i came across a set of photos on flickr belonging to the museum of modern art (ny), it’s called marina abramović: the artist is present – portraits. naturally i was intrigued as to why there were over 1,300 photos of all these different people, some crying, and who is marina abramović? turns out she is a performance artist who is currently performing a piece called the artist is present. she sits in the museum during opening hours (7 hours a day), and you as a visitor are allowed to sit across from her in silence … for as long as you can hold out it seems. this is who you’re up against:

… and this is what might happen:

(after 29 minutes) note: this guy sat with her 14+ times.

over at nymag i read that the queues to sit opposite marina can yield up to an eight hour wait, and that celebrities like björk, james franco, marisa tomei, sharon stone and rufus wainwright sat with her.

my favourite has to be alan rickman, i don’t think anything can make this man cry…

i decided to do a bit more googling and discovered a tumblr called marina abramović made me cry which chronicles all the people who started crying and how long they managed to sit there. Continue Reading →