaker 1: his forward to h the Steve like the monograph, he
Speaker 1: talked about meeting him for the first time, and this
Speaker 1: is this great little bit I wanted to read from
Speaker 1: that Gibson. Gibson, of course, is the author of Neuromancer
Speaker 1: and UH more recently books such as A Pattern Recognition,
Speaker 1: which you know, all of these books deal with technology
Speaker 1: and and how humans are changed, how we interfere involved
Speaker 1: ourselves with technology. Gibson says, I imagine now that I
Speaker 1: was watching Steve Lark in performance with his robotic third arm,
Speaker 1: But what I recall experiencing was a vision of some
Speaker 1: absolute chimera at the heart of a labyrinth of breathtaking complexity.
Speaker 1: I sense that the important thing wasn't the entities stee
Speaker 1: Lark evoked, but the labyrinth that the creatures manifestation suggested,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a nice way of summing it up.
Speaker 1: It's not so much look at this freak with a
Speaker 1: third arm, or look at this frequent an ear on
Speaker 1: his on his arm. Now this is like to think
Speaker 1: of the world that sort of flows out from this
Speaker 1: piece in the same way that um uh, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the performance artists about forcing the viewer
Speaker 1: to think about themselves. He forces the viewer to think
Speaker 1: about the world that we've created for ourselves. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it appears that he doesn't have an opinion one way
Speaker 1: or the other in terms of this sort of technological
Speaker 1: augmenting of his body, and you know, making a statement
Speaker 1: about dystopian future versus utopian future, right, um and he
Speaker 1: doesn't think of himself in and and Gibson was rather
Speaker 1: dismissive of the He's like, I don't think he's talking
Speaker 1: about the future at all. No, No, he says, and
Speaker 1: in fact, and he says on the point, Um, he says,
Speaker 1: I don't think that machines will take over at some
Speaker 1: imagine point in time a singularity. I think it will
Speaker 1: be much more complex. There will be multiple and alternate
Speaker 1: possibilities that will be constantly generated. It's another perspective on that.
Speaker 1: As for the future, Steel has a couple of products planned.
Speaker 1: Just going to mention him quick here. Um. First, he
Speaker 1: wants to engineer a quote insect like microbot that will
Speaker 1: climb into his mouth unquote. Uh. And it's a in
Speaker 1: this level webcam and led light. It reminds one of
Speaker 1: the like The Mermaid, the endoscopic cameras that we've talked
Speaker 1: about in previous episodes. Well, he wants to he's taking
Speaker 1: the artistic approach with this technology, which is fascinating. And
Speaker 1: then he also wants to grow a microbial second skin.
Speaker 1: And this would involve covering his body with a layer
Speaker 1: of agar, which is that that clear stuff you see
Speaker 1: in peachfea dishes. It's the medium that helps grow the culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had some of this when we did the video
Speaker 1: series we did. Yeah, if I known, we should have
Speaker 1: ordered more of it, and I could have slathered myself
Speaker 1: with it and grown more skin. But now he would
Speaker 1: be growing a skin of microbes. And uh, then he
Speaker 1: has he has some fantastic ideas about what that would
Speaker 1: mean and all. And so we'll just see how that
Speaker 1: Isn't he going to encase himself for like three days
Speaker 1: in it or something, and then he's going to discard
Speaker 1: it but allow it to continue to grow grow matter
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, microbial matter. Um, I want one of those,
Speaker 1: although I think that if I didn't, if I wore
Speaker 1: microbial second skin all the time, I wouldn't get the benefit,
Speaker 1: of course, of my own uh good microbes hanging out. Well,
Speaker 1: it comes back to Marta. I feel like I have
Speaker 1: encountered individuals on the train who have grown a microbial
Speaker 1: second skin, but they were not performance artists. Alright, let's
Speaker 1: shift over. Now that we have this kind of foundation
Speaker 1: with a couple of artists who have I really think
Speaker 1: set the bar here in terms of dedication and big themes,
Speaker 1: let's take off a couple of others. There's Guillamo Guillenomo Vargas, yes,
Speaker 1: Costa Rican and this guy is rather controversial and this
Speaker 1: is the guy was definitely thinking of when we were
Speaker 1: talking about the highs, but also poticially the loads of performance.
Speaker 1: Art Um tell us about his piece with the Dog. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was in Nicaragua and two thousand and seven at
Speaker 1: a gall which neighbors UM and Uh. It was at
Speaker 1: a gallery there, and it featured UM a dog tied
Speaker 1: to a wall with a short length of rope and
Speaker 1: the words eros look Lise, you are what you read
Speaker 1: were written on the wall with dog food. Um. So okay,
Speaker 1: set dog that is not being fed and yet there's
Speaker 1: dog food around it. So it caused a ton of
Speaker 1: controversy um and especially when it was reported that the
Speaker 1: dog actually died of starvation. Yeah. So let's like I
Speaker 1: said earlier, art as is this doorway into this room
Speaker 1: of truth and thought and in contemplation and confrontation at
Speaker 1: the door level to this piece. It's it's pretty horrendous, right,
Speaker 1: Like this dude brought in a dog, tied it up, intentionally,
Speaker 1: didn't feed it, and it died. But the audience is
Speaker 1: also part of this. Yeah, the audience is present the
Speaker 1: and did the audience feed the dog? No? According to
Speaker 1: the gallery director, he said that during the exhibition. Uh,
Speaker 1: that he didn't have any visitor that tried to free
Speaker 1: the dog, feed it or call the police. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and the other part of the statement here too is
Speaker 1: everyone gets super up in arms. Oh my god, a
Speaker 1: dog starved to death and this guy just let it happen.
Speaker 1: But as a dog, he got off the street where
Speaker 1: they are all these other dogs starving on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: where there humans starving. And uh, and that is not
Speaker 1: the point of outrage. The outrage is that it took
Speaker 1: place there as performance art, right, right. But I mean
Speaker 1: you could take his stance and say that what what
Speaker 1: the art piece was really about was a diffusion of responsibility.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this in the bystander effect before, and
Speaker 1: there have been a ton of studies carried out to
Speaker 1: say that when people get together and they see, you know, atrocities,
Speaker 1: or they see something that seems wrong headed, we don't
Speaker 1: always fly to the best natures of our beings, right, Um,
Speaker 1: that we sometimes shirk responsibility and social psychologist John Darley
Speaker 1: Ambibilitane concluded that the larger number of people who witness
Speaker 1: something that's seen an emergency or crime, for instance, the
Speaker 1: lower probability than an individual will act. So we've seen
Speaker 1: this in a couple of different ways, or something called
Speaker 1: pluralistic ignorance. And this is a collective in action by
Speaker 1: a group because you kind of look to the other
Speaker 1: person for a queue and if the other person seems like, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not that serious, then nobody else thinks it's that serious.
Speaker 1: Comedian Louis c k has some great bits about this,
Speaker 1: uh in a stand up but also on the show
Speaker 1: Louis that involved like walking past people on the streets
Speaker 1: of New York who are in really bad shape and
Speaker 1: having to and then being there with somebody who's either
Speaker 1: an outsider uh that's visiting New York or somebody who's
Speaker 1: just in a maybe he has a different state of mind.
Speaker 1: This says, does he you know, let's help this guy?
Speaker 1: Does he need help? And Louis like, yeah, he needs
Speaker 1: your help more than anything, but we just don't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was an example was like a I
Speaker 1: want to say, like a teenager or something. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: had never been to the city before and was trying
Speaker 1: to help a homeless person. He was like, oh, honey,
Speaker 1: we don't do that. Yeah, And to your point, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that person does need all the help in the world,
Speaker 1: but we just don't do that. Um. And that's this
Speaker 1: idea to the diffusion of responsibility. Somebody else is in
Speaker 1: charge or somebody else, um may be better a deal
Speaker 1: able to better deal with us than you are I.
Speaker 1: So that is why that peace is interesting. It's it's awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we are not forgiving that. You know. It was
Speaker 1: hard for me to research it, to be quite honest,
Speaker 1: called exposition number one in case anybody wants to look
Speaker 1: into it further. But um, it's definitely a commentary on society. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, like when when I was in Coasta, Rica,
Speaker 1: I visited the art museum um there and there was
Speaker 1: there were I don't I do not remember there being
Speaker 1: a dog tied up, so but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of fine modern art there. So because it bit it
Speaker 1: by that time, yeah yeah, yeah, but let it let
Speaker 1: it be known that Coast Costa Ricue has a lot
Speaker 1: of very talented artists who don't have don't harm dogs.
Speaker 1: And this was in Nicaragua anyway, so yeah, where it's
Speaker 1: also pointed out that there were no laws in Nicaragua
Speaker 1: against what he did, so he wasn't actually breaking the law, right, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that something you could do in the
Speaker 1: United States, right, Yeah, definitely not all right. So Damien
Speaker 1: Hurst is another person we'd like to talk about. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are familiar with him, um, particularly with
Speaker 1: some of the formalde hyde preserved carcasses or animals that
Speaker 1: he's actually done in the past, like the Big Shark,
Speaker 1: thee the physical impossibility of death in the mind of
Speaker 1: someone living, which is like this big formalde hyde tank
Speaker 1: sort of three divisions, what's not really three divisions, but
Speaker 1: it has like they're looking at it, it it looks like
Speaker 1: there are three sections to it, and there's sins a
Speaker 1: giant shark in there, and like it was an actual
Speaker 1: shark that he commissioned somebody to catch. That was his
Speaker 1: his only um mandate on it was it needs to
Speaker 1: be big enough to eat somebody, because that's sort of
Speaker 1: the that's the idea of the shark is a manifestation
Speaker 1: of human mortality. Here is something in the food chain,
Speaker 1: something out there in the world, big enough to eat
Speaker 1: and perfectly capable of carrying it out. And here it
Speaker 1: is a completely vulnerable rendered in front of you. Right,
Speaker 1: He's it's sort of obsessed with death. And uh and uh,
Speaker 1: I guess you know, putrification preservation. Um. What I've seen
Speaker 1: before is mother and child divided. I saw the Tate Gallery,
Speaker 1: and that is a calf and it's mother that are bisected,
Speaker 1: and so they're in four different formaldehyde cubes and you
Speaker 1: can walk through them and you can actually see the
Speaker 1: bisection inside of of their guts and so on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sort of that's kind of a play to mother
Speaker 1: and calf divided. Of course, not everything he does involves
Speaker 1: dead animals. Um. There he has some wonderful sculpture. There's,
Speaker 1: in fact, one of my favorite sculpture pieces, which I've
Speaker 1: never actually seen in person, but I've seen pretty great
Speaker 1: photographs of it, his two thousand and five piece Virgin Mother. UM.
Speaker 1: If I can find I'll either include a link or
Speaker 1: embedded picture of this. Let me do the blog post
Speaker 1: that goes with this episode, because it's just beautiful. It's
Speaker 1: painted bronze, and it's a it's uh, it's like it's
Speaker 1: there's kind of like a half half of it is
Speaker 1: like an anatomical dissection of of of a pregnant woman,
Speaker 1: and in the other half, um, it's fleshed and it's
Speaker 1: it's just just a beautiful piece of art. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he's got his rendering is no doubt there. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to celebrate in terms of that sculpture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he has the skill. It's not like he's one
Speaker 1: of these guys that's just like here's a Dutch shark
Speaker 1: and his art look at it, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot more going on here. But
Speaker 1: I do want to point out that he submitted plans
Speaker 1: for his ninety seven thousand foot When he calls art plant, okay,
Speaker 1: it's square foot, Okay, it's nine seven thousand square feet
Speaker 1: of plant. In rendering these animals, he actually has a
Speaker 1: formaldehyde studio built into this plant and like hooks where
Speaker 1: all the carcasses hang. So, I mean he's still obviously
Speaker 1: interested in this um, but this is actually animal carcasses
Speaker 1: sixty seven foot sculptures. There's another one called the Angel
Speaker 1: of the West that he's trying to get done. Right now, Um,
Speaker 1: this is actually not what we're talking about. We want
Speaker 1: to talk about this skull that is bedazzled beyond bedazzlement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in diamonds, yes, and it's a plastum cast of
Speaker 1: a real human skull with real teeth encrusted with eight thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and one diamonds, and that totals something like
Speaker 1: at the time fourteen million pounds, right, And uh, it
Speaker 1: is rumored that he sold the piece to conglomerate Um
Speaker 1: and that it's I think he's still look for like
Speaker 1: fifty million pounds, but I mean it's we don't even
Speaker 1: know if it will be exhibited again. This is such
Speaker 1: an incredible piece and and so very expensive. If you
Speaker 1: look at it, Uh you, I mean you will be
Speaker 1: dazzled by You can't not be dazzled by it. And
Speaker 1: Hurst himself that he was really surprised by how it
Speaker 1: came out because he really wanted to interrogate death and
Speaker 1: look at it um in a different light, and he
Speaker 1: said that he thinks that there's more of a positive
Speaker 1: spin to the school, that there's it's like the glory
Speaker 1: of death as opposed to like death as we always
Speaker 1: think of as the grim reaper. Yeah, like a fabulous death. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a fabulous It looks as though it's awesome
Speaker 1: when you look at that. Oh death, that's great. Get bedazzled.
Speaker 1: And he's certainly more of a multimedia artist like there's
Speaker 1: performance aspects to his work, but then against some of
Speaker 1: it is more traditional sculpture UM as well. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there were people who said, like, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: comment on this too because of blood diamonds um in
Speaker 1: the mining practices. Um. There's another aspect that you can
Speaker 1: take away from it. To me, I think, is this
Speaker 1: like the ultimate totem of denial of like our our
Speaker 1: own mortality that you dress up death. But in any case,
Speaker 1: you guys should definitely go and google it. It's worth
Speaker 1: a look. Yeah, and again I'll try and include an
Speaker 1: embedded image or at least a link to it. So,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the pieces we're discussing here, so
Speaker 1: you can be able to handle, uh seek them out
Speaker 1: when you listen to this podcast. Okay, we have one
Speaker 1: more artists that we want to discuss here, and that
Speaker 1: is Michael Landy. Yes not Michael Landon performances were they were.
Speaker 1: I will never forget paw Um Alright, So in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, this installation artists spent two weeks destroying
Speaker 1: all of his worldly possessions. We're talking about seven thousand
Speaker 1: or more can with some thousand and change objects including
Speaker 1: like cooking utensils, but also original works by Damien Hurst,
Speaker 1: like things that beyond just nearly stuff, but like things
Speaker 1: that this is the only one that exists. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like oh that's twenty dollars, I'll burn it. Um and
Speaker 1: uh what else? Family photos, his sob, his car and
Speaker 1: this I think from what if I've read this right
Speaker 1: from an article was an idea he had after one
Speaker 1: of his art installations in was thrown away. Do you
Speaker 1: know if us Oh this is the one yes, where
Speaker 1: the art installation itself resembled garbage. Yes, And I've not enough.
Speaker 1: Like I told you about when I went to London
Speaker 1: and I was on the ferry and we the ferry
Speaker 1: tour guide was this cottony gentleman. He was talking about
Speaker 1: the Museum of Modern Art there in London. He was
Speaker 1: like pointed, it's like it's like, oh, you can go
Speaker 1: over there, but they it's just a bunch of roby
Speaker 1: shell went in there and I saw a piece and
Speaker 1: I was, I can throw a pizza cotton in the garbage.
Speaker 1: I'll just make some mot you know. And he's like
Speaker 1: just really ragging on it. But that's exactly exactly exh
Speaker 1: was garbage as art, but then was interpreted by a
Speaker 1: janitor as garbage and thrown right, And so I think
Speaker 1: that this is what spurred him on to say, Huh,
Speaker 1: what if you know, I just lost this installation of garbage?
Speaker 1: What what if I turned this to my own life?
Speaker 1: What would happen to me? Um? If all my worldly
Speaker 1: possessions were just smashed to smithereens? It's like it reminds
Speaker 1: one of the sort of Vincent van Gogh having to
Speaker 1: burn his paintings for warmth on the balcony. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just something I mean, and it also brings to
Speaker 1: mind I think like Tibetan monks creating these mendala's out
Speaker 1: of sand and then and then destroying them. There's there's
Speaker 1: something about I mean, it's creation and destruction that the
Speaker 1: two primal forces in life, uh displayed there. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's that's the core of of art right there, right
Speaker 1: within every man sleeps the great destroyer, right and he
Speaker 1: he took that, I mean and literally destroyed everything, and
Speaker 1: not everybody could say they could do that, right Um.
Speaker 1: And then this idea of of personhood that we talked about,
Speaker 1: like your identity being bound up with things and the
Speaker 1: sort of liberation from that from stuff from stuff man.
Speaker 1: So all right, that's a that's a little uh poopoo
Speaker 1: platter of artists in this field. Cool well, speaking of
Speaker 1: two quick notes, um, speaking of Tookick Ladder, I just
Speaker 1: want to mention real quick, if you downloaded an early
Speaker 1: version of our Fecal Fossil episode, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: where I was talking about owl pellets and uh, I
Speaker 1: got caught up in the moment and talked about them
Speaker 1: coming out of an owl's rear instead of an owl's face.
Speaker 1: Pellets are, of course, vomit. We subsequently edited that part
Speaker 1: out because it's just like a quick um, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes deal where I started rambling about
Speaker 1: it unplanned and uh, obviously pellets come out of an
Speaker 1: house mouth is vomit. But I don't think you know
Speaker 1: very well since you have pets more and I did
Speaker 1: a blog post on so I don't know why I
Speaker 1: got a wires cross in my head or something on
Speaker 1: that one. But if you download the current version of it,
Speaker 1: that air is absent um. And let's see if we
Speaker 1: have a quick listener mail call over the robot real quick,
Speaker 1: al right, our listener Murphy from Hawaii right soon, and says, hey,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie, just listen to your podcast. I'm screaming.
Speaker 1: I recently graduated from high school, and um, I gotta
Speaker 1: love it being out. I mean, the last few years
Speaker 1: of my high school caused me to become very stressed,
Speaker 1: and I would occasionally have screaming fits. I would get
Speaker 1: all wound up over a day or so, start babbling,
Speaker 1: and then it would finally scream. I belt out around
Speaker 1: four seven good screens, rest, and I would feel better afterwards.
Speaker 1: While screaming could be a good release every once in
Speaker 1: a while, I've learned to avoid such traumatic incidences by
Speaker 1: reacting to things that bothered me when they bothered me.
Speaker 1: This is becoming ramble asque. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye aloha Murphy
Speaker 1: of a way, so all right, yeah, well you know
Speaker 1: that was we were hearing from the heart there on Murphy. Um.
Speaker 1: I found it interesting to use the goodbyes, but then
Speaker 1: the aloha, which means goodbye antelope, right, I know. And
Speaker 1: I was just trying to make a joke like about
Speaker 1: Mahi mahi in my head but didn't quite come together. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there you got someone who's using really some scream therapy
Speaker 1: of their own to deal with their issues, well, especially
Speaker 1: in high school, right that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, who of us?
Speaker 1: If you're not screaming in high schools, then you're probably
Speaker 1: a jerk. I don't know. I mean it's like if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not suffering, you're probably causing on the
Speaker 1: people to Suffer's kind of my take. Unless you go
Speaker 1: to a grade high school anyway, Uh, do you go
Speaker 1: to a great high school? Do you have thoughts on screaming?
Speaker 1: But more to the point, you have some thoughts on
Speaker 1: performance are if you've ever if you've seen some great
Speaker 1: performance art out there in person? Um, if you're familiar
Speaker 1: a big fan of a performance artist that we didn't
Speaker 1: mention on the podcast, but you're thinking, you know, you'd
Speaker 1: really like to get their story out on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Let us know. Are you a performance artist that would
Speaker 1: be great as well. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: If you can find us on Facebook where we are
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your Mind, and on Twitter you'll find
Speaker 1: us under the handle blow the Mind and you can
Speaker 1: also drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is It how stuff works dot com,