When Marina Abramovic went forehead-to-forehead with Jay Z for his six-hour “Picasso Baby†performance at Pace Gallery, it was a staring spectacle not unlike her own staring spectacle, The Artist Is Present. And she was flattered. “If he was inspired by something that I did, I wanted to be there and be part of it,â€Â she told us at the 20th Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit this weekend. “For me, it’s very important that the rapper community and the Twitter [community] actually start Googling to understand what performance art is. It’s really important that I can shift the public from the one field [i.e., pop music] to the arts, which rarely happens. So, this was really very meaningful thing.â€
Abramovic is also collaborating with James Franco on a movie about … James Franco. (“I am editing his life,†she told us earlier in the year. “I can’t explain. I am interested in this phenomenon, James Franco.â€) When we asked where she was in the editing process, she said, “We just made the trailer … It really is about James Franco, but it’s also about Hollywood. It’s about so many aspects of Hollywood as an industry, so it’s a very complex movie … He’s definitely a good actor. But he also tries everything else. He is really breaking the rules, and you are going to see this in this movie. I am not shooting any scenes with him; I am not doing any interviews with him. I am just editing existing material, which is enormous. And, at the end, we have the question, Who is James Franco?†The answer? [She shakes her head “no.â€] “That will reveal everything.â€