• @[email protected]
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    3910 months ago

    A lot of this stuff is really cool tho. People rag on modern art because they dont understand it or because they are pushing a regressive worldview onto others. This stuff is good/important because it is weird.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        Ngl I respect the eyelash painter regardless.

        Everyone else is just part of a money laundering scheme.

        She’s willing to suffer for the art at least.

    • @CptEnder
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      1310 months ago

      Yuh there were some real good ones in here with pretty strong messages - woman in vacuum seal.

      Also the high jump one was just cool af.

    • @[email protected]
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      410 months ago

      And for as weird as they may seem at first blush, many of these obviously took real skill, thought, and effort to execute. Some of these would even be dangerous or deadly without that effort.

      • @[email protected]
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        -110 months ago

        Could you please give some timestamps for the many instances which you believe took real skill? Because I didn’t see a single one.

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        I think it’s less committing suicide, and more at the behest of corruption, unrestricted power, and a persistent lack of empathy.

        But words are cheap, I will now perform eighty hours of silence and fasting. You must experience this with me to fulfill my my art. Only by the end of the period will you realize I was not participating, but instead exhibiting the role of the corrupted ruling class.

        Also, I’m going to paint my weiner and slap it around on some paper.

        • @Leviathan
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          110 months ago

          Record it and submit. Art it will be.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          Some are saying things, some are just doing stuff because they can. I’m not convinced it’s any less sane than, say, working in finance. It’s definitely less harmful.

          The thing about art is that it’s whatever you can get away with. Sometimes that leaves room for powerful critiques of the system, sometimes it’s just random stuff. In order to survive in capitalism, artists have to keep producing art. This means that they’re incentiveized to produce things that are meaningless… Which is what most people in society do most of the time.

          So these folks take some drugs and externalize the absurdity rather than fume in an office for decades before snapping and shooting a bunch of people or just offing themselves. Is it crazier to throw the absurdity of society back in it’s face, or pretend that any of this is OK?

          Edit: How many people reading this are pretending to work? You could be outside touching grass. You could be inside by a fire. Every minute you spend pretending to work is a waste of your life. Imagine if you threw your computer against the wall, walked out of the office, covered yourself in paint, and started flopping against a canvas like a fish. Would you experience more joy than you are experiencing right now, trapped at work pretending to do something meaningful? Yeah, I’m gonna go back to work but I’m also not gonna judge.

          • @[email protected]OP
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            110 months ago

            I agree, you do have a point there.

            But that still doesn’t make it good art. Sure, we aren’t doing anything productive as well, but at least the only ones that we lie about how productive we are, are our bosses.

            • @[email protected]
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              310 months ago

              Some of it forces you to think about what you’re doing with your life. That alone is a redeeming value. Most of that means nothing to me or is funny out of context, but the context could make everything. Or it could be bad. I’m not sure that it matters, but it’s really difficult to impossible without knowing the context (like, who’s the audience).

              If I made a joke about tech, I’m guessing you might get it but most folks wouldn’t. Does that mean the joke isn’t funny or that the other people just aren’t in on it?

              • @[email protected]OP
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                10 months ago

                Depends on the joke I guess. If it’s something more commonly known, even if it is about tech, it would be funny for most people. Like the CD-ROM as a cup holder thing, that would be funny for most people.

                Most people have this notion that tech people are like robots and get nothing outside of tech. That is true for most (I have to admit), but then you run into an odd ball like me. I’ve been to operas, plays, art exibitions, concerts (alternative music mostly). And I do enjoy doing all of that. Well, art exibitions not that much… depends on the art I guess. But yeah, I am very much into classical music, as well as the theater.

                My point is, I like to dwell on social problems and constructs and why things are like this or like that and how we could make them better. And I agree, most of the questions regarding these things came through art (lyrics or a dialogue in a play). So it’s not that I’m cluless about life and how things work IRL. I do consider that it’s a shame that we have to do meaningless things in order to make ends meat, but that’s how life in this society is. I’m not delusional that a single individual (or even a million) can change how the world works. Thus, I do respect what the artists are trying to say, but they don’t usually offer solutions, just make us aware of the problem. Yes, I do agree that that is good as well, but I’ve seen this pattern over and over. Point to the problem with no real advice on how to solve it. I’m a problem solver, I don’t like it when a problem has no solution and becomes circumstance. Thus, simply pointing out to me that there is something seriously wrong with this or that is just not enough. Sure, if it’s entertaining, as an art exibit, OK, I can go with that… but that alone is just not enough to move me.

                This is why I like movies like Fight Club. They don’t just point to the problem, but take real steps into solving it, no matter how absurd those steps might be (like banks have no backups of records offshore 😂). They still tried and had a step by step plan of doing it. That is what I like, a plan of action. Something that might not be thought of all the way through, but still, it’s a step in the right direction, and maybe we will change the plan when we see things aren’t what we thought.

                People usually refer to me as the “gets the job done” guy. I either do it right or don’t do it all. I don’t like half baked solutions or endless meetings with nothing concrete to show for at the end. I would rather just start doing something about it, even if it’s wrong, then adapt the course of action, than just analyze to death and not actually do anything about the problem at hand. Sure, analysis is a very important part of planning, but from what I’ve seen so far in life, people do just that with no real incentive to actually start doing something about the problem. And that bugs me A LOT.

                • @[email protected]
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                  110 months ago

                  So, Fight Club is about how masculinity within patriarchy destroys men. A man who is an isolated consumer isn’t allowed to cry because he’s confirming to masculinity, he has a mental breakdown and turns to expresses his sadness as violence. At the end of the book he gets in to every fight until his cheeks wear away and he’s described as looking like a jack-o’-lantern. After he confronts Tyler and shoots himself, he becomes catatonic and lives in a mental hospital.

                  The fact that the plans wouldn’t actually do anything are part of the point. It’s just an unfocused attack on a system that dehumanizes. In the end, it just becomes part of the system he attacked. Which is also his critique of what became ecofascism.

                  The author is gay. A big element of masculinity is cisgendered heterosexual, as least in the US context and especially in the late 90’s when he was writing. He was excluded in some ways from masculinity at that time, while socialized in it. So he has a lot of reasons to explore and decompose masculinity.

                  Brad Pitt, when playing Tyler, understood the critique as well and continued to push on the what masculinity means. While regularly playing an architypical man, he’s often worn dresses. The fact that he can do both demonstrantes the malleability of the definition of masculinity (this is also called “queering” masculinity).

                  I know all this because that’s one of my favorite movies/books. I was in highschool when it came out. I was studying AP English, so I decided to my final paper on absurdism and antiheroes in Fight Club, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Good Soldier Ŝvejk. But even after reading it and having a ton of context, I actually didn’t really understand it. It wasn’t until years later that I was able to revisit it through the lense of feminism that I understood how much of Fight Club is actually feminist.

                  Even though all the information was available to me, I still didn’t get it. Fight Club, Starship Troopers, Rick and Morty, and other films and media that criticize masculinity, violence, and authoritarianism are so often misunderstood by their fans… Like the point of Nirvana’s In Bloom. Could the fact that the majority of people who watch these movies completely miss the point make them, by definition, bad art? They fail, fundamentally, to relate their ideas. Isn’t that a problem?

                  I don’t think the fact that people don’t understand a piece of art makes it bad, and I’m really careful about criticizing art without having context… especially if I’m not the audience.

                  Context is super important. For example, a lot of people don’t realize that the whole “modern art is shit” meme was super important to Hitler. He claimed that Jews were creating “degenerate art” that degraded German culture. They did art shows that were compilations of things they didn’t like or didn’t understand before burning them… Kind of like this compilation. So things like criticizing the concept of modern art (especially out of context) or taking about sterilizing people with disabilities that I always push back on. A lot of people don’t know the connections with those.

                  I work in computer security now, and have for like 15 years or so. Almost every vulnerability is someone trying to solve a problem they don’t fully understand. Occasionally someone will try to solve a problem that isn’t a problem at all and make a problem in the process. Some problems people keep trying to solve when they really need to step away and let a professional handle it, like cryptography.

                  I’ve seen too many people make a huge mess trying to solve a problem they didn’t totally understand or didn’t comprehend the impact of a solution.I always ask myself if a problem needs to be solved before trying to solve it. In a world where people are making money off genocide, starving people, inciting terrorist attacks, and making life unlivable on the planet, is some people acting silly really a thing worth fighting against? It just feels a bit like punching down.

    • @100_percent_a_bot
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      410 months ago

      That’s just what going 200k into debt you’ll never be able to pay off does to your psyche.

      • @draneceusrex
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        710 months ago

        As someone with a BFA (without debt), no those are mostly the ones working at Starbucks, or taught themselves coding or webdesign after graduation. These are the nepobabies who can actually afford to attempt an art career.

  • @MimicJar
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    2310 months ago

    I don’t get most of it, but I vibe with paper towel lady at 1:06.

    Also cucumber lad at 1:24 has childhood bordem that I can relate to.

  • @JusticeForPorygon
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    1310 months ago

    I’m pretty sure I could just go to a modern art museum while trippin balls and cause a scene and I bet people would put cash in my head thinking it’s a show.

  • @Nikls94
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    1010 months ago

    I think the only thing I didn’t do was…. I don’t know. Nearly everything shown here have I done as a little child.

    • @fidodo
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      110 months ago

      Picasso said “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”

      • @Nikls94
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        110 months ago

        So the answer to the question of what beauty and art really is, is a child?

  • @Leviathan
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    910 months ago

    I’m into it. Doesn’t need to make sense out of context in a 3 second clip. I’ll still go experience it. I’ve seen some pretty moving art installations that, taken as a 3 second clip out of context, would make a bunch of people on the internet go “art no make sense”.

  • @[email protected]
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    610 months ago

    I just see “video not found, server is down” and I’m thinking this is shitpost and that totally could be the “art”… 🤔

    • @TeddE
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      610 months ago

      True. But also not just 2:04. I’d say ~¼ of them could be described in fetish terms.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      10 months ago

      What is there to understand… a bunch of people doing weird shit they like to call art. If that’s the case, each of us does art every day, we just don’t film ourselves doing it and call it that. Shit, film it, put some interesting music as the shit exits your anus, post it, tadaaaa, art.

      • @[email protected]
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        610 months ago

        You’ve kind of hit the nail on the head, art is by definition anything the observer and/or the creator calls art and it creates some sort of emotional response in the observer.

        By all means do a shit, film it and book somewhere to show it to an audience and you have indeed created art.

        I agree that without any context, most of these clips look like ridiculous bullshit, but without understanding what the intention of the creator is and what the audience are getting from something you might as well just post clips of Star Wars without context and say “look how stupid this is LOL”

        • @[email protected]OP
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          10 months ago

          You’ve kind of hit the nail on the head, art is by definition anything the observer and/or the creator calls art and it creates some sort of emotional response in the observer.

          Yeah it does, it makes me wanna look surprised and walk away. Does that make it art? No, at least not in my mind.

          By all means do a shit, film it and book somewhere to show it to an audience and you have indeed created art.

          See, this is why I stopped listening to alternative music. Cuz everyone just copy/pasted everyone else in the end, not to mention artists and bands, as old as time, just doing what they’re doing for the income, drugs and nothing else. They really don’t care about the music any more, some have even admitted that in public. So, am I supposed to listen to 100 albums on the off chance that I get to hear that one artists or band that actually made something new, interesting, not shitty, and different? No, thank you, I’m way past that point.

          I agree that without any context, most of these clips look like ridiculous bullshit, but without understanding what the intention of the creator is and what the audience are getting from something you might as well just post clips of Star Wars without context and say “look how stupid this is LOL”

          You know, I once went to this play called Solaris (there were movies made after the play as well, one English one Russian). Anyway, I was really excited because I really liked the movies (mainly the US version, the Russian one was somewhat boring, but watchable) and I was so pumped, I bought a ticket 3 weeks ahead.

          So I go in and sit, the play starts and… it’s 5 hours long, 2 pauses in between… OK, I was expecting that, as long as it’s interesting, it doesn’t matter, right? And the play starts and it’s just… an hour and a half of slow motion movements, no dialogue, nothing… OK, I will be patient 😤. Oh, finally, some doaloge 🥳. 5 minutes, even that was in almost slow motion. Another hour passes with shit like in the clip, just people doing things that make no sense at all. That’s it. I got up, walked away from the theater. Those 3 hours have to be one of the most pointlessly spent ones in my entire life.

          My point is, I knew the context of the movies, I knew what they were about and I saw none of that in the play. What does that say about the director of the play? Mind you, I wasn’t the only one leaving, the theater was mostly full, after an hour and a half there were like 30 people left, I was amongst the last ones to leave. How stupid can you be to think that 5 hours of that shit will keep people interested and trying to “decode” “what was the artists trying to say with this or that”. It can be interesting if it was a dose of it, like 15 minutes, but 5 hours of that shut, fuck no.

          BTW, I bet you whatever ammount you like, I post a short Star Wars clip and screen it to people that have never seen Star Wars… 90% of people will understand what that scene was trying to say. It’s Star Wars, not Fight Club.

      • @frankenswine
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        510 months ago

        it’s always hard to find intended meaning in excerpts from performance art. does art have to be experts doing non-weird things in your opinion?

        nice post btw!

        • @[email protected]OP
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          10 months ago

          To be honest, I mostly just don’t get extreme performace art, like in the clip. I can listen to “extreme” (as in non-mainstream) music and watch “extreme” movies (like, let’s say Irreversible) and plays, but unless there is some dialogue… I’m sorry but, I don’t get it. Some performance art is cool and I get what they’re trying to say, but these extreme cases, no, I just don’t. Like the guy in the mummy outfit screaming. I bet that’s all there is in the performance… or a midget starts runnig half naked, also in a mummy costume (from top to half), or something like that… I mean, they’re predictable if you ask me. The point is to shock, nothing else IMO. I don’t think there is a point. The artist wants us to think there is one, so we wreck our brains “what was the artist trying to say 🤔”, while in reality, he just did some extreme shit, left the audience 😱 and them thinking “wow, he’s so artistic, he’s really good, the message was so strong” but when you ask those same people what the message was, they start studdering 😒. It’s all shenanagins, the artist stays all the wisers by not clearly stating what the message he was trying to say was (because there is none), the audience pretends like they understood what he was trying to say, but in fact didn’t understand shit cuz… well, there is nothing to understand.

          • @frankenswine
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            310 months ago

            how can you know these things when you only know a couple of seconds? that’s like saying you know a movie from having seen some short sequences of action scenes.

            art isn’t how it looks but rather how it makes you feel, no? framing art (like in this video) robs the original art of their intention and creates a new perception on it.

            kinda like saying rock music is bad because you heard of ozzy munching a bat or seeing marilyn manson harm himself on stage

            • @[email protected]OP
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              10 months ago

              I have seen other performance artists, the clip is not the first time I encounter performance art.

              It makes me feel like I’m stupid for not getting what the artist was trying to say. There is nothing to get. I bet if you ask the artists to explain it, he will, but it’ll either make no sense, or he’ll say that he saw it in a dream or something like that.

              Ozzy does stupid things because he’s Ozzy. Manson is a performance artist as well. That doesn’t mean his music is bad, but I would never go to a Manson concert. The Resident Evil acore was pretty good actually.

              • @frankenswine
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                210 months ago

                Well, there is bad art, of course. Or maybe you’re just not into it (that much).

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  10 months ago

                  I am into art, just not performance art, and especially not performance art that is just done for the sake of art progressing, or whatever the reason of the artist might be to do some stupid unrelated things and call that art.