Here are a few of the weirdest things artists have done!
10 - Robin Hood In 2015, a wacky former MIT professor took
are to a whole new level by robbing a bank in New York City and recording the heist.
Joseph Gibbons, a filmmaker and quote “visual artist’’ has taught for a decade at one
of the world’s most prestigious universities.
And yet, dumb enough to make robbing banks as part of his latest “art’’ project!Gibbons
was charged with robbery after allegedly making off with a measly thousand dollars from a
Capital One Bank located in Chinatown.
He entered the bank wielding a camcorder and politely handing the teller a note demanding
a donation for his church, according to court documents.
Rhode Island police had also been hunting for Gibbons, who staged a similar stick-up
there in mid-November 2014 and made off with around three thousand dollars in cash.
While waiting for his arraignment, the eccentric academic allegedly told fellow inmates that
his crime was for art’s sake.
Apparently, robbing banks isn’t a crime – it’s artwork.
What an excuse!
9 - Lettuce Help You From Ginza to Times Square, from Tiananmen
Square to the Champs-Elysées, Han Bing and his cabbage have traveled the world.
Walking the Cabbage in Tiananmen features an androgynous figure walking a cabbage in
Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
The artist behind the work, and obviously, in front of the camera, is Chinese artist
Han Bing.
Walking the Cabbage in Tiananmen is part of one of a series of photographs.
Han produced the Walking the Cabbage series over a period of eight years, from 2000 to
2008.
Han has said that he wanted to create a game for the public and to let society answer.
He claims that he’s just a player in the game.
It’s OUR job to interpret the meaning.
His intention in making art is for people to see how much of our daily lives are routines
that we’ve blindly absorbed.
It’s an attempt to raise questions about people’s relationships with the fleeting
yet important objects in their lives.
If you ask me……..walking a cabbage is just weird.
8 - Rock and A hard Place In 2017, French performance artist Abraham
Poincheval did a rather unusual performance called Pierre, at the Palais de Tokyo museum
in Paris.
He spent a week living inside a ROCK by sucking oxygen through tiny air holes and storing
days' worth of his own bodily waste in bottles closely around himself.
Just…..ugh.
He sat sitting in a cavity that’s been carved out of the rock in the shape of his body.
He survived by eating soup and dried meats.
I mean…..really he could have gone those three days without eating.
He’s spoken of his three day exhibition, as quote, "travelling in this rock without
moving, like an astronaut."
Um…...okay!
It’s by no means Poincheval's first exercise in endurance and isolation, nor his first
time stuffed inside an inanimate object.
Far from it.
Back in 2014, he spent nearly two weeks living inside a bear carcass at the Parisian Hunting
and Wildlife Museum.
While inside the bear, he survived on worms and beetles.
This guy exists in real life!
What a time to be alive!
7 - Annual Surveillance You know that saying, having eyes in the back
of your head?
Wellllll, in 2010, a New York University professor decided to take that saying literally.
He had a camera surgically implanted into the back of his skull!
Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi born photography professor, had the procedure done at a piercing studio
for an art project commissioned by a museum in Doha, Qatar.
A project like this was meant to establish a dialogue about surveillance.
The project is called "The 3rd I," and made use of the posterior camera by taking a snapshot
every minute of Bilal's activities for a year.
The images were then transmitted to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, featuring an exhibit
entitled "Told/Untold/Retold" in time for the museum's opening.
The thumb-sized camera was mounted on a titanium plate inserted in the back of his head.
A cable runs from the camera to a computer that he carries in a custom-made shoulder
bag, providing a real-time global positioning signal of his location that was transmitted
to a website made specially for the project.
Just wow.
6 - Not Famous Anymore?
Back In February 2014, Shia LaBeouf caused a bit of a controversy at the Berlin Film
Festival when he arrived at the red carpet wearing a brown paper bag over his head with
the words, "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE" written on it.
Does that make sense to any of you?
Now that Shia LaBeouf wasn't "famous" anymore, he then decided to be sorry.
He performed at a Los Angeles-based art installation called I Am Sorry.
Yeah, I’m using the word “performed” really loosely here.
Essentially, his I AM SORRY performance consisted of him occupying a LA gallery for six days
wearing the same “I am not famous anymore” paper bag and silently crying in front of
people.
Visitors to the art show were invited to observe LaBeouf's performance one at a time.
Before watching his performance, visitors were supposed to stop at a table to see items
that appear to correspond with LaBeouf's career.
Things such as a "Transformers" toy, a whip, Hershey's kisses, a bottle of Jack Daniels
whiskey, a bottle of cologne, pliers, a ukelele and a copy of Daniel Clowes' book, "The Death-Ray."
LaBeouf said that the title of the project was a genuine reflection of how he felt at
the time.
Yep…..sorry!
5 - Hug Project Gao Brothers, Zhen and Qiang, have been collaborating
with each other on various projects since 1985.
Based in Beijing, they produce performance art, photography, sculpture, paintings, and
written works.
In 1999, the Gao Brothers first conceived their interactive performance art piece, Embrace:The
Utopia of Hugging for 20 Minutes.
That was a site-specific performance of the piece, which invited 60 strangers to hug for
an extended period of time.
Most of the time, participants are pre-registered volunteers and the performance is open for
public viewing.
Some models are dressed, while um….others are nude.
According to the Gao Brothers, they developed Embrace as a means to confront pain and suffering
with a simple, yet ultimately monumental gesture.
The performance has since been presented in multiple locations, including London, Rome,
Singapore, in various cities across China, and at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
in Kansas City.
4 - Cake for everyone To say something strange happened on the subway
in New York City is like saying that the sun came up.
New Yorkers and frequent visitors know that the subway in New York City is a place where
you’re almost guaranteed to see something out of the ordinary.
Performance artist Bettina Banayan's latest project definitely applies here!
Banayan took to the train with a bag of supplies and set up a baking shop, frosting and decorating
a cake while commuters around her looked on in genuine confusion.
And well, maybe some delight as well.
She explained that the cake wasn’t for a special occasion, but instead that it was
for everyone, and she offered up slices to those people brave enough to take something
to eat from a stranger with a spatula and frosting in the New York subway.
3 - Bananaman Ever see a guy surrounded by a wall of bananas?
Yeah, me neither!
The Well was an installation by Toronto artist Zhaoyi Kang, a Chinese immigrant to Canada.
What exactly did he want to show by constructing a round, well-shaped barrier out of hundreds
of bananas and putting himself inside?
The Well was apparently a stand-in for the racial barriers that we continue to have in
society and that Kang has experienced since moving to Canada.
In Kang’s case, the biggest barrier he has been facing was the cultural issue.
A coworker of Kang’s said that because he’s been living in Canada so long, he’s lost
his Chinese accent.
But, he also doesn’t feel native in Beijing anymore.
He doesn’t feel at home in Canada because he feels he hasn’t really been welcomed
as part of the culture.
The Well is a stand-in for the predicament that Kang faces.
Being trapped in The Well during the performance is a metaphor for Kang’s trapped identity
at a time of transition from one culture to another.
What Kang wanted was to get people to remove the bananas.
As every banana disappears, so too does part of the barrier separating him from the Canadian
society.
2 - What in a block?!
In 2015, five artists in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, were arrested after their art project almost
went horribly wrong.
A woman participating in the project had climbed into a box, which the four others covered
in plaster.
According to the Rotterdam Police Department’s Twitter account, the artists started panicking
when the plaster became too hard.
I mean…...isn’t that what plaster is supposed to do?!
Firefighters were quickly called after the woman couldn’t get enough oxygen through
a straw, which had been inserted through a tiny breathing hole.
They had to use heavy equipment to break up the thick plaster to extract the woman from
the plaster block.
Police took all five people involved in the art project into custody, including the rescued
woman.
There was no word on what the art project was attempting to portray.
My guess is……...stupidity!
1 - Incubation Wait, wasn’t this the same guy earlier?!
Yep, Abraham Poincheval’s back already!
The weird French guy with the bear and the rock strikes again.
Well, 2017 was obviously his year, as he did another genius performance – he hatched
his first chick after spending three weeks sitting on 10 eggs in a Paris museum.
I mean………..Sigh.
On a side note, his dad made headlines for inventing pills that supposedly makes farts
like roses.
No, really, I can’t make this stuff up.
I’m bringing this up just to help us understand why Abraham is the way he is.
Anyways, Abraham was on public display inside a glass case at the Palais de Tokyo modern
art museum again.
He slept sitting on the eggs and apparently, it's been a lot harder than being shut inside
the rock.
Apparently, one of the hardest aspects of his time incubating the eggs was the heat
inside the glass vitrine, as the eggs had to be kept at a minimum of 98.6 degrees fahrenheit.
He was only allowed a half-hour break every 24 hours.
His patience finally paid off when the first of the eggs began to hatch after 3 weeks!
At least he’s vowed that his chicks will never end up on a dinner plate and that he’s
planned to give them a happy life on his father's farm in the west of France.
Hey, remember, everything smells like roses there!
Here’s what’s next!