1Rhythm 0 - Marina Abramovic
In 1974, Marina Abramovic completed a 6-hour performance art exhibit where she stood in front of a table of 72 objects (including a loaded gun) and let the audience do whatever they wanted with her, leading to her clothes being cut off and a loaded gun being pointed at her head by the general public.
2. For a performance art piece named "One Year Performance 1980-1981," artist Tehching Hsieh spent a year punching a time clock every hour on the hour and photographing himself immediately after. He shaved his head before starting, so his hair growth would reflect the passage of time.
3. Japanese performance artist Mao Sugiyama cooked his genitals with mushrooms and parsley and served them to five paying guests who had paid 100,000 yen each. The Japanese authorities were notified but chose not to act, as cannibalism is not illegal in Japan.
4. Performance artist Rick Gibson is known for eating human flesh in public places, and while there is no anti-cannibalism statute in England, he has been arrested for making earrings out of human fetuses.
5. In 2001, artist Michael Landy destroyed all of his possessions as part of his performance art piece "Break Down," which he described as witnessing his own death and feeling happy about it.
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6K Foundation Burn a Million Quid
In 1994, the duo behind electronic band The KLF burned one million pounds they had earned in a performance art piece called "K Foundation Burn a Million Quid," with one of them later expressing regret for their actions.
7. In 2004, Joe Deutch, an art graduate student at UCLA, played 'Russian Roulette' in front of an entire classroom and filmed the incident as a performance art piece. The school's ill-handling of the situation caused renowned artists Chris Burden and Nancy Rubin to resign as faculty.
8. Vito Acconci's performance art piece called Seedbed involved the artist lying hidden under a ramp and masturbating for 8 hours a day while his fantasies about those walking above him were played over a loudspeaker for attendees to hear.
9. In 1976, artist Ulay stole a painting from the New National Gallery in Berlin in broad daylight and then returned it as both a political statement and performance art. He received only a very light sentence.
10. Marta Minujín, an Argentinian conceptual and performance artist, used 100,000 commonly censored books to build a full-scale replica of the Parthenon at a Nazi book burning site.
11Soy Bomb
During Bob Dylan's performance at the 1998 Grammy Awards, one of the back-up dancers (a self-proclaimed performance artist) ripped his shirt off, revealing the words 'SOY BOMB' painted in big black letters on his chest, and began dancing erratically before being removed by security.
12. At Art Cologne 2014, performance artist Milo Moiré expelled paint-filled eggs from her vagina onto a large canvas, which became an abstract work of art.
13. Artist Chris Burden created a piece of art called "Samson" that, depending on how many people came to see it, would destroy whatever museum or gallery it was placed in.
14. Benjamin Bennett's endurance art piece called "Sitting and Smiling" involves him recording himself sitting motionless and smiling for 4 hours. He has produced hundreds of videos of this performance, including one where a burglar breaks into his house, which he ignores while he continues his performance.
15. Vermin Love Supreme is an American performance artist, anarchist, and activist who is known for running as an alternative candidate in various local, state, and national elections in the United States. Supreme is known for wearing a boot-shaped hat and carrying a large toothbrush.
16Art Currency - J.S.G. Boggs
S.G. Boggs is a performance artist who draws currency and then trades it for goods, aiming to question what makes money valuable.
17. The Russian performance art collective Voina threw live cats at unsuspecting McDonald's employees in Moscow to "break up the drudgery of workers' routine day" on International Workers' Day in 2007.
18. Marina Abramovi?'s static and silent performance art piece, The Artist Is Present, lasted for 736 hours and 30 minutes, during which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium and faced 1,545 sitters, including celebrities like James Franco, Björk, Alan Rickman, Jennifer Carpenter, and Lou Reed.
19. The character of Maude, played by Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski, was based on two real-life performance artists, Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann, who were known for painting canvas while suspended naked on a harness attached to the ceiling in the mid-1970s.
20. Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy was a surreal and visceral performance art piece in which she and her collaborators danced and writhed in piles of raw meat.
21Great Wall Walk - Marina Abramovic and Ulay
Marina Abramovic and Ulay's performance art piece, The Great Wall Walk, involved the artists walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China, meeting in the middle to say goodbye to each other and end their personal and professional relationship.
22. In 1965, Joseph Beuys performed a three-hour art performance piece in which he wandered around the gallery while cradling a dead hare, his face covered in honey, and talked to the animal about his paintings. The public was allowed in after three hours of watching through the windows.
23. In 2020, a Berlin-based artist filled a wagon with 99 smartphones, opened Maps navigation on all of them, and slowly pulled the wagon along Berlin streets to trick Google Maps into thinking that an empty street was bursting with traffic.
24. The Shia LaBeouf memes were part of a performance art piece by Shia LaBeouf and two other artists. This included the "Just Do It" meme, the infamous Paper Bag incident, and an experiment where the three were isolated inside separate cabins with their only means of communication being a video link to a cabin inside Helsinki's Kiasma Museum. Visitors to the museum could speak to the artists via this link, but the trio could only communicate with the visitors by text and not with each other.
25. John Jairo Villamil, a young artist student, died from asphyxiation while performing with a plastic bag covering his head. No one helped him because they thought the convulsions and heavy breathing were part of the performance.
