Virtual reality: Marina Abramović and Anish Kapoor at Art Basel Hong Kong
Next week sees the first public showing of two new short VR works at Art Basel Hong Kong, by equally distinguished figures from the art world, Anish Kapoor and Marina Abramović. They are being presented by the fair’s “virtual reality partner”, the Taiwanese electronics company HTC, as part of its Vive Arts programme highlighting the links between breaking developments in technology and the art world. The works by the two artists are, not surprisingly, very different. Kapoor’s “Into Yourself, Fall” is a journey through the human body, promising a “disorientating sensation of radical introspection” as the viewer negotiates vertiginous twists in a world that is both abstract and uncomfortably familiar. Abramović’s “Rising” is a polemical piece, asking us to consider the effects of climate change as we interact with an avatar of the artist who is slowly drowning inside a glass tank. The interaction continues after the viewing, via the downloading of an app which will periodically remind us of the artist’s struggles inside the tank and ask us to “save” her and, by extension, our planet.
See the full story here: https://www.ft.com/content/7f9d89d2-2c66-11e8-97ec-4bd3494d5f14