Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Santiago wanted me to take the video down for obvious reasons but I hope that my performance was memorable enough to comment without it haha. Anyway, for my Performance Art piece I decided to roll myself in banner paper to resemble a joint and walk through Plant Park on 4/20, a day considered a holiday by those who use marijuana. The idea was to decontextualize the use, and abuse, of marijuana by making the human body look like a form of the drug. It also was meant to show the reaction of those people who are very pro-marijuana. Both of these missions were accomplished successfully with my performance and I think it is certainly worth mentioning that I do not smoke weed at all so this was not done in a pro or anti-marijuana perspective, merely that of a performance artist conducting an experiment if you will.

P.S. The security guard's full quote at the end was "$30,000 a year to dress how?? Alright have fun".

11 comments:

  1. Your video was so funny and really got the best reactions from the general public. It definitely thought outside the box.

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  2. Everyone did a great job, but this is one of my favorites! Very funny! I think it's important that you stated your neutrality on the issue of weed smoking and made it clear that this was just an experiment and not a political statement. Great job!

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  3. Absolutely hilarious! What a great way for a non smoker to capitalize on 420. It was so funny to see all of the people in the park getting involved. This performance was my favorite

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  4. This was absolutely hilarious! I love how people were interacting with you and even took pictures with you. Fantastic idea!

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  5. Very, very funny performance! I love how many reactions you got, as opposed to the other videos simply because the "holiday" is so embraced. My favorite part was definitely the almost encouraging reactions of the security guards. Thanks for writing out that quote! haha

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  6. Very clever and funny idea! I liked how you used the combination of your performance with the holiday to give it more of an impact. Nice Job!

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  7. i think UT found our new mascot! haha i LOVED LOVED LOVED your project! god i couldnt imagine seeing a joint high, i probably would have fallen into the river if i had seen you in the park. i loved how you got some film of the security guards encouraging you. AWESOME job!

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  8. I'm glad you got to do your video on 4/20, that made it even more funny than it would have been otherwise. You definitley decontextualized the joint and it was hilarious to watch. Nice job.

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  9. Hilarious! This was so funny and ridiculous and I really like how you thought about the context of the date and where you were. So good.

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  10. This video was so great and the fact that it was done on 4/20 made it perfect. The reactions of people were so funny and it was great how you were embraced by so many people. It was like you were a celebrity, with people taking pictures with you.

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  11. very brave to post this online at first. I agree with Santiago to take it off the web asap. But it was a very appropriate performance to do because your picked the perfect day to do it on. Great idea

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