At first I was quite unclear about what exactly performance art is and how it's portrayed. After watching a couple videos in class I was struck by once such performance, where a woman named Marina Abramović allowed an audience to come up and use various different objects she laid out on a table any way they wanted to on her. One such object was a gun, which she knew was loaded. She claimed she was ready to die if it came down to it, but thankfully nobody pulled the trigger.
While not as brave or daring as miss Abramović, this did give me an idea. Would one of my friends pull the trigger on me if I asked? Of course I don't own a loaded handgun, but instead a homemade potato launcher my roommate constructed using only a couple PVC pipes, a grill lighter, and cement glue. When put together and infused with generic hairspray, the lighter ignites the flammable spray and shoots an object out of the pipe, with the capability of reaching a hundred yards.
With this at our disposal, I thought why not shoot things at me and see how far we could go?My one roommate refused to shoot me, but my second one was more than willing. We started out simple with just balled up toilet paper, nothing too sturdy but still enough to pack a punch, and believe me it did. Then we moved on to grapes wrapped in napkins to keep them together. This sprayed them everywhere and hit me both on the head (protected with a lacrosse helmet) and on my thigh. These were pretty hard but still weren't too dangerous (i think). Finally, we attempted to launch a portion of a bagel. Thankfully, my roommate was not too accurate and the bagel wizzed past my leg at no less than 30 miles an hour, but even the brush on my leg was enough to let me know this was as far as i wanted to go before we shot something really hard and actually made contact with my bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flgUJNapDlQ
OK, I think you should tell Marina A. how she inspired you.
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