Turning art on its head.
ArtHere’s an awesome street performance video that I’m recycling from a February 3 post on Deborah’s blog. What happens when 207 plain-clothed living statues take the day off and head to Grand Central Station? Well, they turn art on its head and turn the audience into the act. At least, that’s how I see it. Check it out.
This reminds me of avant-garde composer John Cage’s piece titled “four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence,” a three movement composition that consists of the sounds of the environment, and utter silence from the instruments themselves. It was a wacky idea, but it worked. And it works with the performance above. Instead of actors acting, the crowd is reacting (pay attention to the suffix, -acting), and incidentally becomes the performance. I don’t mean to take credit away from the incredible job that the living statues did, but it really flip-flops the idea of performance art.
Here’s a modern rendition of John Cage’s 4′33.”
Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
That is not John Cage doing the performance. His original performance was done in 1952.