What’s the draw here again? Will the twenty “sincerely interested” and “really supportive” exhibit visitors and live birth watchers tune in? This isn’t the miracle of birth, in all it’s magical/wonderful/intimate/horrific/pornographic splendor. This is a baby in a diaper being bounced around and sprinkled with confetti. He’s a baby being a baby like all other babies and he’s not even doing anything particularly amazing.

Yet, Kotak calls this “a collaboration” and wants you to donate to Raising Baby X: The First Year and fund her podcasts of “breastfeeding, play time, bedtime stories, lullabies, holidays and key milestones in his development.”

Wait… wait… In October, Marni Kotak said this about Facebook and Twitter:

“I have always had a deep-seated disdain for Facebook… I never log on just to post status updates or such about the details of my life. My life is for me to experience in an authentic way and not for Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the company’s shareholders to make more money from…  I do feel that people today are desperately seeking a sense of meaning in their lives. Facebook is feeding into that and providing — what I see as an ultimately empty — solution for a hyper-mediated world… The more time that people spend on social networking sites and the less time they spend engaging in authentic experiences with friends and family in the real world — and yes, I do still think there is a real world — the more they are denying the significance of their own human experience. This in turn leads to a greater sense of desperation to find meaning in their lives, more wasted hours on Facebook, and so on and so forth. It is a vicious cycle.

Good points, Kotak! Wait. So, someone with “disdain” for the “vicious cycle” of compulsive online updates and its damage to “authentic experiences” is turning a year of her motherhood — and her baby’s babyhood! — into a compulsively documented performance? So, she’s not using a corporate social media platform to post details about her life. Instead, she’s “re-contextualizing motherhood” by posting details about her life on her own platform for pay, with the commendable savviness of an internet sex worker. Disappointingly, she’s delivering content about as exciting as the average mother who posts details about her life on Facebook. There’s absolutely no difference aside from the forced “art” label. I want to like this, but it just seems dull and hypocritical.

Am I biased as a self-identified non-parent? Parents, do you “get” this?

After the biracial artist set up his WhiteSmellBot on Twitter and was retweeting about 80 “white people smell like” stereotypes a day, he set out to the streets of New York in whiteface to “protest” those racially-tinged comments. Since the first trial, he’s done this several times — in Harlem and, three times in the Upper East Side. His thirteenth performance (above) was his last.

What have you learned?

I started by going to Harlem to tell black people that they could be racist, but many told me they didn’t have enough power to be racist. I adjusted my approach to say that black people could have prejudice. That was received better but still not well, and two common arguments arose directed at me — “White people started it” and “White people don’t care what we think.” I then went to the Upper East Side to see for myself if this were true. I was mostly ignored by white people on the street. Perhaps it was because white people aren’t aware of the stereotype that they smell funny to black people, or they don’t care, or I was intimidating to them in whiteface. I then returned to Harlem, and told black folks that I didn’t think white people cared, and that they were right to begin with.

How has it changed, so far?

I am done. I decided to stop. I’m not a masochist and it started to feel masochistic.

As far as what happened in the video above and why Nate’s left screaming theatrically, Nate explained that showing up in whiteface that a few street-vendors he encountered in the section of 125th St caused particular tension: “When they see me in whiteface, it’s like the perfect storm.”

The reason I lost control and began screaming “white people are the devil” was because that is what some people in that video really think. If you listen, you can hear one or two men agree. I also lost control because I felt attacked and I felt like I was losing control of the situation. I was hoping that after screaming back, I would equalize things, then we could have a conversation. But some people don’t want to have a conversation with me in whiteface. They want to tell me how it is, and then watch me run off with my tail between my legs. I wasn’t going to do that. On three occasions, I passed these same men on 125th St, and each time they yelled, “Don’t come back!” and each time I returned, and we spoke again. It was weird.

What are some of the difficulties you’re facing in sustaining “character”?

People want to look behind the curtain, as I said to the man in the latest video. It was difficult to keep them interested in talking to a pretend white man. They quickly want to move on to, “Who are you really?” I would try to redirect, but I didn’t want to be a jerk about it. Sometimes, I would reveal that I’m biracial (black/white) first, and sometimes strangers would just blurt it out. It was messy. The saddest part about it to me was that many black people on the street used my biracial background as a way to undermine my message that black people could have prejudice. So it became my problem or something wrong with me, the reason I was protesting. I don’t have anything to hide. I freely admitted on the street that I’m more sensitive to black/white relations because of my racial makeup, but that is not a reason to disregard my message, and I would argue, it is why I was the most qualified to be The White Ambassador in the first place.

It was a difficult project to execute and challenging to have taken it this far, exploring not only notions of prejudice, but also the challenges of taking an object of controversial, confrontational internet art into “real life.” It’s clear that this has opened up the issue to further inquiry — When does an artist break “character?” How is the performance transformed when the artist’s immediate audience dismisses it as “mentally ill”?

For International Migrants Day, Boryana Rossa (artist, curator, educator) and Oleg Mavromatti (artist, web-controlled self-electrocution performer) re-contextualize the drastic protest gesture “in solidarity with migrants around the world”:

Many migrant protestors stitch their mouths as a symbol of their voices being shut. This gesture is visually appealing, provoking and desperate. We would like to use this technique but overcome despair and create an image of solidarity… We stitch the fingers of our hands into fists.

The stitched mouths protests and hunger strikes took place earlier this year in Athens to bring attention to Greece’s backlog of 52,000 cases involving alleged human rights violations towards asylum-seeking migrants that are held for months in overcrowded, unhygienic, badly ventilated detention centers and prisons, starved and trapped.

Miru Kim is in a small space with two pigs saved from a slaughterhouse. She eats what the pigs eat — out of the trough, mostly grains and raw vegetables — and sleeps with them. I saw her feeding them by hand.

The gallery is a bizarre building, almost like a mall with tons of ridiculous upscale shops and restaurants. She is in a very small storefront, a white box with a door out in the back wall and a glass floor to ceiling front. You could almost walk past it without even noticing.

She was dirty and there was hay on the ground and mud but the light was super bright and the walls were gallery white. It felt unnatural. There was a guard to prevent people taking photos. She was mostly on all fours or laying on her back, interacting with the pigs a lot, scratching them, feeding them, hugging them, rolling around with them. She never walked fully upright.

The Primary Flight gallery was next door. There were about 6 of her photos going for 8K a piece inside.

I thought it would have been packed and compared to other stuff we saw today there were so few people coming to see it or staying long to watch it, maybe five people total while we were there. Maybe it’s just not Miami, too weird. Trying to experience it in that space was hard — noisy, sterile, air conditioned, people strolling around window shopping modern furniture behind you. It was like she was a science experiment.

The pigs will be donated to a no-kill farm after the installation.

Even though Miru Kim’s work is “not explicitly political in nature,” we’re glad to hear the pigs have been saved from torturous death. There’s something strangely appealing about the sterility of the exhibit. From what Kim has said and demonstrated, she’s philosophically, physically and emotionally entwined with the pink beasts. It’s touching. Literally. It’s quite tactile. If it’s too weird for the art fair cruisers, that’s too bad for them.

The exhibit ends tomorrow night. (Photos: Martha Cooper, live feed, Diana Frame/ANIMALNewYork)

Apparently, the pay was quite low and workers’ comp took fighting for… Now, let’s not get tabloid-y. We love museums. MoMA’s neat. Those involved with Abramović’s epic retrospective/exhibit and were re-performing the respected artist’s classic pieces upstairs — hanging off said walls, forming nude human doorways, metaphysically bonding with bones/mortality — found the experience challenging, transforming, rewarding, etc etc, and just collaborating with the world’s most successful living performance artist can be considered the sweetest artist internship ever, yet…

Three re-performers write:

Leading up to the Abramović retrospective in 2010, the 39 “reperformers” engaged in a series of successful negotiations with the MoMA for better wages and working conditions. The initial offer we received from the museum struck many of us as untenable: $50 for a 2 1/2 hour performance shift, no compensation for prep time or time in between shifts, and, most troublingly, no workman’s compensation, which would cover us in the case of injury. Through a first round of negotiations, we achieved a modest pay increase and a change of status to “temporary employee,” which provided us workman’s compensation and some other benefits. However, we were only able to approach a fair wage for our work after two fainting performers made evident the difficulty and risk of our work. Still, we were not paid enough to avoid working other jobs during the run of the exhibit.

Considering MoMA’s operating 2008-2009 budget of $160 million, Abramović’s devout preaching of her performance art copyright ownership, the $22 ticket price and the Abramović blockbuster exhibit’s 750,000 attendees… Jeez. Awkward.

Hill explains:

Black people are racist too. They need to deal with that. All white people don’t stink. Wake up and smell the damp, white hair. I have some in a plastic bag. Then sign my petition.

So he walked the streets with a clipboard, a bag of white person’s hair for sampling and an umbrella, presumably to protect his delicate ahem ahem complexion. He chanted “We are white. We smell alright” and loudly proclaimed that unlike the stereotypes curated by his Twitter bot, white people do not smell like Cheetos or hot dog water or other things more offending to the senses/your feelings, white people.

This video gets particularly tense when Nate is forced to “break character” and explain his project and his biracial background to the passerby who seem, at first, unamused with the performance. The discourse transpires next is more interesting than oh so many things you hear at Chelsea gallery openings.

When’s the next one?

(Video and Photos: Tod Seelie)

Each photo from the big gala is a punch in the head and the crotch to anyone who spent their formative art-learnin’ years crushing on Abramović, but no, it’s not shocking. Rainer’s Salò (this!) comparison was a hyperbole — no one was sexually tortured and sadistically destroyed (Abramović did the cutting, beating, bleeding, slicing, slapping of herself in her own works), but gosh, well, this is just awkward stuff. (Explanation below the visuals.)

At least one celebrity guest — Will Ferrel — looks noticeably uneasy with the stoic rotating head centerpieces looking at him eat. We feel you, Will. The rest? Well… that’s that.

A wrapped Debbie Harry was carried out by bare-chested boy slaves on a gurney. Then, there was the finale cutting of the nude, marzipan, Marina-shaped cake (I believe she was planning that particular bit for her funeral? What gives?). A glitter-crotched Debbie Harry cake bled red stuffing. Apparently, someone in the crowd started jeering this as misogynist, insensitive to actual violence against women. Marina’s intimate artist manifesto that had so moved me when she read it at MoMA before embarking on The Artist Is Present — “An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist. An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist. An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist.” — was now a big red backdrop for Gwen Stefani to vamp in front of in a borrowed lab coat.

Abramović’s point was, allegedly, to transform the “everyday life situation” of the gala with the “dignity, serenity, and concentration” of the injected performances, but — I say this as an outsider — it looks like the opposite. The work originally imbued with depth and death is recontextualizes as entertainment. The heads look tacky. Perhaps this is meant to be funny. If you’ve seen all her work and never laughed, you don’t get it. But are we in on this joke?

These images haven’t quite beaten out this blogger’s artistic affections for Abramović completely, but that whole “economic exploitation” bit comes back to mind, sharply, and it feels ethically awkward, especially now, mid-Occupy. I won’t rage. I want to chuckle. I’m wishing this was really, really kinky instead. (Photos: Getty/Yahoo)

One very upset person who auditioned to be part of Abramović’s shin-ding wrote a letter, complaining directly to the renowned experimental artist/dancer/choreographer Yvonne Rainer:

“The deal is that the artists/dancers she will hire will spend 3(!) hours under the dining tables of the donor gala with their heads protruding from the tables. They will be sitting on lazy susans under the table and slowly rotating and making eye contact with the donors/diners. f course we were warned that we will not be able to leave to pee, etc. That the diners may try to feed us, give us drinks, fondle us under the table, etc but will be warned not to. Whatever happens, we are to remain in performance mode and unaffected. What the fuck?!”

For the 15 hour, two day performance, the artists will be paid $150 plus a one year MOCA membership to be played with by museum head Jeffrey Deitch and honorable guests Debbie Harry, Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova. Fancy art benefactors will pay $2,500 to $10,000 to attend the Gala and $25,000 to $100,000 per table. There will be heads. There will be nudes hugging skeletons. There will be a party. The comparison is definitely a stretch, but you can see the Salò relation, sans obvious political allegory. Now then, the appalled audition attendant is considering revenge!

“Since I cannot stomach being a turning, severed head while people get drunk in front of me, I am seriously considering taking a naked role and performing an intervention at the gala celebration… sick shit. God, we need a revolution.”

Like the streaker at MoMA’s last day of The Artist Is Present, perhaps? Good luck getting in. But Rainer bit, and responded, condemning the Gala as “grotesque” and “verg[ing] on economic exploitation:”

“Subjecting her performers to public humiliation at the hands of a bunch of frolicking donors is yet another example of the Museum’s callousness and greed and Ms Abramovic’s obliviousness to differences in context and some of the implications of transposing her own powerful performances to the bodies of others.”

Abramović was read the letter aloud, responding:

“Wow. I hope the performance itself will bring some kind of dignity, serenity, and concentration to the normal situation of a gala, and actually change the energy of the space and bring the performance into an everyday life situation. All these accusations, you can’t have them before you actually experience the situation and see how I can change the atmosphere, that’s my main purpose… I really respect Yvonne.”

As in, don’t dog it till you see it. Good point! Indeed! Agreed! But, as much as an Abramović fan girl this blogger has always been, let’s not pretend that just because this is performance art it isn’t simultaneously a bunch of ambitious nude young’uns surrendered to their authority figures, made to perform possibly exhibitionist, humiliating acts (’cause it’s a fucking party) for a few bucks and then, perhaps, have to feel bad about it afterwards… unless they really, really, really, really concentrate. Why bother? I’m sure with a properly-worded open call, ready and willing volunteers would have gladly paid for the experience.

That’s one way to grow a family…

Remember the white girl milk-”purifying” garglers of White Power Milk? That’s part one. “Since I’m half black and half white, I find the tension between the two races fascinating,” Nate tells ANIMAL. “I started making work about race that is presented on the Internet and stopped doing performance art.” Instead of trying to theorize this with my blah-blah, let’s let the artist/the CEO of Racist Incorporated speak.

Racist Incorporated is also Race Warriors — “Answer ten easy questions to uncover your racial prejudices, and play your own personalized race war video game.” Comprised of hacked NES games and Do the Right Thing clips (for “nostalgia” purposes), “The game functions on the logic that if you take part in an experience that is both racist and absurd then racism is absurd,” Nate explains.

The last of the triad as the Twitter White Smell Bot — “Learn what black people have to say when no one is looking about how white people smell.” Oh, it’s racist. I asked Nate if it’s getting him Twitter hate. “Why would I get hate? I’m just retweeting what other people say. I’m only curating. That is what Racist Incorporated is designed to do. We make racist experiences for good. If the racism repulses you, which I hope it does, then that is good.”

Looks like Nate isn’t quitting performance art but modifying it.