Ana Mendieta

Ana Mendieta is a Cuban-American earth artist who does a lot of works involving the female body along with her earth projects. Sometimes she combines the two, whether that be her laying naked in a hole in the ground or her painted like bark against a wall made to camouflage.

Her other works are also somewhat violent, she has some pieces that are unrelated to her earth works that may show a body wrapped up in white but covered in blood or her drawing a blood looking paint on a wall with her hands. This could mean a lot of things but I think it comes down to her life as a child when her family was exiled from Cuba because her family opposed the dictatorship and I think that has a lot of influence with her work.

Survival Research Labs

SRL focuses on using technology and machines to create machines that are operated by humans to do whatever basically. Whether they have an actual purpose, like the Shockwave Cannon here, which, when fired, explodes propylene and oxygen, being able to destroy windows up to 700 feet, however when shot at humans all they feel is a puff of air. Although not really very useful it is rather interesting scientifically and is a very interesting technological piece of art.

 The one below here is called the "Mumbly Peg Stabber", which is exactly what it looks like, a machine that is supposed to take the knife and stab around the persons fingers, as long as they keep their fingers between the lines they should be okay, however there were some videos of people getting cut by the machine.

Xavier Cha

Xavier Cha is a performance artist who does some very interesting things concerning advertisement in the public.

These are two costumes that she has used to dance in front of stores. Cha does not like the public advertisements that get in peoples faces whether it be billboards or people dancing in front of a restaurant to get people to come inside, and she dressed up as a nail to dance in front of a nail salon and a shrimp to dance in front of a sushi bar. It's not that she's taunting the store or the store owners but more in fact the advertisers or the stores that use those types of advertisements. What is normal among society  now is for things like this to happen, so seeing this in the middle of Los Angeles was probably not a very big deal for many people which could be another statement that she's trying to make.

Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson is most famous for his earthwork titled "Spiral Jetty". What I found so interesting about this was that the piece itself is forever changing because of the environment. Whether it be the tide or the stuff thats in the water or the position of the sun, the piece never really looks the same twice and there are many beautiful photos that don't even seem like it could be from the same piece of work because of how diverse it looks at times.

James Turrell

James Turrell is an earth artist who seems like he focuses much on earth and space with his artwork.

This is called "Into the Light", made out of neon lights, glass, gypsum board, and plaster. I viewed this as the artist's interpretation of "seeing the light at the end of the tunnel". The neon lights put a different flavor on the artwork, making it seem almost as if you're in space, maybe you're hitting lightspeed like in the Star Wars movies or whatever but it does give a very good sense of tunnel vision and I think that is what Turrell was at least trying to partially portray.

Stelarc

Stelarc's early works were mostly focused on suspensions, where he'd have hooks go into his skin and it would suspend him, however his later works are centered more around technology as seen in the picture above. His idea was that we as humans can better ourselves and evolve with the use of technology. 

Much of it also seems revolved around him basically doing stuff to himself, modifying his body or cutting into himself to "improve" upon himself. In this case he puts something inside his arm to make it look like he has an ear there.

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist who has done many past pieces of other artists as well as her own new performance pieces, such as this one titled "The Artist is Present". This consisted of her sitting at a table in complete silence as people would line up to sit across from her. She spent a total of 736 hours at the table, not all at once but oftentimes she'd be sitting there for a very long time in complete silence with a stranger staring back at her. It kind of gives a different perspective on things and helps filter out all the incidental stuff that really doesn't matter, this would include things like small talk or whatever.

Burning Man

Burning Man is a week long "participant-driven" festival that focuses on much of its art installations and music. The theme for the art installations for Burning Man 2011 is Rites of Passage.

I honestly think most of these art installations are made for people who are on drugs just to experience a crazy trip or something. Because of when the festival started during the hippie era, when LSD was a huge part of the hippie scene and such, the art installations were made specifically for people tripping out on acid. Now that LSD is illegal of course the festival wouldn't condone drug use but I know they have the same idea in mind that they did all those years ago, people are going to be on drugs there so in the spirit of Burning Man let's have these crazy art installations.

Nancy Popp

I realized I had posted my presentation on Nancy Popp on WordPress by accident so I'm putting it back onto Blogger.

Nancy Popp

Originally from Los Angeles, Nancy Popp is a performance artist who performs a lot of public pieces, many of which seem rather confusing and often make you sit there wondering what she's doing. Her performance pieces need explanation because much of it comes down to her own interpretation of the piece she's doing. These videos up here kind of give you an idea of what she's about, the last two videos are her performing someone else's piece but the piece itself is very much her kind of style when you see everything else that she's done and is doing.

This is part of her Untitled (street climbing performances) where she would climb random street poles and someone would take a photo of her. Her explanation of these performances were to break out of the normal "pattern of movement" (on the sidewalk) and to observe the flow of the sidewalk and seek out new sightlines. Basically she climbed the pole to see how people walked from her point of view and to also check out the cool view.

In her other works, she often portrays herself naked or almost naked, sometimes in the fetal position sometimes in a well or whatever. Much of it comes down to the human form being in a vulnerable position, and the photos I took off her website actually have their own explanation of the pictures, most of which say "video coming soon", and considering some of the works that she's doing that would be a very interesting thing to see.

These are just a few examples