Marcus Coates—the man who’s learned to be an animal

British artist Marcus Coates thinks Nature can help address the concerns of the urban poor. So he's trained himself to be an animal, so as to bring Nature to them. He goes to slums, gathers groups of the local residents, and then does a shamanistic trance thing in which he "journeys to the lower world" to seek the wisdom of animal spirits. He does this while wearing a deer's head and skin, and uttering grunts and cries. Sometimes he'll wear a horse's head, or a badger hat. More about him here and here. Check out the video to see him in action.

Posted By: Alex - Thu May 24, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Art, Performance Art

Bear sculpture made out of louis vuitton handbags

Nightmarish or artistic? (or both?) Created by UK artist Billie Achilleos. On display at the Louis Vuitton Omotesando store in Tokyo. (via fashionstoyou)

Posted By: Alex - Thu May 03, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Art

Turner Prize 2012

It's that time of the year again, a favorite moment for all WU-vies. The shortlist for the UK Turner Prize is announced! We get to see a selection of the best and the brightest UK artists, those figures who contribute to humanity's glorious heritage of imperishable art that uplifts the soul and defines what it is to be human.

My personal fave this year is Lali Chetwynd. "She reworks iconic moments from cultural history in deliberately amateurish and improvisatory performances." Such as you see above.

Monet, eat your heart out!

Posted By: Paul - Wed May 02, 2012 - Comments (7)
Category: Annoying Things, Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Science Fiction, Europe

Nagi Noda’s Hair Hats

Learn more here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue May 01, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Art, Surrealism, Body Modifications, Asia, Hair and Hairstyling

More Placenta Weirdness

After posting a few days ago about the doctor who was speculating about the benefits of eating placenta, I realized I had merely scratched the surface of placenta weirdness. There's also a growing interest in placenta art — that is, smearing the placenta against a piece of paper and calling it art.



Another option is to transform your placenta into a placenta teddy bear. Your kid is sure to need years of therapy once he gets old enough to realize what he's been cuddling up with at night.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 14, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Babies, Pregnancy

John Graham

[Click either to enlarge]

Apparently, the painter John Graham was highly eccentric, both in his personal life and in his art. One fascination he had was with crossed eyes, as seen above.

His self-portrait below shows a certain, ah, uniqueness.

Read more about him in this LIFE magazine article and at this site.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 05, 2012 - Comments (2)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Eccentrics, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Russia

The Toilet Art of Adrian Rodriguez

His art involves spending a lot of time staring into toilet bowls. He calls his creations "toilygraphs."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 31, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Bathrooms, Photography and Photographers

Angel

See how long you can last through this 1966 film without ingesting any drugs. Caffeine permitted.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 14, 2012 - Comments (13)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Surrealism, Body Modifications, Dreams and Nightmares, Drugs, Movies, 1960s

Interior Clouds

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates temporary clouds inside rooms by regulating the temperature and humidity inside the rooms.



When I saw this it immediately reminded me of an experiment conducted in the eighteenth century by the Dutch scientist Martin van Marum. He created two artificial clouds by filling calf's bladders with hydrogen, causing them to float around his laboratory. He gave one of these bladder-clouds a positive charge, and another a negative charge. As these charged clouds floated around, sparks would pass between them. This was Van Marum's way of simulating a lightning storm.

But van Marum had an extra trick that was always a great crowd pleaser. He introduced a third (non-charged) cloud into the room. When this non-charged cloud passed between the two charged ones as they were exchanging sparks, it would noisily explode into flames (kinda like a miniature Hindenburg). That's how to do an interior cloud installation properly!

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 13, 2012 - Comments (11)
Category: Art, Science, Experiments

One Night in a City

Wu-vies--Originally, this nine-minute clip was viewable in its entirety. Since I created the post, however, it's been marked "private." So here's a two-minute trailer for it, to give you just a taste, unfortunately.

One Night in a City from İstanbul Animation Festival on Vimeo.

Now that I do a little more research, it appears that even the nine-minute clip was a fraction of the 76-minute feature. Might be worth searching out on DVD.

More info here.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 18, 2012 - Comments (5)
Category: Art, Body Modifications, Music, Puppets and Automatons, Stop-motion Animation, Europe