[HN Gopher] The Story of Marina Abramovic and Ulay (2020)
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The Story of Marina Abramovic and Ulay (2020)
Author : NaOH
Score : 48 points
Date : 2026-03-19 01:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sydney-yaeko.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sydney-yaeko.com)
| incognito124 wrote:
| Having c symbol stand out because the font does not support it is
| a story way too familiar to anyone from Balkans
| trvz wrote:
| Could be a fonting error, could be being really aggressive
| about not ignoring slavic diacritics. Considering the topic of
| the article, I say it could be either.
| mjd wrote:
| If it were the latter, why would it be misspelled in the
| title at the top of the page?
| subpixel wrote:
| For decades, I have successfully used reverence for Marina
| Abramovic as an attribute to filter out persons with whom I am
| incompatible.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Say more.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Is it like "The Slavoj Zizek game" except with Marina
| Abramovic instead of Slavoj Zizek?
|
| https://medium.com/the-hairpin/the-best-time-i-pretended-
| i-h...
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| that is one of the most pretentious things ive ever read
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Perhaps you mean that as an insult, but IMHO that's what
| makes it funny.
|
| Some of the references regional or are dated, since it is
| from 10 years ago.
| 1337biz wrote:
| It also requires some ideological bubble where people
| care too much what other people know and think. Otherwise
| someone would never bother that kind of an educational
| talk with a stranger.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| I played kind of the same thing a little while ago. I and
| a friend wanted to watch a movie, "Blast of Silence" it
| was called. We met in the bar two people, one of them I
| knew, the other one asked what we were about to watch, I
| answered "Blast of Silence", pronouncing it completely
| wrong (our mother tongue is some sort of German), she
| thought I made a joke and I told her with a completely
| straight face that I didn't learn English in school as I
| was going to a very basic school. I had to completely
| rely on the subtitles. She was a little bit embarrassed
| to have brought it up. moral of the story: you have to
| play dumb convincingly then you can have a little bit of
| fun
| api wrote:
| Yes, it is, and that's the irony, making it meta, which
| makes it the very kind of pretentious bullshit it is
| critiquing, which makes it brilliant, which also makes it
| bullshit, which is amusing. It's great satire.
|
| A version of this I've experienced before is when
| someone's trying to "pill" you on some ideology that
| you've already examined and tossed aside. They keep
| trying to educate you on it. Like the problem is you
| don't get it. You can't even get across that no, in fact,
| you do get it, and you don't _accept_ it.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| A decent red flag to detect typical New-Yorker intellectual
| fart sniffers.
| api wrote:
| Someone should make a site for literature, music, art, etc.
| that uses a filter to exclude anything from New York.
|
| I mean it's not like everything from New York is bad, but
| even the good stuff there is eclipsed by the sheer volume
| and assumed gravitas of pretentious crap. (Apparently
| there's now a whole scene there of right-wing pretentious
| crap too, so this is by no means a political dig.)
|
| It'd be kind of like Kagi's "small web" switch. Show me the
| great painter of incredibly moving scenes in some college
| town in Michigan who lives in a borderline squat and can't
| pay her bills or the indie hillbilly trip-hop crossover
| band in Oklahoma doing something original and actually
| good.
|
| The net was supposed to be all about this but algorithms
| have kind of ruined it by algorithmically promoting
| attention bait, like an automated version of the
| pretentious gravitas machine but with even worse taste.
| stemlord wrote:
| That would be amazing. Idk if you're hating on NYC but
| yeah, artists go there for career exposure so it would be
| interesting to somehow gain easy access to all of those
| who haven't sought exposure through the main
| institutional channels
| api wrote:
| I'm not really hating on NYC so much as the pretentious
| gravitas machine that seems to be permanently stuck on
| early-mid 20th century avant garde tropes and derivatives
| of them. There just happens to be a crapload of that in
| New York, and a ton of people who want to be in and
| around that scene, so much so that an anti-NYC filter
| would be useful.
|
| Years ago I lived in a little town called Asheville, NC.
| I've heard it's not as good as it used to be but back
| then... the sheer number of _unbelievable_ artists that
| nobody had ever heard of and were living at or near
| poverty was staggering. I miss strolling through downtown
| and stopping into galleries and routinely seeing pieces
| that were _moving._ I really wish I 'd collected more of
| it or at least taken notes and written down names. The
| place was also covered in graffiti far more interesting
| and clever than most of Banksy. I photographed a little
| of it. Should have photographed more.
|
| Apparently there's a number of small towns and medium
| sized cities with concentrations like this, because
| seldom can artists genuinely committed to their own
| visions afford to live in a place like NYC. The reason
| you saw a lot of genuinely innovative art there once was
| that it was cheap because it was dirty and crime-ridden.
| Now people like that go to little towns, medium sized
| cities in the interior, and the middle of nowhere.
|
| I do think going to NYC can be actively harmful though...
| there's been two musicians I genuinely loved who made
| incredible original visionary stuff in places like Ann
| Arbor MI and Mississippi and then moved to NYC and their
| stuff became dull atonal ambient click-noise junk. Cause
| that's avant garde, I guess.
|
| Tangentially...
|
| I've heard there is now a quietly but explicitly well-
| funded detachment of far-right and "alt-right" New Yorker
| artists and intellectuals making right-wing coded
| pretentious crap. (Most pretentious crap is left-coded
| but it does not have to be.) Maybe this is what will
| finally kill the thing I'm talking about.
| dddw wrote:
| Excellent, I will be copying you, and hope we meet. JK,
| seriously curious how this works out at an art-opening.
| jancsika wrote:
| Dollars to donuts the only thing standing in the way of you
| having a mutually meaningful conversation with anyone in this
| set of people is your low effort filter.
| keiferski wrote:
| People who say stuff like this are just signaling. Same exact
| thing as the people that "don't care about fashion" yet wear
| the same hoodie jeans uniform as everyone else.
| smartbit wrote:
| _Walk Through Walls: A Memoir_
| https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/288046/walk-through-walls-by...
| also covers her relationship with Ula.
|
| Easy read, personal & entertaining. Highly recommended.
| keiferski wrote:
| Also if you're interested in this type of art, look up Tehching
| Hsieh, who was an inspiration to Abramovic. He did some really
| cool stuff and only got recognition in the last 15 years or so.
| axpy906 wrote:
| Isn't that the soul cooking lady from the Podesta files?
|
| Edit: yup looks like it
| preciz wrote:
| The fact this is the top comment shows that HN is healing.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah, not so much. Half a decade ago there would be some
| interesting commentary on her performance art. Now it's just
| Reddit tier meme comments and "it's dumb and I think anyone
| that likes her is dumb."
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Her performance art consciously courts controversy, so it
| wouldn't be fair to the artist to ignore this aspect of her
| work. Anybody who wants the discussion to avoid the
| controversies is being dumb and quite frankly doesn't
| understand art!
| keiferski wrote:
| What aspect? I doubt any of the shallow dismissals are
| even vaguely familiar with her work.
|
| Certainly it's possible to critique her, but I'm not
| seeing any of that here.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| The woman goes out of her way to play on taboos like
| cannibalism, but you think you're doing her a favor to
| ignore it? Please.
| keiferski wrote:
| Again - perfectly fine to critique her methods,
| attention-seeking, etc., preferably after taking the time
| to understand why she is doing this.
|
| But I don't see any of that here. Just mindless "it's
| dumb." Very similar vibes to the angry atheism cultural
| trends 15 years ago.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Mindless "it's dumb" when she's literally posing with
| decapitated goat heads, fully aware of their centuries-
| old symbolism?
|
| My reaction to your response is that your moral compass
| has the sensitivity of a glass thermometer that fell off
| the wall.
| keiferski wrote:
| Do you have an actual point to make?
|
| I don't personally care for her work, at least the more
| recent stuff. Her older performances were more
| interesting. But I'm not evaluating it morally, and I
| don't really see how it being "demonic" is equivalent to
| it being dumb.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Your problem is that you see "demonic" as an aesthetic
| choice; but Marina and others like her completely believe
| what they are doing is real and has weight. The people
| accused of engaging in the occult are frequently offended
| by those who claim it is merely aesthetic.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| A video of Abramovic preparing for one event shows her
| smearing pig blood on walls while writing cryptic
| instructions, including, "Mix fresh breast milk with fresh
| sperm milk, drink on earthquake nights."
|
| In one photo, Abramovic holds a bloody, skinned goat head--
| a symbol associated with Baphomet, a pagan idol tied to
| Satanism. Another image depicts her standing behind a model
| posed as a "dead" body, naked with her internal organs
| spilling out. Abramovic's hand gestures in these photos are
| said to align with occult practices.
|
| - https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/zara-announces-new-
| creepy-...
|
| If that's not demonic, Satanic, and occult, _what would you
| ever call demonic, Satanic, and occult_? Does every demonic
| person need to self-identify as such? Is this a game of
| "she's not because she says she's not"? Believe people when
| they tell you what they are.
| keiferski wrote:
| Pretty strange for sure.
|
| Not clear to me how that has anything to do with my
| comment. Thanks for the reminder not to engage with
| bizarre comments, though.
| api wrote:
| I call it being an edgelord, and it's a great way to get
| attention, and it worked because we are talking about it.
| nftu wrote:
| I first learned of her from her Netflix documentary, long
| before the Spirit Cooking thing, and she came across as a
| pretentious twit to me. I'll say I did have some respect
| for her commitment. I'm admittedly someone who doesn't
| "get" performance art, though.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/marina-abramovics-spirit-cooking/
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| She's always been so cringey. Like when she let people beat her
| up and called it art.
| lpd59 wrote:
| These self-proclaimed conceptual artists entire 'work' consists
| of doing stupid and pointless things in public to get money and
| attention and then act pretentiously about it. In other words,
| they invented the concept of influencer 30 or 40 years before it
| was mainstream on the internet.
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(page generated 2026-03-21 23:01 UTC)