I have been very influenced by Marina Abramovic the last couple of months. She is a brilliant performance artist who can really engage with her audience on a personal level. I bought this film last week, which is a documentary on her latest piece The Artist is Present that was performed at MoMA in NYC along with a retrospective of her life's work. For the piece, there was a large space with a table and two chairs; she would sit in one chair and an audience member would sit in the other and they would share a moment of silence together. A simple concept, but one that created a profound experience for the audience. Below is a YouTube video of a talk Marina gave about art and the process of preparing to give a performance. Very much worth watching!

I have been on Spring Break from school this week, and since I did not have many commitments it gave me lots of time to listen to some great things while I attempted to clean my house. On a side note: turns out you can not buy CD players anymore at stores like Target, Wal-mart, etc. Since my car and computer both crapped out, I have had no way to play CD's, which apparently does not matter to mass consumers anymore because that technology has a foot in the grave. Resorting to a pawn shop to find a basic CD player/boom box makes me feel old. And also slightly confused considering Target had record players? "Hang on to those CD's kids! Some day they will be worth something!" Said no one.