‘Human beings are “social animals” their habits, desires, hopes, fears and beliefs are shaped by various societies into which they are born’

We are surrounded by newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the internet, which are crowded with ‘celebrities’. Basically, people who are the same as everyone else but they have more money and are idolised…by us. The public. Their fans. Today’s society, myself included, are obsessed with appearance and body image. People either want to follow the latest fashion trends, or want to be ‘alternative’ by not following the trends, which is consequently creating their own trend. And these so-called ‘celebrities’ use the media as their main tool to communicate with the public. They thrive on any publicity, good and bad.

As a collective we are happy to moan about the celebrity culture that appears to be taking over, however, we don’t actually do anything to change it. This is something which I want to explore further.

 

 

WORKS CITED

Haeberle, J. Erwin (1983) The Sex Atlas Continuum Publishing Company: New York

 

Marina Abramovic – As I am writing my dissertation about Marina Abramovic, a performance artist, it is difficult to not be influenced by her work. She has created numerous performances ranging from carving a star into her stomach with a razor blade, to sharing the stage with a python, to sitting for over 700 hours opposite individual audience members. Like Joseph Beuys, Marina has looked at the idea of transformation. Her work consists of the power of the body and mind. Her earlier works and her collaborations focus mainly on the body, which she views as an object. Her later work looks at the mind and different states of consciousness the performer and audience develop together.

Her performance Art Must Be Beautiful features  a typically feminine action which she repeats ‘the artist combs her hair forcefully, without a pause, for more than 50 minutes’ while doing this ‘she repeats the sentence “art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful” like a mantra’.

Elizabeth Price – Recently won the 2012 Turner Prize for her piece Woolworths Choir of 1979, a video installation, which combined the burning of the Central Manchester branch of Woolworths with church architecture and the 1960’s girl band the Shangr-Las. The element that made this piece as powerful as it was, was the musical element she included. It consisted of a group of delicately placed clicks and claps which featured throughout the piece, showing genre changes and tempo changes. As an audience member the sound that encased the room made the piece more compelling and interesting to watch, the room in which you could either sit or stand was pitch black so all the attention was focused on the screen.

The ‘music’ in this video is what she used in her actual performance and the clicks and claps I have referred to.

WORKS CITED

Re.act Feminism (1975) Marina Abramovic Online: www.reactfeminism.org (accessed: March 5th)

Tate (2013) Turner Prize Winner: Elizabeth Price Online: www.youtube.com (accessed March 5th)