I have always liked Marina Abramovic, from her earliest works to the latest ones. — Read the rest

"The Hard Problem" is a new episode of the Into The Impossible podcast from the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination: it features the outcome of a collaboration between legendary performance artist Marina Abramović (previously) and environmentalist science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson (previously): a short story about an interstellar journey incorporating elements of Robinson's outstanding 2015 novel Aurora -- a novel that is pitiless in its insistence on rigor in our thinking about the problems of living in space and on other planets.

What happens if you allow a group of onlookers to do anything they want to you for six hours? Marina Abramovich found out in 1974 when she laid out dozens of items on a table, including a gun with one bullet, and allowed strangers to use the items on her however they saw fit.

Author Jasmina Tešanović writes this guest-essay on the work of 63-year old Serbian artist Marina Abramovic (above), the "grandmother of performance art" whose work will be honored in 2010 in a MOMA retrospective:

All her work is centered on body, her body which went through severe trials all these years: cutting, beating starving, public exposure… the dividing line between spirituality and trials is almost invisible, the path of living leads to death.

Nancy and Sluggo, stars of the greatest comic strip in history, pay parodistic homage to "Rest Energy," a classic 1980 performance art piece by Marina Abramović and Ulay. This fine t-shirt is available from Vacancy Projects. Below, a video except from "Rest Energy" and description of the work. — Read the rest

Composer Janek Schaefer drew from the work of John Cage, DJ Shadow, The Orb, Marina Abramović, Steve Reich, Chris Watson, and so many other greats to create this powerfully evocative and weird 90 minute mix. A former architect, Scahefer has masterfully designed a haunting, expansive environment of found sound. — Read the rest

John Podesta practices Aleister Crowley-inspired blood sex semen magic, reports Drudge Report, citing Infowars, which cites Wikileaks. They just went Full Drudge.

You never go full Drudge. — Read the rest

As I understand it, being the parent of children is consistently terrifying — like herding cats, except suddenly minor environmental conveniences, like power outlets and stairs and cars, suddenly turn lethal. Everything is to be either managed with your last shredded nerve or avoided.

Noemi sends us a Kickstarter campaign: "to help re-imagine education and establish an Art Circus for the Kids of Canning Town in East London run by the good folks at The House of Fairy Tales. International art stars Sir Peter Blake, Marina Abramovic, Jeremy Deller, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread and other high-profile art world names are collaborating with The House of Fairy Tales and Gavin Turk to create the world's first permanent Childrens' Art Circus, opening in East London in Autumn, 2013."

Years ago during the reign of Milosevic in Serbia I wrote an essay called "Decent people". It was about that 80 percent of Serbian people, the classic silent majority, who lived in denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, the snipers in Sarajevo, the shelling in Dubrovnik. — Read the rest

Image (click for large): The map of the genome of the first synthetic cell
J. Craig Venter: Genome Scientist, J. Craig Venter Institute; Author, A Life Decoded

From the Edge.org Serpentine Map Marathon. John Brockman writes:

Three years ago, Edge collaborated with The Serpentine Gallery in London in a program of "table-top experiments" as part of the Serpentine's Experiment Marathon .

Since April 10th of this year, Torino, Italy has been crowded by a strange mob of tourists: endless streams of international and local people, old and young, pious and less pious. They are Catholics, and believers of other religions, too.

The Shroud Crowd walks the majestic straight streets under the portici of this city, the first capital of Italy. — Read the rest

(Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanović, video here.)

Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial Prime Minister of Italy, suffered a severe physical attack in Milan this past week. The man who attacked him with the plaster model of the Duomo cathedral, at the site of the same Duomo cathedral, is said to have a history of mental illness. — Read the rest

(Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanović, photos by protest participants.)

Italian people are at their best in a piazza. Yesterday, the international "No B day" was held all over the world, in public squares. The largest event happened in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. — Read the rest

John Brockman's Edge "World Question Center" and the Seprentine Gallery in London debuted a new collaborative project where they asked dozens of smart people–scientists, authors, big thinkers–this question: "What is your formula? Your Equation? Your Algorithm?" People like Craig Venter, Keith Devlin, Freeman Dyson, Drew Endy, Brian Eno, and Douglas Rushkoff answered. — Read the rest