“This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her. She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted.
Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly. “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”
This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances.”
This performance showed just how easy it is to dehumanize a person who doesn’t fight back, and is particularly powerful because it defies what we think we know about ourselves. I’m certain the no one reading this believes the people around him/her capable of doing such things to another human being, but this performance proves otherwise.”
this is why performance art is important
So every single person who told me ‘ignore them they’ll go away’ and ‘you can’t let them know they bothered you’ and ‘They’ll stop if they don’t see you react’ and all that bull shit, my entire school career, I want you to look good and hard at this.
I want you to think about what you said.
What you keep saying.
What you are telling your children.
You are making them powerless.
that last comment. actually crying.
consider the bank.
You know, a few months ago this dude friend of mine showed up to hang out with me all dejected. Over a couple of drinks he explained his long face — earlier that night, he’d been walking down the street behind this really cute girl, and when she looked back at him over her shoulder, he thought it was in interest and smiled at her. Now, this guy is tall and skinny, can most commonly be found in glasses and t-shirts scrawled across with math jokes, is kind to animals, considers himself a feminist. What he doesn’t consider himself is threatening, so he was surprised, confused, and even hurt by what happened next: the girl in front of him responding to his called greeting of, “Nice skirt,” by taking off down the darkened street in a dead run.
“Yeah,” I said, “she probably thought you were going to rape her.”
“But that’s not fair,” he said. “I’m a good person; I’d never rape anyone! How could she think that? She doesn’t even know me.”
Out here in the wilds of the internet, I often find myself making arguments about shit like feminism and rape culture unilaterally. For one thing, there’s so much (like, so much) out there arguing unilaterally against this shit that I feel it’s necessary; for another thing, ‘round these parts there’s a lot of people jumping to hostility when it’s painfully clear they don’t have a handle on all the facts. But I’m more lenient with the people in my real life, especially dudes like the one mentioned above. I’m willing to extend to them a patience that I wouldn’t with strangers on the internet, because they matter to me, and it matters to me that they understand. So when my friend sat there that night, whining over his beer and responding to my attempted explanations with, “But I’d love it if a girl smiled at me on the street, or even catcalled at me! Fuck, even if a dude did it, I’d be flattered,” I decided to spend some time thinking about how to clear things up for him. It took awhile, but I finally came up with a metaphor to get the job done:
Consider the bank.
the-dangers-of-ingesting-mercury:
Interesting.
This is actually really interesting.
This is legitimately not jut about boobs,just watch it,youll learn something about modern cinema
So I was waiting at the bus stop, and along came a rough looking bogan dude and his young son. The kid sees my Iron Man shirt and pulls on my skirt to get my attention.
KID: "I love Iron Man."
ME: "Yeah, I love Iron Man too."
KID: "No, I REALLY love Iron Man."
DUDE: *rolls his eyes*
ME: "Iron Man is pretty cool, yeah."
KID: "I love his beard."
ME: "... I'm also quite fond of his beard, I must admit."
DUDE: *raises his eyebrows at me*
KID: "I want to marry Iron Man."
ME: "..."
DUDE: "..."
ME: "..."
DUDE: "You can't marry Iron Man, he's with Miss Potts, remember? Pepper?"
KID: "I don't know why. Girls are icky... no offence."
ME: "That's okay."
KID: "I think Black Widow would make a pretty bridesmaid, though."
DUDE: "Can I marry her?"
KID: "NO! She's a BLACK WIDOW Dad, she'll eat you! You can marry... Captain America, because he's nice and he's old like you."
and then the bus came and the kid fist bumped me goodbye, and then so did the kid's dad and he said thanks for not pointing out that you can't marry a fictional character.
Because apparently real life is like SportsNight: there’s a fight over the copyright of the song “Happy Birthday.” Even the NYT thinks so!
Because apparently real life is like SportsNight: there’s a fight over the copyright of the song “Happy Birthday.” Even the NYT thinks so!
