Category:
Performance Art

Lys Chelys, French Female Fakir

Modern performers like David Blaine, who entomb themselves in glass boxes, are carrying on an old tradition, as seen below in the first video with Lys Chelys.

The still photo shows her exiting her "sarcophage" after 57 days without eating.

After her items, we have a full movie utilizing the same theme.





Photo source.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 05, 2021 - Comments (1)
Category: Food, Magic and Illusions and Sleight of Hand, Performance Art, 1950s, Europe, United Kingdom

Finding a needle in a haystack

ARTnews reports that the artist Sven Sachsalber recently died at the young age of 33. Sachsalber's most famous work, which Chuck posted about in 2014, was when he spent two days searching for, and eventually finding, a needle hidden in a haystack.



Some of Sachsalber's other works (or 'performances') included:

  • Completing, with his father, a 13,200-piece puzzle of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam
  • Eating a poisonous mushroom
  • Spending 24 hours in a room with a cow

For whatever it's worth, Sachsalber wasn't the first person to try and find a needle in a haystack. Legendary publicist Jim Moran did the exact same stunt back in 1939.

Popular Science - July 1939
Note: despite what the caption says, Moran did find the needle.
He then sent it to the Smithsonian.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Dec 22, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Publicity Stunts, Homages, Pastiches, Tributes and Borrowings, Performance Art, Obituaries

The Rain

The film shows Marcel Broodthaers trying to write while the rain constantly washes away the ink. In the final scene, during which the artist gives up and drops his pen, the inscription “Projet pour un texte” (Project for a text) appears.

Is that actually rain, or is someone spraying him with a hose?

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 21, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Performance Art, Absurdism and Dadaism, Writers, 1960s

An Intentional Cannibal

There's an old urban legend, which folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand refers to as 'The Accidental Cannibals,' about people who accidentally eat the cremated remains of a loved one:

the story circulated about how postwar food packages from the United States led to a gruesome confusion. When one package arrived containing an unlabeled dark powder, people assumed it was some kind of instant soup or drink, or perhaps a condiment. Only after most of the powder had been consumed did a letter from the United States arrive explaining that the powder was the ashes of their emigrant grandmother who had died during the war and who wanted her remains returned to Romanian soil...

A recent version of the legend describes the cremains of a relative shipped home from Australia to England and mixed there into the Christmas pudding. Half the pudding has been consumed by the time the letter of explanation anives.




In a case of urban-legend-becomes-real-life, performance artist Eva Margarita has announced that she'll be mixing the cremated remains of her father into three different entrees and then eating them. She'll be doing this "to not only honor his spirit but to show how communities pass on knowledge through a practice in eating and conjuring with one another."

Her performance will be broadcast live on the Internet. It's happening today (Sep 23, 2020), from 8 AM to 8 PM (eastern time).



In an interview on timeout.com, Margarita offers some details about how she'll prepare her father's cremains:

I'm taking just the bone pieces. I'm grinding them down in a molcajete, or a mortar and pestle, and then I'm adding them into the food. I'm grinding them down in a metaphorical sense to help grind down the body and flesh, but also it's almost to subvert the grinding that we do in real life, and all the beating that we've taken throughout, but now it's done out of love.


Thanks to Gerald Sacks!

Posted By: Alex - Wed Sep 23, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Cannibalism, Food, Performance Art

Sybil Brintrup, RIP

Alas, the world will get no more performances like this one.

Obit in Spanish.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 14, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art

Lunar Striptease

Edited to stop short of bare bosoms.

Posted By: Paul - Fri May 22, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Aliens, Body, Entertainment, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Performance Art

Capitalist Man

The New York Post has an interview with the performance artist who calls himself "Capitalist Man." His gimmick is that he carries around a see-through briefcase, which he claims contains $500,000 in hundred-dollar bills, and he's trying to find someone willing to buy it for a million dollars.

The price tag, he says, is "$500,000 for the cash, $500,000 for the concept." Any interested buyer gets to examine the bills before purchase.

Capitalist Man says that if someone does buy his briefcase full of money, his profit will go entirely to charity. But so far, he has no takers.

Image source: Facebook

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jan 16, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Money, Performance Art

Medieval Illustration Re-enactors

"A Group Of Czech Students Recreate Weird And Strange Scenes From Medieval Books"

Many more at the source.



Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 08, 2019 - Comments (1)
Category: History, Hobbies and DIY, Humor, Performance Art

Crawling as art

This weekend in New York City, artist Pope.L organized a “group crawl" along a 1.5 mile route from Seravalli Playground in the West Village to Union Square. 140 people participated. Pope.L wasn't one of them. He "walked alongside the crawlers for the duration of the performance, offering support and chatting with viewers."

Over the years, however, Pope.L has personally done a lot of crawling... turning it into an artform. From his wikipedia page:

eRacism, a project that Pope.L began during the late 1970s, included over 40 endurance-based performances consisting of “crawls”, varying in length and duration. In one example titled Tompkins Square Crawl (1991) Pope.L dressed in a business suit and crawled through the gutter in Tompkins Square Park, New York, pushing a potted flower with one hand. Another example titled The Great White Way involved a crawl which stretched over 22 miles and took five years to complete. For this performance he donned a Superman outfit and strapped a skateboard to his back. The crawl stretched the entire 22 miles of Broadway, in New York City.

The Great White Way - source Wikipedia



Tompkins Square Crawl (1991) - source Forbes

Posted By: Alex - Sun Sep 22, 2019 - Comments (2)
Category: Performance Art

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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