Shanghai-based artist Yang Yexin has been getting a lot of criticism for throwing away 1,000 grains of rice made of pure gold as part of a performance artwork to highlight current food waste.

If you’re planning on visiting Shanghai soon, you may want to keep your eyes peeled as you walk through the city streets, as you may stumble on small precious nuggets worth a pretty penny. Local artist Yang Yexin recently released a video of himself throwing 1,000 gold grains in trashcans, in drains, in the grass, and in the Huangpu River, as a way of drawing attention to food waste in modern society. The rice grains  showed in the video were made from 500 grams of gold worth over 200,000 yuan ($31,000), by a jewelry store that made them “in accordance with the actual size of each real rice grain.”

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Known as the “Brooklyn Transformer”, Peter Kokis has become a very recognizable figure in New York, thanks to an arsenal of impressive robot exoskeletons made out of all sorts of everyday items.

A former military pilot, Peter Kokis started making his now-famous exoskeletons after joking around with an ex-girlfriend. At one point, during a conversations, she told him “you’re too stiff, you need to loosen up and do something weird,” and he decided she was right. Using his experience in aviation, he started piecing together things he had around the house into an impressive exoskeleton that became known as Squid Boy. But that was only the beginning, as over the years he made wearable costumes inspired by the likes of The Transformers, The Terminator or the Xenomorphs of Alien.

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Inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, French artist Gaetan Marron has confined himself to a transparent, 4m² plexiglass cube located inside a Marseille shopping mall for 20 days.

Titled “Non-Essentiel”, Gaetan Marron’s art performance is all about highlighting various issues caused by the lockdowns tied to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, like the lack of human interaction, the lack of freedom, and the role of so-called non-essential activities like culture and art. Earlier this month, the Marseille-based artist locked himself in a small, transparent plastic cube located inside the local Les Docks Villages shopping center, for a period of 20 days. Passers-by can see him, they can talk to him, and, most importantly, they can donate to him, as Marron depends on donations from his visitors for food.

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Mike Parr, a 73-year-old Australian performance artist, recently spent three days in a container buried under one of the busiest roads in Tasmania, with no food, as a “response to 20th-century totalitarian violence in all its forms”.

The unusual performance was apparently conceived a decade ago for an arts festival in Germany, but could not be pulled off due to health and safety concerns. However, the Hobart City Council, in Tasmania, approved it last month, as part of the Dark Mofo festival, as long as the organizers agreed to cover the roadwork bill. That included literally cutting a section of road and digging a large hole under it in order to lower a large metal container in it, and covering it up so that traffic could go on as usual for the three days Mike Parr spent buried inside.

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Latvian performance artist Arturs Bērziņš has managed to spark a heated debate about the ethics of his latest project, where he sliced bits of flesh from two people’s bodies, cooked them in a frying pan and fed it back to them.

Bērziņš’ controversial performance, named Eschatology, was staged on March 6th, at the Museum LV un Grata JJ, in Riga. As promised, those in attendance were treated to something they had most likely never seen before. The artist, wearing a white forensic suit, practiced his surgical skills on two models – a man and a woman – slicing bits of flesh from their backs, then frying them in a hot pan and feeding the meat back to them.

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A Belgian man had to be cut free from his art installation after failing to liberate himself after 19 days. Mikes Poppe had tethered himself by the ankle to a three-meter (10ft) chain that ran through a massive four-ton block of marble and spent 438 hours attempting to chisel his way to freedom.

The performance took place in the courthouse of the coastal Belgian city of Ostend. Poppe ate, slept, and washed there while chained to the block, all while live streaming to Youtube. He worked toward liberation from his self-imposed captivity by chiseling toward the stone every day, but after 19 days had to be cut free by a workman with an angle grinder.

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Abraham Poincheval is no stranger to daring performance art, but his latest project is probably the toughest one yet. The French artist will spend eight straight days sealed in a human shaped hole carved out inside a giant boulder. The purpose of this unusual performance – “to find out what the world is”.

On February 22, 2017, 45-year-old Poincheval was sealed in this carved out stone sarcophagus at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo gallery, where he will allegedly spend eight straight days, until March 1st. His temporary prison, a large boulder split in two with just enough room to fit the artist’s body in sitting position, and enough food and water to keep him in good physical condition over his eight days of isolation. His only connection to the outside world is a ventilation duct that keeps him from suffocating in the tight space.

“The purpose is to feel the aging stone inside the rock,” told media reporters. “There is my own breathing, and then the rock which lives, still humid because it was extracted not so long ago from the quarry. So there is that flow, that coming and going, between myself and the stone.”

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Japanese artist Ei Wada discovered that old cathode ray tube television sets make great percussion instruments by mistake, but he managed to turn this accidental discovery into an art. Today, his unique Braun Tube Jazz Band is famous all over the world.

Wada first became interested in percussion music at age four, after attending a Gamelan music performance in Indonesia. He was impressed by the sound of the percussion instruments, recalling that he felt “taken to another world”. This memory stuck with him, and a few years later, while tinkering with some old cassette tapes, he realized that the off-key sounds they produced were very similar to the Gamelan music that had made such a big impression on him. Since then, he has been focusing on producing otherworldly sounds with obsolete gadgets that people usually throw away.

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Most people may think they’re barking mad, but that’s not stopping dramatic duo Alex Bailey and Krõõt Juurak from putting on theatrical shows aimed exclusively at pets.

Actors Alex Bailey and Krõõt Juurak use their own research as well as consultations with pet psychologists to put together artistic performances for their animal audience. They usually travel to a pet’s home and try to connect with it by using various techniques, including “non-human voice and body languages”. While their performances are not always interactive, the two admit that some animals, especially young ones, join them during their act. So far they have performed more than 80 times at the homes of pets in Zürich, Erlangen, Berlin and Vienna, and are currently promoting their unique services in Bristol, England, in the hopes of gaining new fans.

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Meet Moon Ribas, a ‘cyborg artist’ who is able to literally feel every single earthquake that takes place anywhere on the planet. She senses the tremors through a tiny sensor permanently grafted under her skin near the crook of her elbow, and dances to these vibrations during her performances.

“I want to perceive movement in a deeper way,” Ribas said. “The planet moves, constantly shaking and moving every day. I thought it would be amazing to translate the massive and natural movements of the planet in a different way.” So she had a tiny magnet implanted near the crook of her elbow that allows her to feel the Earth’s vibrations in real time. Her choice of body hacking may not be as obvious as the antenna sticking out of the skull of Neil Harbisson, or these LED lights implanted under the skin, but its purpose is just as bizarre.

Ribas, a choreographer who studied movement at Dartington College in the UK, described the physical sensation near her elbow as being similar to having a phone vibrate in your pocket. Of course, the stronger the earthquake, the stronger the vibrations she feels. For instance, during the devastating 7.8 quake in Nepal last year, Ribas woke up in the middle of the night with strong vibrations coursing through her arm. “It felt very weird, like I was there,” she said. “I feel connected to the people who suffer through an earthquake.”

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Have you ever imagined air so thick that you could literally vacuum the dirt out of it? Well, believe it or not, a Chinese artist has actually gone and done that in a bid to raise awareness about environmental protection. He used an industrial vacuum cleaner outdoors during smoggy days in Beijing and eventually made a brick out of all the dust he collected.

The man, who goes by the name ‘Brother Nut’, said he came up with the idea after he was shocked to read news reports about the quality of air in China’s capital city. So he started a 100-day ‘Dust Plan’, just to show people how dust is affecting their daily lives. He got a 1,000-watt vacuum cleaner that absorbed 100 grams of a mixture of “dust and smog” from the amount of air inhaled by about 62 people in four days.

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Benjamin Bennett probably has the most bizarre YouTube channel. For the past six months, he has been sitting in front of a camera in zen-like silence, smiling, for hours on end! He’s put out at least 120 hours of footage of himself doing nothing but sitting, without offering any explanation whatsoever.

Ben’s videos made no noise at all – literally and figuratively – until he reached the middle of his 25th live stream. Once he started getting a decent number of views, everybody wanted to know what he was doing and why. Some thought it was art, while others speculated that he was meditating. A few were convinced that he was mentally ill.

The mystery was finally solved a few days back when Vice published an interview with the man himself. When asked why he was doing this, he was quite vague about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed like something the internet was lacking. It seemed like it needed to be done, and nobody else was going to do it.”

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David Garibaldi is a successful performing artist who combines his passion for painting, dance and music in truly inspiring performances. Holding a paintbrush in each of his hands, he strokes the canvas as he dances to modern tunes, creating incredibly detailed portraits of pop icons.

Born in Los Angeles to entrepreneur parents, David Garibaldi moved to Sacramento when he was just four years old, for his dad’s business. Ever since he was very little, David had a strong sense of creativity, and although they didn’t share his passion for the arts, his family always encouraged him. He started by drawing cartoon characters, then moved on to encyclopedias, comic books and anything else kids his age were into back then. Then, during middle school, he started getting into hip-hop, so his friends suggested he use his artistic talents to do graffiti. It helped him develop his own style and explore all kinds of new design elements, but all those late nights he spent leaving his artistic mark on the walls and trains of Scaramento really affected his education. By the time he realized he was neglecting school, it was too late, and he couldn’t graduate with the rest of his class. It’s one of his biggest regrets, but also one of the things that motivated him to become the great artist he is today.

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