The first book to explore the extraordinary career of musician and performance artist Charlotte Moorman, whose work combined classical rigor, avant-garde experiment, and madcap daring. The Juilliard-trained cellist Charlotte Moorman sat nude behind a cello of carved ice, performed while dangling from helium-filled balloons, and deployed an array of instruments on The Mike Douglas Show that included her cello, a whistle, a cap gun, a gong, and a belch. She did a striptease while playing Bach in Nam June Paik's Sonata for Adults Only. In the 1960s, Moorman (1933–1991) became famous for her madcap (and often unclothed) performance antics; less famous but more significant is Moorman's transformative influence on contemporary performance practice—and her dedication to the idea that avant-garde art should reach the widest possible audience. In Topless Cellist, the first book to explore Moorman's life and work, Joan Rothfuss rediscovers, and recovers, the legacy of an extraordinary American artist. Moorman's arrest in 1967 for performing topless made her a water-cooler conversation-starter, but before her tabloid fame she was a star of the avant-garde performance circuit, with a repertoire of pieces by, among others, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Paik, her main artistic partner. Moorman invented a new mode of performance that combined classical rigor, jazz improvisation, and avant-garde experiment—informed by intuition, daring, and love of spectacle. Moorman's annual festival of the avant-garde offered the public a lively sampler of contemporary art in performance, music, dance, poetry, film, and other media. Rothfuss chronicles Moorman's life from her youth in Little Rock, Arkansas (where she was “Miss City Beautiful” of 1952) through her career in New York's avant-garde to her death from breast cancer in 1991. (Typically, she approached her treatment as if it were a performance.) Deeply researched and profusely illustrated, Topless Cellist offers a fascinating, sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious story of an artist whose importance was more than the sum of her performances.

"Published in conjunction with the exhibition 'A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,' Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, January 16-July 17, 2016; Grey Art Gallery, New York University, September 8-December 10, 2016; [and] Museum der Moderne Salzburg, March 4-June 18, 2017"--Title page verso.

This new, fully illustrated catalogue on the celebrated progenitor of video art, Nam June Paik (1932-2006), brings together a host of scholars, artists, and Paik's own collaborators to illuminate the work of this innovative artist. An essay by curator Michelle Yun takes readers through Paik's highly original career, providing insight into his radical and witty experiments with technology, especially in relation to the body, which he viewed as vital platforms for the future of art, science, and popular culture. Scholars David Joselit and John Maeda contribute texts examining the artist's interest in new media and popular culture. A roundtable discussion with three of Paik's own artistic collaborators and contemporary artists' statements shed light on the collaborative process and Paik's enduring influence on artistic practice today. Drawing on the newly established Nam June Paik Archive at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this book also features never-before-published primary sources that highlight Paik's prescient attitude towards the integration of increasingly indispensable technologies into modern life. Distributed for Asia Society Museum Exhibition Schedule: Asia Society Museum (09/05/14-01/04/15)

Item is the journal of the final year of the life of Bob Flanagan and tells of his illness and his life with Sheree Rose.

Explore the ground-breaking work of 20th-century, avant-garde artist Nam June Paik, the pioneer of video art, and discover his impact on the digital age. Nam June Paik was one of the most presciently visionary artists of his generation, one who foresaw the ascendance of the screen in modern life, coined the phrase "electronic superhighway", and celebrated these developments with a humor and whimsy that counteracts some of the darker aspects of our technological age. This book features works from throughout Paik's five-decade career--from robots made from old TV screens to stills from his innovative video works and views of his renowned room-sized installations. Archival materials and excerpts of Paik's own writings offer a deeper understanding of the artist's extraordinary collaborative career. He had exchanges with avant-garde artists, musicians, and choreographers, including Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys, and members of the Fluxus movement. Essays explore how Paik influenced a global network of artists and pioneered a radical and cutting-edge art practice. They also consider how Paik's transnational approach to art presaged today's issues around borders, immigration, cultural appropriation, and nationalism. By envisioning a future that has become a reality, Paik's work--and its humanity, scope, and optimism--is perhaps more important than ever. Published with Tate

Every culture has a creation myth, and skateboarding is no different. The Ollie forged a new identity for skateboarding after its invention in the 1970s, and it lies at the root of nearly every significant move in street skating today. This groundbreaking no-handed aerial has also affected the evolution of surfing and snowboarding, and has left a permanent impression upon popular culture and language. This, then, is the story of the Ollie, the history and technology that set the stage for its creation, the pioneers who made it happen, and the skaters who used it to start a revolution.

Being based in different countries around the globe, but keen to work together, Fluxus artists developed collaborations based on shared resources and creative autonomy – methods that also gave the artworks agency to perform beyond the control of their originators.