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24 Hour Arty People: Endurance Tests And Creativity

Who knew Marina Abramović and memes had so much in common?

via SlamxHype

Yesterday’s midnight launch of “the world’s first 24 hour music video” by Pharrell Williams in celebration of his new single Happy inevitably caused a splash. What’s not to like? Uninterrupted footage of, well, happy, folks (and some celebrities!) dancing runs around the clock. Meanwhile, the song loops over and over, its mantra-like chorus sung in the light, clean funk for which Williams is known.

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Now that the debut has run its course, anyone can go to http://24hoursofhappy.com/and hover over the screen to manipulate a brilliant digital interface that allows users to navigate to various points in the content, scroll credits for the project of We Are From L.A. and Iconoclast, and of course “share this moment” on social media.

It didn’t take long for TIME’s newsfeedto bemoan the fact that the same song plays 360 times, drawing attention to the fact that 24 hours is a long time for anything. Yet, there is something compelling about the sheer length of the creation.

The concept of endurance artis a Thing, and Pharrell’s “Happy” video might have just stretched the definition to accommodate expressions that are not necessarily born of pain, trauma, or suffering, as has previously been inherent to the genre.

via NYCultureBeat

In Daily Rituals: How Artists WorkMason Curry divulges just how famously Serbian artist Marina Abramović inhabits the original definition of an endurance artist. Anyone who was in New York City in 2010 for her career retrospective at the MoMA may recall the installment in which the artist sat across exhibition viewers, allowing commoners to actualize the loftiest art by sitting in the same chair James Franco sat in, staring into the famous eyes of profundity, and maybe even get on this Tumblr feed. Over the course of eleven weeks, Abramović faced off with 1,565 people. This is insane enough, but it took even more behind the scenes to enable to artist to remain motionless 7 hours a day, 6 days a week. Just one aspect of her preparation was to hydrate throughout the night by waking herself every 45 minutes so that she could avoid the urge to urinate while at work.

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via GalleristNY

Pharrell’s video feat has also had predecessors, though not strictly in musical form. Swiss American artist Christian Marclay (who happens to be highlighted in the current Time Out New York this week for a new exhibition) created a 24-hour-long video in 2010. Entitled The Clock, the real time montage of movies and TV shows was maniacally edited so that any display of time in the clips coincided exactly with the time of viewing. The installation has made its way around the world. So seductive have been its mesmerizing effects that prominent museums such as NYC’s MoMA and London’s Tate have purchased the piece.

That same year, German director Peter Stein brought a twelve hour rendition of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Demons (aka The Possessed) to Governors Island, requiring that the audience be ferried to their immersion in the masterpiece.

Nyan Cat via DailyTech

A much more low brow manifestation of endurance art is the good old Nyan Cat, born in April 2011 from an unlikely combination of inspiration (interview with the cat’s designer here), and, with its bevy of offshoots and games, still serves as a literally perpetual source of joy and dread in the office.

One can only wonder what it means that endurance art is coming into its own in the modern era, impacting audiences beyond a pedestrian fascination for record setting activities. Where high art is concerned, perhaps endurance replaces the long lost spiritual connection and metaphysical knowledge that was once supplied by epic performances in ancient traditions worldwide. Where pop culture is concerned, perhaps the comfort we find from a continuous flow of digital content helps ground us amidst a world of instantaneous multimedia micro-creation. Maybe we just like the reliable but low commitment companionship of it all. Or maybe we are just plain curious how far artists will take it, and how long we can keep up with a real challenge.

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If it doesn’t tire us, long form art engenders wish for original, intentional, and coherent masterpieces of unprecedented lengths. While length constituted logistical and financial barriers even in the recent past, the increasing accessibility, power, and storage capability of cutting edge technology dictates that the length is increasingly limited only by one’s ability to create. Or humanity’s ability to create.

Case in point: Longplayer, a thousand years long musical composition conceptualized by Jem Finerin league with Artangel and Brian Eno, naturally, plus a whole collective of new agers. The piece began playing at midnight at the Trinity Buoy Wharf in London on New Year’s Eve of 1999 when most of us were busy worrying about Y2K. The end result at “the last moment of 2999” is to be a song with zero repetition, constructed by the sound of ancient bowl bells played by humans and computers. The project is so forward looking that the team is constantly  researching post-digital ways of insuring the perpetuation of this “life form.”

To digital natives, the proposed measures, such as mechanical devices, graphical scores, live performances, and the establishment of a trust might seem like a regression to old ways. Luddites might claim that this has all “already been done,” pointing to examples such as the group of traditional musicians that has presumably played nonstop devotional music inside the Golden Templeof Amritsar, India since the late 1500s.

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But the synchronicity between the long form art of ancient times and today’s endeavors of creative endurance seems more like a connection of the time loop rather than any return to concepts that are old or “done.” The infinite synergy between creative works from the beginning of time with that of the still unfurled future might just consist in endurance pieces, bringing literal and utmost validation to the adage that life is short but art is long.

For more endurance art, check out our recent video on David Blaine, where the illusionist describes how he managed to survive 72 straight hours"Electrified" in mid-air: