As a fellow PTSD sufferer, I get what you’re saying about the need to reinvent the situation in a way that allows you to retain control. Been there, done that. Personally, I think that’s at least part of what she’s doing, based on descriptions (haven’t and won’t watch the video). I don’t think that it’s necessarily…

The purpose of much art was to flatter the hell out of the patron paying for it.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I only read about that shit in books and whatnot. If you dont’ mind me asking, what did actively reinventing and perpetuating usually do for you?

Yeah I thought the beauty in art was always about how the same piece can be interpreted so differently depending on the viewer.

I’m guessing if Ms. Sulkowicz had titled the video This Is Not A Rape — which is what Ceci N’Est Pas Un Viol means in English — the preamble to this piece of performance art would have lost some of its indefinability, its je ne sais quoi. It certainly made me a lot less curious and even more inclined (than I already…

I’m really conflicted here.

I don’t think you had a very good art professor. Yes, “art for art’s sake” (the idea of art not needing any purpose besides itself) was a (modern) thing, but most of what we currently consider as art was meant to have specific purposes beyond the purely aesthetic (e.g. religious, political, utilitarian, architectural,…

I’m nothing if not the funniest man of 2011.

I think the message she’s trying to send is. Me!!

Still a better love story than Twilight.