Lady Gaga Gets Naked, Hugs Crystals In New Video
Now this is the Lady Gaga we've been missing!
Mother Monster blew minds late Wednesday when she dropped a bizarre, definitely NSFW clip in which she pays homage to legendary performance artist Marina Abramović.
Oh and she gets totally naked and hugs a bunch of giant crystals, too.
The clip is a tribute to the Abramović Method, which the artist describes as an exercise that "helps participants to develop skills for observing long durational performances."
In Gaga's case, that means a two-minute video which opens with her laying on a gallery floor in an all-white jumpsuit while singing a single note for nearly 30 seconds and then standing in the rain in the middle of a river doing the same while wearing a pair of yellow horns over her eyes.
The ARTPOP star, who is slated to take the stage on [article id="1711264"]August 25[/article] at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, had said in an earlier statement that her new album would find her working with a number of art-world luminaries and Abramović certainly fits the bill. The 66-year-old Serbian performance artist has been provoking audiences for more than four decades, often with works that are physically challenging.
One of her most famous pieces is the 2010 "The Artist is Present" work at New York's Museum of Modern Art, during which she sat in silence for more than 730 hours while looking into the eyes of a rotating series of visitors seated across a table from her. In an interview about the show earlier this year, Abramović said Gaga's visit to the endurance event helped raise the artist's profile and introduce her to a new generation.
At one point in the Gaga video, the singer is seen sitting on a tall stool in the river with her back to Abramović, also seated on a tall stool, with both wearing matching grey jumpsuits. Gaga's one-note vocalization continues in the background the entire time, including a bit in which she walks, horse-like, through a field completely naked wearing a black mask, her arms up in the air.
In the next scene, still naked, Gaga is bent over in a forest holding a stick while wearing only boots and a black wig. The video ends with a shot of her hugging, and sitting on, a gigantic crystal and then laying on a white bed with smaller crystals arrayed all round her head.
"Last week at a three-day retreat in upstate New York, Marina instructed Lady Gaga in the Abramović Method -- a series of exercises designed to heighten participants' awareness of their physical and mental experience in the present moment," reads an artist statement explaining the video and soliciting funds through Kickstarter for the artist's institute.
The first ARTPOP single, [article id="1711145"]"Applause,"[/article] will be released on August 19.
