The Art Angle Podcast: How Marina Abramović Became the Center of a Vast Satanic Conspiracy Theory

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delves into the places where the art world meets the real world,
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experts in the field.

Just when you thought the spring of 2020 couldn’t get any
weirder, a Microsoft ad starring performance artist Marina
Abramović caught the attention of conspiracy peddler Alex Jones and
his followers, sparking accusations that the artist was practicing
satanism and reigniting the “pizzagate” controversy that ensnared
Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta four years
ago.

It all began with a seemingly innocuous commercial put out by
Microsoft to advertise a product called HoloLens 2, a newfangled
set of mixed-reality smart glasses, which Abramović used to
create her augmented-reality
artwork The Life. Hours after the ad debuted
online, an onslaught of exceedingly negative comments drove the
tech company to scrub it from the
Internet completely.

Abramović, a native Serbian artist who has come to define a
certain brand of physically and psychologically exhaustive
performance, helped chart a new path for contemporary art over
the course of her 50-year career. In the process, she’s become a
fashion icon and a friend and muse of such celebrities as James
Franco and Lady Gaga. But, as it turns out, a certain corner of the
Internet has also seized on her early work engaged with Eastern
European politics and religious traditions—which involved dousing
herself in gasoline inside a flaming pentagram and spending hours
scrubbing blood off animal bones—as a sign that she, well, worships
Satan and is the high priestess of a cabal formed by the Hollywood
and political elite.

Confused? So were we. On this week’s episode of the Art Angle,
Artnet News’s chief art critic Ben Davis joins host Andrew
Goldstein by phone to break down the
controversy—and explain why this moment of turmoil is proving
to be an exceptionally fertile one for conspiracy theorists to
reach an audience.

Listen above and subscribe to the Art Angle on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts. (Or
catch up on past
episodes here on Artnet News.)

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the Center of a Vast Satanic Conspiracy Theory appeared first
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