Marina Abramović, the controversial artist that incorporates witchcraft into her exhibits and allegedly performed a “spirit cooking dinner” for the Clinton campaign, is at it again. This time she is using the climate change agenda to push fear and alter consciousness via virtual reality.
Abramović presented her virtual reality film called Rising at London’s Royal Academy of Art saying that it is about raising consciousness.
Pushing pure fear she hypnotically says, “This video game will present the players with opportunities to save lives in urban landscapes radically altered by catastrophic flooding. Some predictions say that in one hundred years the human race won’t exist on this planet, we want to address these issues.”
“You’re saving the human being, and you’re saving the planet, or you’re not saving the planet, and you make human beings die. And the choice is only yours.”
“With virtual reality technology players will be immersed in a dystopian world that seems increasingly likely to be the future of our planet,” she says.
On stage at London’s Royal Academy of Art, Marina Abramović and Anish Kapoor, the designers of the virtual reality games being presented talked about their personal views on the new technology.
Speaking on her experience in Kapoor’s Virtual Reality, Abramović says she, “emerged into this void and had an absolutely physical experience.” She explains that the human brain has trouble distinguishing what is and isn’t real and thus is tricked into feeling all the normal sensations as if they were actually there.
Abramović touches on this in Rising saying, “I hope to explore the questions if immersive play will increase empathy with the present and the future victims of climate change and how this experience will affect players consciousness and energy.”
The film maker is known for ritualistic witchcraft-themed exhibits. The most infamous since the Podesta emails were released is the Spirit Cooking dinner that members of the Clinton campaign allegedly took part in. The original Spirit Cooking exhibit took place in Rome and featured a menu written in pigs blood with items such as “mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk.” According to Abramović, the work was inspired by the widespread belief that ghosts feed off intangible things like light, sound, and emotions.
Her virtual reality exhibit sounds as if it’s based on that same belief when she begins to bring metaphysics into the equation saying, “In real life when someone rescues another person or offers aid of any kind there is a transfer of energy. The recipient of the help and the provider of aid are both affected by the experience, will the same happen in our virtual reality?”
By commenting that both ends of the relationship are affected by experiences in real life and questioning whether they are the same in VR, is Abramović implying that she thinks the “energy” created in virtual reality exists in the form of a recipient?
Throughout the behind the scenes video, Abramović is seen in a water tank that begins to flood until the tank is full and she is drowning. The VR user then puts their virtual hands up to the tank to let the water and Abramović’s avatar out. “Whatever you can’t do with your body, you as an avatar can actually do endlessly,” she says.
Abramović says her video game is about raising consciousness and she compares that with the rising waters and melting ice at the north and south poles.
She nods as the interviewer concludes, “One might think of new technologies extending our five senses, there might be some way of giving us a sixth sense or a seventh sense, other ways of reading and knowing the physical reality.”
Works Cited
Amah-Rose McKnight-Abrams. “Watch Marina Abramović and Anish Kapoor Take a Dive Deep into VR.” Garage. . (2018): . . http://bit.ly/2wbLpek
Anish Kapoor. “Into Yourself-Fall.” Anish Kapoor website. . (2018): . . http://bit.ly/2w9y1Hy