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1 June 2010, 9:27Artist completes 700 hour stareA Serbian artist has completed the world's longest ever piece of performance art by staring at members of the public for 700 hours.Marina Abramovic sat for seven hours a day, six days a week, on a chair for her installation, entitled The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.Visitors were invited to sit in a chair facing her and simply return her silent gaze.Celebrities including Bjork, Lou Reed, Marisa Tomei and Isabella Rossellini were among the 1,400 people who came and sat opposite the artist, who always dressed in a long cassock.Some spent an entire day sitting opposite Abramovic while others managed just a couple of minutes.Other parts of her retrospective at the museum proved similarly controversial, particularly Imponderabilia, in which visitors must squeeze past a naked man and woman who stand facing each other in a narrow doorway.Abramovic's more challenging solo work has also included stabbing herself, playing with fire and standing motionless for six hours, having invited visitors to do anything they liked to her. At one point, a man held a gun to her neck but she remained still.
I think it'd be fun to go to an exhibit where the artist does nothing but stare. You guys are too uptight.
