{"id":42718,"date":"2013-07-10T20:35:44","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T03:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ma.tt\/?p=42718"},"modified":"2022-06-20T03:12:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T10:12:10","slug":"jay-z-picasso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ma.tt\/2013\/07\/jay-z-picasso\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Z + Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I think it was Dustin Curtis who said something along the lines of “you can learn a lot about someone by their bucket list,” and he had posted his publicly recently<\/a>. (Posting it is a great idea by the way, people will help you with it.) I began to think about mine, which was a little strange because I’ve been trying to move away from desiring things or experiences and just be more grateful in the present, but immediately a few music ones came to mind: have WordPress name-checked in a major hip-hop song, be in a rap video, and perform with one of my favorite artists (somehow).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was less than a week later I got an email from a friend who was helping organize a hush-hush event where Jay-Z would sing his song Picasso Baby over and over 6 hours while interacting with various artists and an audience as a performance piece, and there might even be an opportunity to be one of the people he interacted with. My jaw dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The entire experience was fairly surreal, this article by Jerry Saltz captured it well<\/a>, and in the end I did get to “perform” (in a very loose performance art sense) directly with Jay (we’re on a first syllable basis now), which was even caught in a photo<\/a>. An hour into the event I couldn’t find any trace of it on Twitter or blogs. I brought my Nikon D3S to the event and snapped a few photos, some of which of his performance with Marina Abramovic turned out really well. If I could do it again the only thing I’d do differently is try and get portraits of more of the amazing artists who were there, from Andres Serrano<\/a> to Elizabeth Peyton<\/a>. Also huge thanks and kudos to Yvonne Force Villerael<\/a> and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn<\/a> for putting together such an unique happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a video Shannon Lanier took when we went up together:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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