Marina Abramović is a Yugoslavian-born performance artist, known for her boundary-shattering, provoking and experimental performances where she often explore the nature of the audience, the limitations of body and mind, and the willpower of the human being.
This photography was taken right after her “Rhythm 0” performance in 1974, where she further tested the limits of the relationship between performer and audience. “Rhythm 0” is arguably her most (in)famous and most talked about performance, where she assigned herself a very passive role in relationship to the audience, which were given total power to act upon her physically passive body as they pleased.
Abramovic lied down upon a table and placed 72 objects in front of her that people were allowed to use on her. Some of these were objects that would bring pleasure, while others would cause harm, or even potential death. Some of the things she put on the table was a rose, a feather, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, and a gun with one single bullet, among various other things.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) people began to act more aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.” … “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation.”
The ancient golden Helmet of Coţofeneşti, is a Geto-Dacian helmet dating from the first half of the 4th century BC. The helmet was uncovered by chance by a child on the territory of the village of Poiana Coţofeneşti (now Poiana Vărbilău), Romania.
This is an exceptionally well preserved helmet, missing only the part of its skull cap. It is made of pure gold, almost a kilogram in weight, and displays the “autochthonous character” of this artwork. The helmet is decorated with two large apotropaic eyes, intended to ward off the evil eye and magical spell. It is believed to have once belonged to an unknown local Geto-Dacian local aristocratic noble or a king from around 400 BC.
One theory suggests that this item was the sacred helmet of Zalmoxis, the living god-prophet of the Dacians. It has, however, never been proven.
The extensive decorations depict an illustration, (on either cheek-piece), of a ritual enactment, as well as depictions of a range of mythical creations.
The cheek-pieces of the Poiana-Coţofeneşti helmet show a ram being sacrificed by a man who kneels on its body and is about to cut its throat with a short knife. The iconography on the right side of the helmet is of a great interest, and has been interpreted in light of the tauroctony scene from the Mithraic Mysteries. Environment and affluence might well account for a change to a larger beast in the species offered and a similar interpretation of a bull-slaying episode. This sacrifice of the ram might have been performed by the “king-priest-god”
The pair of Voracious Beasts on the Coţofeneşti neck-guard occupy a lower register along with a similar creature deprived of a victim’s leg. This motif of the “Voracious Beast” is found earlier in Assyrian art, and was popular among the Etruscans. Phoenicia was probably the intermediary for its transferral to Italy and around the Adriatic, but Voracious Beast must also have traveled through Asia Minor to appear in a North Thracian idiom not only on the Coţofeneşti neck-guard but also in high relief on the base of the Aghighiol beakers (Aghighiol is a village near the Danube Delta in eastern Romania).
The upper register displays a row of three seated or squatting winged creatures, rather monkey-like with human faces, long forearms, and long tails. These, however, are surely direct, if run-down, descendants of the sphinxes on a gold beaker from Amlash.
The decorations such as rosette, strips, triangles, spiral and others are specific Geto-Dacian art motifs. The scene of sacrifice the ram is an oriental Iranian theme that entered in the Greek art and from there in the ‘barbarian’ art. Therefore, the helmet seems to have been realized in a Greek workshop. But, in the same time the awkward technique of execution that contrasts with the perfect technique of a Greek craftsman points out to an autochthonous one. (x)
Courtesy & currently located at the National Museum of Romanian History. Photo taken by CristianChirita
How Big is the Universe? via minutephysics
Carbon Nanotubes Used in Scaffolds to Grow Working Rat Hearts
Heart cells share many of the problems of neurons, from a research perspective; they are woefully inept at directing their own growth through space, requiring virtually every effort be made on their behalf, and even when led to the right place require all sorts of special genetic and chemical allowances. It was once thought impossible to regrow neurons, but lately we’ve come to realize that it’s just very, very finicky. Not the least of the reasons for this is conductivity; neurons cannot work unless they somehow come to meet one another such that an electrical signal can propagate between them. Heart cells are much the same — a cluster of so-called pacemaker cells keeps the whole thing contracting as one. This requires not just that the pacemaker signal pass between the cells, but that it happens fast enough for the heart to act seemingly as one coordinated unit.
In pursuit of this, the heart has a class of myocytes that form Purkinje Fibers, long cords that ferry pacemaker signals at a rate unsurpassed in the body. When a contraction signal leaves the pacemaking cells, its order reaches the furthest cells in the heart at an imperceptibly short time after it reaches the closest ones, and so the heart cells seem to beat as one. This ability is absolutely essential to a working heart, and has proven very difficult for organ transplant researchers to overcome.
Enter carbon nanotubes. As anyone familiar with the little critters will know, their important feature is a combination of strength, flexibility, and conductivity. Some combination of these virtues has made them of import to virtually every advanced research and manufacturing sector, from space elevators to flexible computers. Now, we must add conductive tissue development to that quickly growing list. By laying the conductive carbon nanotubes coated with a growth medium, researchers were able to create a scaffold that mimicked the utility of the Purkinje Fibers. By coating the scaffold in rat cardiomyocytes, they were able to create a colony of heart cells capable of contracting properly.
(via Carbon nanotubes make it possible to grow human hearts | ExtremeTech)
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Vase handle in the form of a winged ibex. Partly gilt silver, Achaemenid artwork, 4th century BC.
Should historical artifacts be repatriated to their country of origin?
For instance, a famous case is whether or not the Elgin Marbles should remain at the British Museum or be returned to Athens.
I’d be interested to know what your thoughts were on this
arcticmuseum:
Another staff favorite for today. This early Greenlandic carving of a woman carrying a baby in her amautik is a recommendation from our assistant curator, Anne. This statue “has an archaic design quality,” Anne says, “that looks almost modern to my eye.”
I, for one, love the angles and details on this figure - really lovely.
-M
(Source: arcticmuseum)
Ancient Siberian tattoo art, intricate patterns of 2,500-year-old tattoos, from the body of a Siberian ‘princess’ preserved in the permafrost have been revealed in Russia.
The remarkable body art includes mythological creatures and experts say the elaborate drawings were a sign of age and status for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk people, described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus.
Ancient Siberian tattoo art, intricate patterns of 2,500-year-old tattoos, from the body of a Siberian ‘princess’ preserved in the permafrost have been revealed in Russia.
The remarkable body art includes mythological creatures and experts say the elaborate drawings were a sign of age and status for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk people, described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus.