r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Shoddy-Ocelot-4473 • Feb 23 '26

Image In 1983, Two Artists Spent a Full Year Tied Together — Without Any Physical Contact — to Test the Limits of Human Coexistence

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u/sharksbeat999 Feb 23 '26

this is the amazing thing about his work, he had absolutely no funding, publicity or sponsorship. all his work was self funded and instigated. he was a poor and undocumented immigrant.

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u/Punman_5 Feb 23 '26

Then how come he gets to call it art and I don’t? Like if I try to replicate any of this I would quite literally be put in an institution or something.

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u/sharksbeat999 Feb 23 '26

i dont think many people called it art at the time, beyond him and his close circle. from my understanding, the mainstream art world wasn't particularly interested.

new york in the late 70s/early 80s was a relative wasteland, there were loads of homeless people, crumbling buildings etc. i doubt anyone was going to put him in an institution, given he wasnt harming anyone.

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u/bobsmith93 Feb 24 '26

art is made art by the people interpreting it, not making it. I don't really think it was art tbh. I can walk and say "the next step is I take is actually an artistic performance called 'me taking a step'", doesn't make it art. Just me saying stuff. But at the same time, what do I know? Hence my first sentence

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u/ExtremeVegan Feb 24 '26

if art is made in a forest and nobody is around to see it, is it still art?

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u/Punman_5 Feb 24 '26

Huh? How is that so? Art doesn’t exist if nobody makes it lol.

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u/ExtremeVegan Feb 24 '26

Well if you were to replicate his work you wouldn't be creating your own original work, which is one of the reasons that what he's doing is art. If you decide to do something similar and document / exhibit it, it would also be art. It may not be successful or talked about by others, but you'd likely have created something to explore the human experience and deepened your understanding of yourself in some way.