Tilda Swinton’s performance art
The documentation of artist Marie Karlberg’s performance “Woman for Sale” (2013) has reached almost a million views on Youtube.
Like many Youtube videos with views of a similar amount, it has garnered a lot of very negative comments, some about the nature of contemporary art in general. Mostly, they’re just extremely misogynist, random Youtube comments.
When contemporary art directly intersects with mainstream audiences in public arenas such as Youtube, something uncanny happens. It could be argued that, because of its roots as an intellectual history, much contemporary art is inherently illegible to the public. Thus, when there’s a massive, forced reading of something illegible–particularly a work made by a woman using her own body–this is publicly understood as collective insanity and indulgence. This also brings to mind the work “Interior Semiotics” by School of the Art Institute of Chicago student Natacha Stolz.
The documentation of this performance was discovered by 4chan months after it was originally uploaded, and has since garnered over two million views as well as thousands of abusive comments.
What can we learn from these public clashes? Is contemporary art–specifically performance–so illegible to the public that it is basically seen as navel-gazing tomfoolery?