George Gessert - Artist in the Garden

Gessert is an artist-gardener who creates hybrids, selected for color, form and vigorousness in the garden.

Eduardo Kac - Green Bunny

Artist Statement:

My transgenic artwork "GFP Bunny" comprises the creation of a green fluorescent rabbit, the public dialogue generated by the project, and the social integration of the rabbit. GFP stands for green fluorescent protein. "GFP Bunny" was realized in 2000 and first presented publicly in Avignon, France. Transgenic art, I proposed elsewhere is a new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings. This must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created.

Mark Quinn -- Selfie [in blood]

 
He cast a mold of his whole head and added blood, froze it

Omas Fast - Isreali Artist Telling Strange Stories

 

Eve Sussman: Past, Present, Future

whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, 2011

89 Seconds at Alcazar

Eve Sussman is a British-born American artist working in New York. A multimedia artist, her work incorporates film, video, installation, performance, sculpture and photography. Sussman is known for translating well known masterpieces into into large scale reenactments, as she has done with her piece, 89 Seconds at Alcazar, a reenactment of Velasquez's Las Meninas (1656). Her recent piece, whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir is a video work that follows and comments on the observation and surveillance of the future. 

Margaret Salmon: I Work Alone

Margaret Salmon is an American, New York based artist. Her work comments on the 'everyday life' of the 'average Joe/Jane.' She shoots all of her videos and films without a crew or assistants, and produces her own music and sound to incorporate in her work.

Housework, 2014

Mwangi Hutter: 1 Name, 1 Culture, 1 Artist

Ingrid Mwangi was born in Nairobi, Kenya and her husband Robert Hutter was born in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany. After working together for several years and then marrying, the two artist merged their names and stories to became a single artist: Mwangi Hutter. "Working with video, photography, installation, sculpture and performance, they use themselves as the sounding board to reflect on changing societal realities, creating an aesthetics of self-knowledge and interrelationship." 

Here are links to several of their video pieces:

Color in Dark, 2015

In a Pure Land (excerpt), 2015 

Turquoise Realm (excerpt), 2014 

Janaina Tschape: Muse

Lacrimacorpus, 2004

He Drowned in Her Eyes as She Called Him to Follow (Wave), 2010

Born in Munich, Germany and raised in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Janaina Tschape is a multimedia artist working in both New York and Rio de Janeiro. Her muse is said to be the female body, and her work explores themes of the body, landscape, sex, death, and renewal. 

Alex Prager: Red-Haired Beauties in Crisis

La Petite Mort, 2012

Despair, 2010

Alex Prager is a photography and video artist based out of Los Angeles. Her work is often quite stylized in reference to both surrealism and Hollywood's melodramatic Golden Age. She exhibited in her first US solo show, Face in the Crowd (2013), at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Walid Raad - Lebanon

 

Raad works in video and photography addressing the history of his native Lebanon. He is especially concerned with the violence in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991. He has an extensive exhibition history in the Us, France and England -- He attended University of Rochester in New York and currently lives and works in New York where he teaches at Cooper Union.

Isaac Julien - British Artist Takes on Chinese Subject

 

 

Ten Thousand Waves was created over 4 years.

David Claerbout - Silver Water

   

 

 

David Claerbout  is a Belgian artist working in video and digital arts. He makes large scale video installations. The Quiet Shore was shown at the Sydney Art Fair in 2012.

Rosa Barba - Drawing or Sculpting with a Camera

Rosa Barba is interested in the Stuff" of film and the sounds of cinema.

Cyprien Gaillard - The Beauty of Failure

This three part video looks at gang violence, building demolition, and a modern urban apartment complex.

Christian Marclay -- Not Enough Time

In 2010 Marclay captured the art world with the release of The Clock...a painstaking video of every passing minute in a 24 hour period. A British artist, Marclay s clock takes scenes from movies that show a specific time on a watch or clock.  Newsweek named him one of the ten most important artists today. 

Yang Fudong - China's Most Important film/video artist

2010 work titled: FIRST SPRING« A CONTEMPORARY FILM DIRECTED BY YANG FUDONG FOR PRADA

Pierre Huyghe - Engaging the Viewer

I saw his exhibition at LACMA...it was a full sensory experience. [2014]

Yael Bartana - Isreali/Polish Video Artist

Quoted from Roberta Smith: The entire effect is exceedingly complex, with just the right mixture of staginess, uplifting music and 21st-century details to keep the artifice before us while delving into numerous issues including the failed utopia of Israel, the unresolved trauma of World War II, the danger of nationalism and, above all, the importance of diversity. With words as resonant now as ever, the young leader says, “With one religion, we cannot listen.” [ 2012]

Tacita Dean - Simply Film

Dean exhibited a work titled Film in Turbine Hall of the Tate in 2011. There was no sound...simply images. A tall thin projection, Film is edged with spoked frame---it looks like a slice of film. A British artist, Dean is mourning the death of film as a viable media. She shot Film using 35mm and then hand edited it.  Says Dean: "This beautiful medium, which we invented 125 years ago, is about to go...How long have we got? I hope we've got a year left. It's that critical."

Matthew Lancit- 16 Reasons Why I Hate Myself

Matthew Lancit is an American artist, working & living in Paris, France. This piece involves the artist listing 16 reasons why he hates himself, physical and psychological, some true and some false.

16 Reasons Why I Hate Myself

Rossina Bossio- The Holy Beauty Project, Volume 3

Rossina Bossio is a Columbian artist, mainly working with the themes of femininity and gender social constructs. The Holy Beauty Project is a series that satires the seduction and values of women. "It aims to examine the constant need for deities and idols and the need to make sense of life's apparent absurdity." The Holy Beauty Project laughs at the way advertisements, fashion, and media stereotypes women into animalistic, self-obsessed beings.

Here is a link to HBP, Vol. 3

Koorosh Asgari - Difference of Contemporary & Traditional Women in the Middle East

Nina Caspari- The Silk Silence of the Wild Cotton Candy

Brian Gonzalez // Taxiplasm - Ripening: Playmate

Eva Michon - Whistle Solo

Eva Michon is an artist and director based out of Los Angeles, California. She is originally from Toronto, Canada. 

Karen Cytter - "I Won't Stay Here for Long..."

Karen Cytter is an Israeli video artist highly sought after in American and European contemporary museums an galleries. Rose Garden is a good example of her work...direct, unvarnished reality. In this work she address American culture, gun violence, and death. This tragic narrative is set in a Texas Bar. It was made in 2014.

Pipilotti Rist at MOMA

An immersive experience at MOMA and the Pompidou in Paris

Jennifer Steinkamp - Mysteries of a Season

When Steinkamp's imagery surrounds the viewer in a darkened gallery, there is magic happening!  IT is a calming transitory experience.

Leila Alaoui : From Their Eyes

Crossings (2012) is a three-screen video installation exploring the experience of sub-Saharan migrants who embark on the perilous journey to reach the elusive European shores. The installation combines voiceovers and static portraits with reconstructed video landscapes filmed from the imaginary viewpoint of the migrants. It is an immersive experience into the collective memory of a forgotten minority.

Leila Alaoui is a French-Morracan multimedia artist working out of Marrakech and Beirut. She is working on cultural diversity, identity, and migration using video installations, studio, and documentary photography. She is certainly an artist we should be looking out for. 

Rino Stefano Tagliafierro: BEAUTY

Taking famous paintings from the 18th & 19th centuries, the artist carefully animates the figures to bring their stories to life, and takes viewers through the journey of life through birth and innocence, to love and lust, and finally until death and sorrow. 

Yuval Yairi & Zohar Kawaharda: This LAND is Your LAND || This LAND is My LAND

What does it mean to have rights to a certain place? Created by Jewish artists, LAND reflects on the historical, religious, and moral rights to a place, a home. Although this is only an excerpt the piece, the actor's attitude clearly changes from love to hate and all between in this video. 

ElDorado University: OCFF Winner

City Limits 

Brad Valentine, Composer

This film is this year's winner of the Orange County Film Festival. Brad Valentine, one of my brother's good friends actually made the short film's original score. 

Ruth Hogben: Hitchcock Meets Burton

Ruth Hogben is a fashion filmmaker based out of London, often doing work for Louis Vuitton and Fendi. This piece is her commentary on what it may feel like for a woman to feel ugly (while wearing fabulous designer clothing). 

Jennifer Linton: A Vengeful Butterfly

Domestikia, Chapter 3: La Petite Mort (The Little Death)

"La Petite Mort was inspired by the Surrealist animations of the Polish and Czech masters Jan Lenica, Walerian Borowyck and Jan Svankmajer, Japanese tentacle erotica, and those strange, middle-of-the-night dreams one sometimes has after spicy food." - Jennifer Linton

Greg Barth: A Misfortunate Reading

Fortune, an experimental comedy by Greg Barth

Does this piece represent what our consumeristic culture could be coming to? Are we surrounded by culture that influences society to ultimately all be the same? 

Max Hattler: Basic Objects May have Something to Say

Shift by Max Hattler

Mark Wallingner - In The Beginning

Wallingner is the British who created Ecce Homo for Trafalgar Square Plinth. His works are often thoughtful contemplations on the spiritual realms.

Diana Thater - Eerie yet beautiful

From the Hauser and Wirth:   Thater spent time in the ‘Zone of Alienation’ which surrounds the site of the nuclear disaster, filming the eroded architecture and wildlife of the one-hundred mile wide radioactive territory. The animals she films have managed to survive amid the devastation of the only existing post-human landscape, demonstrating a wilderness of man’s making. The installation focuses on the rare and endangered Przewalski’s Horse. Once facing certain extinction in its native habitat in central Asia, this sub-species of the wild horse now roams freely in the ‘Zone of Alienation’.

The desolate remains of an abandoned movie theatre in Prypiat, a city founded to house the Chernobyl nuclear plant workers, will form the backdrop of Thater’s installation. The city’s decomposing architecture will be juxtaposed against the footage of the wild animals living in the ‘Zone of Alienation’. Through this installation, visitors will experience a world where a man-made catastrophe has abruptly halted all progress and animals inhabit an irradiated landscape. Overlaying physical and filmic spaces, Thater confronts the successes of civilisation with its profound failure. bsite:

Maria Adela Diaz - Refugees

 

 

"Borderline" (2005)

An artist from Guatamala, this video suggests the hardships of immigrant populations desperate for better safer lives -- they are willing to risk everything.

 

I sealed myself in a wooden box and navigated into the ocean for 45 minutes

Jim Campbell - Let There be Light

Campbell has been working with computers and digital effects for many years. He is based in San Francisco where this work was exhibited at SFMOMA in 2011. Titled "Exploded Views the artist installed the work in the museum atrium. Strands of LED lights hung from above creating an open or lo-tech computer screen where images appeared to be dancing/floating in space.

Predictions for the Future of Animation

http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/animation-trends-2015-111413522

Brown Shoes Only - Color and Sound

Steina + Woody Vasulka - Noisefields

Steina and Woody Vasulka are two artists from Iceland and the Czech Republic who worked together as a couple in the 70s and 80s to create video art. Their video piece, Noisefields from 1974 was a groundbreaking piece as it was an early formal and technical experiment for them as they explored the capabilities of audio and visuals of electronic signal and its energy. 

William Wegman - Dog Models

http://www.williamwegman.com/gallery/works.html

William Wegman is an American artist who is well known for his work with his own dogs Man Ray and Fay Ray, and their puppies. Some younger generations may remember his short films including his dogs dressed up as people in Saturday Night Live and even Sesame Street.

Bruce Nauman - Paint Me

Bruce Nauman is an American artist working with multiple forms of media. His video piece from 1967, Art Make-Up is a video of the artist painting his body three different colors. Today, he does a lot of work with neon and LED. 

Peter Campus - Three Transitions

Peter Campus is an American artist known for his video work. His 1970 piece, Three Transitions, is famous for his experimentations with blue screen technology and superimposing images were it looks like Campus is breaking through his own body and re-revealing his face. 

John Baldessari - Are You Making Art?

John Baldessari is an American artist working and living in Santa Monica, California. Among with several other video art pieces, Baldessari made the piece "I Am Making Art" in 1971. This work shows the artist standing in the center of the film, making gestures over and over again, and after every new pose, he claims, "I am making art." 

Cai Guo Qiang - Fired Up

Cai Guo Qiang is a Chinese artist working and living in New York. Trained in the theatre arts, his studio work often involves experiments with fireworks and gunpowder, as he creates beautiful images and shows with them. He wants his viewers to have an experience with his work, and a dialogue between his work and the world around us. https://vimeo.com/27243548 https://vimeo.com/16632105 

Tony Oursler -- Funny Faces

Tony Oursler is an American artist who was born in and still working in New York City. He mostly works in the performance and video art and is probably most famous for his pieces with deformed faces, typically faces without noses, with two eyes and a mouth put together, while the faces are speaking to the viewers about, usually, something pretty heavy or humorous. Although much of his work has a bit of a creepy side to it, we cannot help but wonder and listen to what these creations are sharing with us. 

Joan Jonas -- Volcano Saga

Emerging in the 1960s and 70s, American artist Joan Jonas works mainly with performance and video art. Inspired by theatre and other forms of story-telling, Volcano Saga is a short film made in 1985, featuring actress Tilda Swinton, that is based on the thirteenth-century Icelandic Laxdeala Saga. It retells a medieval myth about a young woman whose dreams tell the future. This film is set in both Iceland and New York, and was technologically advanced for its time. 

Doug Aitken - SONG1

Doug Aitken is an American artist working out of both Los Angeles and New York City. Although Aitken works in an array of different media, projects like SONG1, exhibit his expertise in working with film, projection, and installation. SONG1 was a Happening taking place in 2012 around the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.. Aitken used the building's round exterior to create a 360 degree audiovisual projection as the famous song "I Only Have Eyes for You" was covered by a handful of musicians. Reviews from the show are only positive, and many of the viewers report that SONG1 was extremely mesmerizing. 

Pioneers of Video: Martha Rosler

Semiotics of the Kitchen is her most noteworthy video. It addresses feminist issues in a humorous yet poignant way.

Pioneers of Video: Wiliam Kentridge

South African artist Kentridge is noted maker of animated videos. He makes drawings then erasures, then additions, shooting each drawing then stringing them together into a film. His themes often address racial  issues and prejudices.

Pioneers of Video: Nam June Paik

Korean Artist Nam June Paik is considered to be the father of video art. He dubbed tele-communications: "the electronic super highway" -- a term that still applies today.

Nam June Paik; Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii; 1995; 49-channel closed circuit video installation, neon, steel and electronic components; approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft.; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Gift of the artist; 2002.23

Pioneers of Video: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono, is a Japanese video/performance artist.  Her best known work Cut Piece.

Pioneers of Video: Chris Burden

Chris Burden is an LA based artist perhaps most famous for his early work where he videoed himself in places of personal danger.  He challenges notions of media violence where horrific images are so pervasive that viewers can be numbed to the grueling pain portrayed.  

Pioneers of Video: Eleanor Antin

Antin is both a conceptual artist and video artist who casts herself in many guises that reveal her many selves.

Pioneers of Video: Pipilotti Rist

Rist's most well known works address issues about gender identity and feminism. 

Pioneers of Video: Paul Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer's work is often about erasure...removing something frame by frame from a video document or film and thereby creating something new that teases the viewer into a new way of seeing.  This video posted above is based on a Turner landscape and filmed in real time.  It challenges a viewer's patience as it is a real time sunrise and sunset. After the Deluge suggests the day after everything we know on earth has been destroyed!

Pioneers of Video: Mary Lucier

A well- known video installation explores imagery of the American west -- it is a celebration of the West yet also evokes a sense of sadness even a melancholy for a passing of Western mythology.  The video offers snapshots of life on the Plains. 

Pioneers of Video:Gary Hill

Seattle based artist Gary Hill is a video artist primarily concerned with language.

Pioneers of Video: Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney's most famous video was made between 1994 and 2002 and titled The Cremaster Cycle.  It is a series of five films that explore ideas and narratives of creation and creativity. A dominate theme is the emergence of human sexual development.

Pioneers of Video: Bill Viola

Viola explores human emotions...our feelings/responses to transcendent moments in life: birth, death, spiritual awakenings,  what it means to be alive and in relationship to each other and to nature and God.  

Leo Villareal -- Lighting up The Bay

In March 2013, artist Leo Villareal's design of The Bay Lights was first shown from dusk until dawn, for the bridge's 75th Anniversary. His exquisite work is shown on the Bay Bridge, in which he covered one side of the bridge in about 25,000 LED lights, and the bridge basically puts on a public show every night, always different. This is the largest LED sculpture in the world, 1.8 miles wide, and 500 feet tall. This piece is beloved by the city of San Francisco, and for a perfect viewing can be watched at the edge of Pier 7.

Undersea Adventure of Balloon Manor

An annual project, 'Balloon Manor' began in February 2015 this year, and was on display in the Sibley Tower in Rochester, New York from February 27 to March 7. This year's theme was Under the Sea, and was a five-story-tall public art installation, using a whopping 40,000 balloons. Under the direction of artists Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle, the project was finished with the help of 60 'twisters' in about four days. What is really impressive about this piece is that they make balloons look sharp and edgy like coral, or textured like wood. On March 8, people had the opportunity of purchasing tickets for the 'popping party.' What do you think?
Watch this time lapse of the building of Balloon Manor 2015! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nicTbKdzahU

Queen Mother of Reality

Created in 2013, Queen Mother of Reality is a 50-foot-long assemblage sculpture by Polish artist Pawel Althamer in collaboration with several other artists. The piece is coming to Queens, New York in the Socrates Sculpture Park from May to August. The sculpture is a reminder to society of its peers who have been displaced from their homes, and the homeless community in general.

Peter Busby -- Making Drawings Sculptures

Peter Busby is an American artist from Connecticut. He uses steel rods to create life-sized sculptures of animals in a way that "echoes lines drawn my pencil, only [his] metal works are free of paper, and thus, create three-dimensional drawings." His sculptures truly do follow beautiful, organic lines that make his creations look almost real. His work is often placed in parks and in the outdoors (where the particular animal may naturally reside), for the general public to examine and enjoy.

Artist w/ work

Interlude
1993
Alta Laguna Park, Laguna Beach, CA

Night Light in Virginia

Five-hundred twenty-two solar-powered LEDs are set on slim metal poles holding a plastic bottle fitted with a solar-powered light. Only a temporary public art project, the work was titled CO2LED and designed by Jack Sanders, Robert Gay and Butch Anthony. 
Read more: CO2LED Solar-Powered Public Art Installation | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Marc Quinn - What a Big Baby!

‘Planet’ is the title of a large sculpture that seems to float against the backdrop of Singapore’s night skyline.  The artist Marc Quinn modeled the baby sculpture after his own 7-month old son.  He describes the work as follows: “To me, Planet is a paradox - hugely heavy, yet the bronze appears weightless; overwhelmingly big, yet also an image of vulnerability. It is both a reflection of ourselves and the earth upon which we live."

 see: ”http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/public-art-sculpture

The huge sculpture weighs seven tons, is over 10 meters long, and made from painted bronze and steel. 

Hofman - A Rubber Ducky in the Bath!

Florentijn Hofman is a Dutch artist who creates large sculptures based on very ordinary objects. A recent and famous example was unveiled in 2007 when Hofman made a 26 meter tall rubber duck titled “Spreading Joy Around the World.” The artist circulates the floating duck to cities that have a water's edge with the intention of spreading happiness. In 2013 the rubber ducky was in Hong Kong.

Nantes, France - "The Most Bizarre City"

Bizarre City...a good thing? Yes. Nantes was a slowing dying city with dwindling industry, unemployment, falling tourism ... enter the arts! Daring city leaders invited musicians

first, then public artists to re-create Nantes as a destination:
"First came a summer of musical and theatrical performances from groups all over Europe, intended to break the air of sadness and defeat that came from the cities' industrial decline," writes Browning. "Next, as the town moved toward plastic arts, more and more outsiders came, further boosting local confidence, leading finally to still riskier bids financed jointly by public (local, regional, national) sponsorship and corporate collaborations."
Now, the city's outdoor spaces are riddled with enormous, startling installations of contemporary art, from houses half-submerged in the river to a four-story mechanical elephant. Drawing some 200,000 tourists each summer, Nantes quite rightfully bills itself as France's most "bizarre" city. For the past 23 years, artistic director Jean Blaise has been curating works by artists from across the globe, using the city as his gallery space.
"From the beginning France's conservative UMP party... was a consistent doubter that such public investment in 'culture' could generate any real returns. So far, however, the mixture of serious art created by world-class artists, many from China and Japan, seems to have been proved a solid formula for rebirth."

IT worked! The city is now branded as "bizarre" and it seems we all want to see just what bizarre is!

Blu -Art on the Wall

The Italian street artist Blu paints graffiti on Israel's separation barrier on December 5, 2007.

Blu is the pseudonym of an Italian artist who conceals his real identity. His art is almost always political as seen here in a painting on the wall that surrounds Bethlehem.  Stumps of trees carry multiple associations including the destroyed orchards and grove of olive trees -- the livelihood for many Palestinian farmers -- that were destroyed when the wall separated the growers from their trees.

Ekta - Public Painting

Street art by Ekta on the side of The White building, along the River Lea Navigation at Olympic Stadium on August 7, 2013 in London, England.

 

 

A Swedish artist, she grew up on London, but later moved back to Sweden.  From an interview she says: I usually start with a very vague idea or no idea at all as to what I’m painting or drawing, I make stuff up as I go along, it would bore me to death to have a fixed idea that just needs to be realized. I don't like to be obvious with my work and I don't want it to be too vague either, in between is good. There’s a lot of lines involved in my drawings but I tend to stay away from lines completely when I paint and just use blocks and shapes of color, it's a good way for me to not get bored the process. I prefer painting but when I've done that for a while it's good to swap to lines and drawing for a bit. For painting I use acrylics and spray paint, I usually don't mix the two (unless sometimes when painting outdoors) as for drawing its just pens. I don't have a standard or some specific brand or size that I always use, I recently started drawing a bit more with a brush and ink which is something I'll continue with for sure, I've been very focused on tidy & clean lines when I'm drawing and using a brush allows me to try and be a bit less “perfect.” see: http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/interview-with-ekta

A pinch of Earth...Uysal's Sculpture

'Skin 2' (2010) created by Mehmet Ali Uysal. Not only did the artist create a giant clothes pin, but it seems to be squeezing a moujt of earth in this park outside Liège, Belgium. 

Federation Bells - A new way to ring the bells

A musical work of public art can be found in Melbourne. Called the Federation Bells, it consists of  39 brass different sized bowl-like bells that play different songs each day. In fact the public can submit a tune to the curator who then translate it via computer into a song the bells can play.  Federation Bells was created in 2001, designed by Anton Hasell and Neil McLachlan in collaboration with Swaney Draper Architects.

Jess Dobkin: Crossing Lines

Jess Dobkin is a performance artist based in Toronto, Canada. Dobkin's primary artistic tool is her own body, that she uses in multiple ways in her work. A lot of her work involves nudity, that is explicit, filled with humor, and sometimes makes the viewer a little uncomfortable. Her main goal is to allow audiences to dive into an array of contemporary social issues.
This is Dobkin's website that has several of her performance videos: http://181.224.139.35/~jessdobk/video/#&video=1

Kanye West: Claustrophobic ?

Kanye West is an American rapper, songwriter, performer, record producer, director, entrepreneur, and fashion designer. He began his musical career in 2004 with his first album, The College Dropout, and is currently finishing up on his latest, unnamed album that should be released sometime this year. West has already accomplished a lot this year with fashion (Adidas campaign) and music (single with former Beatle, Paul McCartney). A few weeks ago at the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary celebration show, West gave a very interesting performance, and was joined by rapper Vic Mensa and Sia. The performance begins with West lying down on the stage, rapping into a microphone that is hanging over his mouth, and making upside down eye contact with the camera, revealing his creepy blue contacts. Check out the performance, here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/751672

Marina Abramovic: Pulse

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian artist based in New York City. She began her performance art career in the 1970s, with one of her most famous series called Rhythm. Within the series her most famous performances is called Rhythm 0 (1974) in which she set up a table of about 70 objects, assigned herself a puppet-like role and viewers were allowed to participate in the performance by using the objects on Abramovic in any way they wanted. The objects ranged from a feather to a pistol with a single bullet in it, and for six hours the artist allowed the audience to manipulate her body in any way in order to test the limits between performer and audience. Today, she continues to work, with one of her most recent pieces called The Artist is Present (2010) that took place at MoMA. Essentially she sat at a table with two chairs, and guests were invited to sit in the chair across from her as she sat in utter silence. Each guest was photographed and then their photo was placed in a book. One of the guests included Lady Gaga, who attracted many more people to the museum/performance. After the performance was over, Gaga and Abramovic formed somewhat of a business relationship in which Abramovic (as well as other artists like Jeff Koons) helped the singer with aspects her latest album, artPop.

Rhythm 0
1974

  Artist's Commentary on Rhythm 0

The Artist is Present
2010

Francis Alys: Bringing Cultures Together

Francis Alys is a Belgian artist who is currently living in Mexico City. He was formally trained in architecture, but has a passion for using performance art as a means bringing people together either for a project or while viewing his work. He travels internationally to film his work, most of it holding similar themes of politics, culture, and location as things that are in the way of community. One of his most famous works is a performance piece called 'When Faith Moves Mountains,' that took place in Lima, Peru in 2002. Alys recruited around 500 volunteers to help with the project, with their end goal to move a sand dune a couple of inches. Though this project seems not only impossible but also a bit of a waste of time, the participants were excited to be a part of it, and once it was over, they were excited to share the story. Another piece he did is called 'The Green Line,' in which he performed a walk through the streets of Jerusalem with a leaking can of green paint beside him, leaving his trail. Spectators thought the performance as a poetic expression. Alys's other works consist of him traveling to different third world countries and filming children playing games together, some of which are the same game in different countries.
Alys also did a performance called Painting/Retoque in Panama in which he repaints a single median strip on a road where the US base used to be.

When Faith Moves Mountains
Lima, Peru
2002

The Green Line
Jerusalem, Israel
2004

Here is the video of Painting/Retoque, Paraiso, Panama, 2008