by A.D. Griffin

The Reuters special report was called “The downfall of ‘China’s Jackie Kennedy.’” That video was picked up and republished by numerous news outlets such as the Chicago Tribune. “The fall of China’s ‘Jackie Kennedy’” was Rediff’s version. CBS did a remix with its report titled “China’s Jackie O” confesses to murder,” and HuffPo accompanied its story with the tweet, “China’s Jackie Kennedy, if only Jackie were accused of murder.” In the U.K., the Express went with “’JACKIE KENNEDY OF CHINA’ FACING DEATH FOR POISONING BRITON” while the London Evening Standard chose “Slice of heart clue in trial of China’s Jackie Kennedy.” The Daily Mail’s very Daily Mailish story was filed under the title “Bodyguard says he saved Neil Heywood and his Chinese lover from kung-fu assassin after their affair was found out.” The story noted that “Neil Heywood lived in fear after affair with ‘China’s Jackie Kennedy’ was exposed.” Proving a trend knows no language barriers, RTVE (Radiotelevisión Española) reported that “La Jackie Kennedy china confiesa haber matado al británico Neil Heywood,” while Taiwan’s Apple Daily reported on “中國賈姬” (“China Jackie”), it added an explanatory note in parenthesis, “(為美國故總統甘迺迪之妻)” — “the wife of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy.” Even NPR repeated that Gu Kailai was “the woman dubbed China’s Jackie Kennedy.”

For those with the remotest sense of who Gu Kailai is (or was if she is executed by the time this is published), the comparison should trigger a migraine. Saying Gu Kailai is the Jackie Kennedy of China is like calling David Hasselhoff the Jacques Cousteau of America: That is, they both are famous and both used to get wet a lot. No surprise then that this lazy, infectious comparison started with an offhand comment by a single American in Colorado.

On April 11, 2012, in a piece titled “’Jackie Kennedy’ of China focus of murder probe,” CNN reported that “Gu Kailai, the woman likened to the ‘Jackie Kennedy of China’ and now at the center of a murder investigation.” CNN has since re-used the trope, posting a pre-trial profile just last week under the title “Gu Kailai, China’s ‘Jackie Kennedy.’”

That CNN report came a day after NBC news ran a piece titled “’Jackie Kennedy of China’ suspected in death of British businessman.”

The CNN report attributed the Kennedy comparison to a Wall Street Journal interview with a man named Ed Byrne. NBC credited a BBC story from earlier that same day.

The BBC story from April 11 — “China’s ‘Jackie Kennedy’ under scrutiny” — quotes Colorado lawyer Ed Byrne as the source of the comparison, having told the BBC, “People likened her and her husband to the Jack and Jackie Kennedy of China. They were the modern liberal element there.”

Byrne, who worked with Gu the 1990s when she was in Dalian including on a lawsuit she brought in U.S. federal court on behalf of Chinese companies, had spoken to The Wall Street Journal a few days before. In an article published on April 7 titled “’Jackie Kennedy of China’ at Center of Political Drama,” the Journal noted that, to Byrne, Gu “seemed like the ‘Jackie Kennedy of China.”

Unlike the BBC, The Wall Street Journal does not quote Byrne’s comparison in full. In either case, it was the BBC, NBC and The Wall Street Journal that condensed a statement about the couple to one simply about Gu.

Reached in his office in Denver, Edward Byrne told me that when he was in Dalian, “Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai were described to me as the Kennedy’s of China.” The comparison, he suggested, was based more on them as a couple than her individually, which is reflected by his original comment to the BBC. Byrne added that this description came from the Chinese and American people working for Gu in Dalian, and not from anyone else.

The first mention in Chinese of “中國賈姬” (“China Jackie”) is from the Apple Daily. Published days after the Journal’s report, the Apple Daily credits both the Journal and Byrne with the comparison. On April 11, a World Journal headline read “中國賈姬變殺人犯?” (“China Jackie Charged with Murder?”) Since then, numerous Chinese media have used the term. But no record exists of it before the Journal story.*

In the context of Bo and Gu as a couple, the comparison to JFK and Jackie is still a stretch at best. It is the kind made by those whose worldview and sense of history is only an inch deep and defined only by the Kennedy’s Camalot mystique. The Bo-Gu comparison to the Kennedys is about as insightful as the original John-Jackie one to Arthur and Guinevere’s kingdom.

Through this game of journalism telephone, Gu ends up isolated as simply the Jackie Kennedy of China. It’s a bit of nonsense that has come to inform a significant number of western news reports about the trial that, as all these same reports consistently remind readers, is “the biggest upheaval in Chinese politics for 20 years” and “the biggest murder trial in recent Chinese history.”

“Jackie Kennedy of China” was a reworded assessment that sprang from one guy’s comment given to two news outlets about something he was told a decade and a half ago by people being paid by the person being compared positively to Jackie Kennedy.

In fact, Gu Kailai — the wife of one of the most powerful politicians in China, Bo Xilai — is far more the “Hillary Clinton of China” than she is Jackie Kennedy. Except, of course, Clinton never slept with and poisoned a business partner (that we know of). But then, neither did Kennedy-Onassis.

Clinton, like Gu, graduated from a top law school and broke barriers. Clinton was the first woman chair of the Legal Services Corporation and was repeatedly named one of the nation’s most influential lawyers. Gu started her own highly influential and powerful law firm in China and was the first Chinese lawyer to win a civil case in the U.S. Both married new wave man-of-the-people political titans and, attached to raising boats, both parlayed their considerable smarts into political influence. Like Clinton, both have seen their names attached to questionable business dealings. By comparison, Kennedy was a society girl with a degree in French literature who became a fashion icon during her time in the White House. Later, she conveniently married an old billionaire, then became a respected book editor known for valuing her privacy. Kailai, like Clinton, has written books about her own professional victories and experiences.

Interviewed for the Boston’s NPR affiliate program “Here & Now,” Marion E. Wynne Jr., a lawyer who worked the federal trial with Gu, said of the Journal’s comparison, “I smiled. I liked it. I don’t know if it’s accurate but I know I liked it.” Pushed by the host if “it matches her in terms of her dress” and if Gu had “that Jackie elegance,” all Wynne could effort was, “She was sharp.”

The Gu Kailai “Jackie Kennedy of China” comparison persists because it is comfortable shorthand for understanding a very complex and unique individual from a nation the west continues to work hard to understand and yet can so far define only in the most shallow terms possible. It’s a lazy, media-friendly shortcut to please those happy to believe that it might be totally reasonable that Chinese bad guys sent ninja assassins to England. And the persistence and popularity of the “Jackie Kennedy of China” comparison proves that western media outlets, at all levels, are hardly much ahead of their readers in this regard. A perfect example of this is how CNN files its “Jackie Kennedy of China” Gu Kailai reports under the tag “Tiananmen Square,” because, why the hell not, all China’s stories look the same.

* And it’s not because “贾姬” (“Jackie”) is an unknown entity. Even as Gu was sentenced, “中国贾姬” remained an allowed term on China’s microblog Weibo and offered users a perfect chance to skirt censors. But the only “贾姬” users seemed interested in was the Gucci”经典贾姬包” or “Gucci Jacki-O handbag.” The only single mention of “China’s Jackie Kennedy” was a post using the term to describe Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

A.D. Griffith is the pseudonym of a writer who sometimes covers China. Contact him here.

Something is going on with the Internet, and, once again, it’s fun, but maybe not that fun. There’s a rash of actually quite cool new “products” — services, websites, “apps” (sigh) — and they have a lot in common. From our pals at Branch to things like Medium and Svbtle (oh that name) and on back to Pinterest, and then forward to a few other projects in development, well… there’s a visual language going on, for one thing, and it’s like John Herrman writes:

It’s an internet where every blog is Daring Fireball, where every post looks like Instapaper, where every discussion is led by its rightful leaders, and where ads are considered no better than spam. It’s barren but design-forward, and, at least at the moment, kind of elitist.

It’s really interesting that these “sites” want their appearance for users to be visually unified, and it’s also extremely telling that these “sites” are overtly rejecting display advertising.

“Web publishing tools” were first about easy customization, from Blogger to Livejournal, with the last big monster being Tumblr. (Though the funny thing about Tumblr is, for all the time tweens put in to tweaking their “themes,” nobody really reads their sites except by the internal “dashboard.” So really, Tumblr was the genius publishing tool that transitioned us into “apps.”) After Twitter, that’s all really over. Twitter is for sure an “app” not a “website” or a “publishing tool” — it’s not something you make “look like you.” You don’t bring Twitter to you and make it yours, you go to it.

Now one beloved troll, I mean, VISIONARY (totally same difference, no?), is calling for the end of web pages. This is an appealing notion! “Most users on the web spend most of their time in apps,” begins our pal Anil Dash. (He promised a citation on that stat later. I’m sure it’s true, if you count Facebook!) And: “Most media companies on the web spend all of their effort putting content into content management systems which publish pages.” Anil’s sort of right, but he’s also boosting an idea about business who act like — and design like — they have no interest whatsoever in being businesses. Producing a “feed” subsumed in the apps of our time is not a business. It might (SORRY) own the means of its production but it won’t own the means of its revenue.

Except, of course, they all do have an interest in being a business. Or will. It’s great to build a fun product! But it’s not like people are going to spend millions on making something and have it be a happy write-off in three years.

The hot word in advertising right now is “native.” If I hear “native” one more time this week, oof, I swear. As with all terms in advertising, it’s a word that doesn’t make much sense on its face. (Ask me about “stock and flow” someday.) What “native” means is: it’s not in an ad box. All “native” means is that advertisers are now getting to come closer to presenting advertising that is less distinguishable from what they like to call “content,” AKA the stuff people make that people go to “apps” and “sites” to see. We (along with everyone else!) are expanding our native advertising! There are really good ways to do it, I think, and I think over the next three months we’ll be doing a better job with it! I even believe, particularly in the cases of “brought-to-you-by” sponsored editorial “content,” that readers and viewers of good things are often happy to see that a sponsor paid for it to exist! It also really helps if you try to only take good advertising, that’s a good match for where it’s published. (Hard to do, but a worthwhile fight.)

And there are also really less good ways to do it. Some of them pretty horrendous. I won’t get into the less good ways that some people do. (Winky emoticon goes here.)

So the move towards these “ad-free” apps and sites coincides nicely with the move in digital ad budgets to “native” advertising. Because, when it comes time to make money, seems like they’re going to have only native advertising, and no “display” advertising. (And if they’re talking about how advertising disgusts them, well, history suggests they’ll turn a corner.)

The anti-advertising bias — as Dash put it, “page-based sites are cramming every corner and bit of white space on their sites with ads that only ever decrease in effectiveness until they are made even larger and more intrusive every few years” — has a strong chance of resulting in advertising that you’ll wish was crammed into an isolated box.

Most of these “apps” currently have a huge ton of money behind them, and a lot of resources, and this money-making idea will be a second-wave scheme for them. (If you look at the job titles at a place like Branch, you’ll notice that none of them have “business” or “revenue” in them.) I mean that’s kind of wonderful, that people get to grow and build like that! But when they get to it, if they don’t cook up some wacky subscription model or something surprising (I won’t rule that out!), they’ll likely be running advertising that has a high opportunity to be deceptive — or at least, intrusive in a way that no display ad could ever be.

Unlike Pinterest, none of these sites seems (to me, from way outside) to have an opportunity to become a “marketplace,” where they make money off percentage of sales or affiliate arrangements. And Pinterest also has a great opportunity, like Facebook, in selling “brand profiles.” As in, “here are 50,000 women aged 24 to 28 who live in the Midwest who love socks, cats and flowers, have at them.”

What do they have? They have non-display advertising. Twitter’s “promoted tweets” and “promoted trends” are pretty much the leading vanguard of “native” for now. You know what? It’s not actually that great or cool a model. It’s not terrible or damaging or anything. But the brilliant principle of Twitter is that you create your own universe. Everything that’s there is something you’ve chosen — oh, except of course those tweets from Tampax or Home Depot or some other terrifically wonderful brand. (Uh, P.S., contact John@TheAwl.com for exciting native advertising opportunities!)

It’s fine to want your cool indie product-cake and to want to later IPO-eat it too. (That sentence doesn’t really work, I know, but come on.) But why aren’t we in a time where we’ve flipped the focus on business around to the front? I mean, not all the way.

Facebook without pictures or updates or profiles. or a site. just a big relational name database. so simple, so elegant. $123m seed round

— John Herrman (@jwherrman) August 15, 2012

But maybe halfway? The late-day pasting-on of revenue programs to pretty products makes monster hybrids, and that just makes a lot of Dr. Frankesteins sad. It’s a little galling after they’ve all made it clear just how revolting they find advertising to find them circling back around later.

So if, as Dash says, display advertising gets more and more aggressive over time, as users get accustomed to it — well, what does that process look like for native? When advertising gets inserted into all your “streams” and “feeds” and “apps” to the point where you don’t notice it any more, how do you think the makers of that advertising will respond? And how do you think big, expensive, revenue-less business will respond?

by Sarah Marshall and Michael Magnes

Some things aren’t as good as they used to be, but that isn’t true of birth control. Some tips from the footnotes of history, used by women (and in some cases, men) far less fortunate than us:

• A pessary made of dried crocodile dung (Ancient Egypt)

• A mixture of olive oil and oil of cedar, placed in the vagina (recommended by Aristotle)

• Bloodletting, as current medical tradition held that sperm was merely blood turned white by the heat humor. The French physician Jacques Ferrand, author of A treatise on lovesickness, recommended that, if moderate bloodletting failed to dampen libido, the man must be bled until he “is ready to fall downe for faintnesse, and losse of blood.”

• A sponge soaked in lemon juice and inserted into the vagina (Medieval Europe)

• The woman must hold her breath during coitus, then sit with her knees bent and sneeze to expel semen (Ancient Greece)

• A pessary made of nettle leaves (Elizabethan England)

• A condom made from tortoise shell or horn, which had the added benefit of concealing impotence (Feudal Japan)

• Emetics and diuretics, which reduced the desire for sex or simply made it impossible (Elizabethan England)

• The woman must eat beans on an empty stomach (Ancient Egypt)

• The woman must drink the froth from a camel’s mouth (Ancient Africa)

• The woman must drink sheep urine or rabbit blood (Medieval Europe)

• Inserting tar or elephant dung into the vagina after coitus (11th-century Persia)

• A pessary made from cat testicles (Ancient Greece)

• Half a lemon skin used as a cervical cap (recommended by Casanova)

• A condom made from a goat bladder, to be worn by the man or the woman (Imperial Rome)

• The woman must wear weasel testicles on her thigh or the amputated foot of a live weasel around her neck (Medieval Europe)

• Onion juice applied to the penis before coitus (Ancient Egypt)

• A numbing genital bath of either cold water or a mixture of ginger and vinegar (Elizabethan England)

• In 1920s and 30s New York, the most common form of birth control was coitus interruptus, which doctors worried would cause impotence in men and a hardening of the uterus in women.

• Coitus obstructus: pressing on the forepart of the testicle to block ejaculation (Used in American Utopian societies in the 19th century, and recommended in Sanskrit texts)

• Ancient Greeks and Romans used Silphium, a giant fennel, as a form of medicinal birth control so much that it is now extinct. Greek coins depicted a woman touching the plant with one hand and her genitals with the other. Its seed resembled the stylized heart shape we know today, and may be its inspiration. (Take that, Hallmark.)

• Some women in rural North Carolina still use a traditional oral contraceptive made from Queen Anne’s Lace seeds, which are chopped and put in a glass of water, which is then drunk. Cutting the seeds releases terpenoids, which block progesterone.

• A pessary made of acacia gum, dates, an unidentified plant, fiber, and honey (Ancient Egypt)

• Coca-Cola douches, as Coke was rumored to be an excellent spermicide, and the classic bottle provided a “shake and shoot” applicator (1950s and 60s America)

• In 1971, a study in China found that six percent of women used “having a husband outside the city” as a form of birth control.

Related: “Don’t Even Brush Your Teeth”: 91 Hangover Cures From 1961

Sarah Marshall has an IUD. Michael Magnes swears by amputated weasel feet.

“A Blackpool art gallery has been branded ‘tasteless’ for featuring a crazy golf hole depicting Adolf Hitler.”
 — You’re not kidding! There is absolutely no challenge to that hole. I’m offended as a fan of both art and miniature golf.

A$AP Rocky, “Purple Kisses”

Rap is so crazy drugged-out right now. This new A$AP Rocky video — with its molasses-slow sample of Linda Rondstadt’s “It’s So Easy to Fall In Love” and kaleidescopic camera tricks — makes you think the young Harlem rapper is jealous of Andre 3000’s getting to play Jimi Hendrix in the Jimi Hendrix biopic. And Gunplay, an underrated member of Rick Ross’s Maybach Music group, has a new mixtape coming out called, hilariously, 106 & Snort. There’s a good song on 106 & Snort called “Take This,” which, you will not be surprised to learn, is about cocaine.

“Contemporary teen soaps don’t pretend to have an educational mandate; they are as much works of fantasy as programs about vampires, werewolves, and witches. Yet they deliver a different kind of catharsis, trading education for escapism and reality for romance. Degrassi brought teenagers onscreen, but the shows that came afterward transformed them into creatures of television.”
 — Apparently, ‘Degrassi High’ is “popular culture’s most honest depiction of teen life.” Unrelated (OR IS IT?): it turns out that Canadians cannot get enough Kraft macaroni and cheese. They need it like air. I did not know this about Canadians! But it explains a lot.

★★ Torpid yet uneasy. A moody orange-gray morning shed its odd tint, but the day stayed gray, with damp air. At late midday, in a walled terrace plaza, ripples trembled on the glassy surface of the edgeless decorative pool. The sky was the same travertine as the Metropolitan Opera House. Over the wall, from a fringe of trees by the older apartments, came the drone of cicadas, their pulsing calls gathering into unison, like a ratchet tightening, then falling into shapelessness again.

Academy Award-winner Ben Affleck turns 40 today. I’m not sure what that signifies, or if it even means anything at all, given that we’re living in a topsy-turvy world where the oceans are rising and death lurks around every corner, but it’s something to think about. Or not. I guess it’s whatever you make of it. Still, 40! That really is something. I mean, to some people. Other people will be all, whatever, it’s just a number. I suppose your reaction will be based on wherever you are at this particular point in your life. It’s a lot like everything else in that regard.

Always stanning for Schubert and/or Martha Wainright. (iTunes)

“Andy Warhol’s Factory Without The Drugs”: Marina Abramovic Debuts Her New Space In Hudson

by Mark Allen

This past Sunday, a crowd of about 200 gathered outside the entrance to a faded-looking building at 7th Street and Columbia in Hudson, New York. They were there for a first public peek at what will be Marina Abramovic’s Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art. The building — brick, columned, with “Community Tennis” lettered across its front — seems a long way from what the architectural renderings depict for the future museum, which is a sleek “interactive building” seemingly encased in glass. (The project is led by architects Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas.) The institute is projected to open in mid-2014; for now, this open house would give Abramovic the chance to meet people from the town and describe her plans for planting the world’s first “performance art” institute in their front yard.

The doors opened right at 11, and the waiting crowd spilled into the space. Built as a grand theater, later remade into an indoor tennis court and then an antiques market before being shuttered, the building showed its years of disrepair. But signs of renewal were everywhere in the vault-like space: Fresh scaffolding gleamed against the massive walls, and work lights illuminated a giant, crumbling balcony and a (roped off) upstairs area. Abramovic, dressed all in white but for the black rims of her glasses, moved through the crowd, greeting people as they found their seats. Younger faces were scattered throughout the crowd, but for the most part, attendees were in their 40s through 60s, members of the established cultural set who’ve been migrating to Hudson from New York City for decades.

Institute director Serge Le Borgne greeted the crowd from the podium: “Today is going to be a very big performance.” Next to him a screen flashed computer-created images of the institute’s planned spaces. “You all are going to be the future of this building,” he continued. “You are going to be the spectators. You are going to be the participants.”

People began fanning themselves from the heat.

“Talking about art today means talking about commodity, talking about what is bought and sold,” Le Borgne proposed. “I don’t think that is a good way to talk about art. Marina and I are interested in creating actual social networks that are real. Some people can spend all day in front of their computers, in contact with friends they’ve never met. Part of what we want to do with the Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art is refabricate those social constructs.”

The crowd erupted into applause.

“Speak louder!” Abramovic loudly whispered, popping out from behind the projection screen.

“I can’t, it makes too much feedback.”

“Oh!” she said, disappearing again.

“To spend time with Marina Abramovic is a performance,” said Le Borgne.

Then Abramovic took the podium. After thanking the crowd, she said: “There are many performance centers in the world, but no performance centers designed for the creation of long-duration works. Performance art is time-based art. If you create a painting or an object, that is something else. But a performance occurs in a span of time. There are all kinds of performances and performance art. If you experience a performance you like, then you leave with a memory. Or if you experience a performance you hate, then you leave with a bad taste in your mouth.”

The audience laughed.

“I so tire of seeing people walk quickly through a gallery, run by a few works of art and walk out the door in five seconds with their cell phone in their hand as they tweet about what they’ve just seen,” she continued. “I believe we need to reclaim time. Long-duration art has the power to change your mind. I am not making a foundation; I am making an institute, where I and someone else are the directors, and others can come and work — and create work. With the public, performance art can exist. Performance art needs community. You are that community.” She gestured to the crowd.

(The day before, speaking to WGXC, a Hudson-area radio station, Abramovic had said, “One quote about the institute that the press keeps repeating is that I said ‘It’s going to be like Andy Warhol’s Factory, without the drugs.’ I think this is true.”)

Then Abramovic described what visitors can expect when visiting the finished institute. Her description sounded almost frightening, like some sort of futuristic hospice where you check in but can’t leave. Or maybe it even sounded boring. But “boring” is a means to an end for Abramovic:

“First, you will sign a contract that says you must stay for six hours, regardless if there are events scheduled for the entire time or not,” she began. “Then you will surrender your Blackberry, your iPhone, your watch, your computer… anything that reminds you of time. Then you will be given a white lab coat, because you have become an experimenter. You will also be given sound-cancelling headphones which you can wear when you like.”

But that wasn’t all.

“You will have an attendant that will move you from room to room. You will be sitting inside a futuristic wheelchair that I’m creating specifically for the institute with designers and architects. It will be designed to have hot food contained in one arm, cold food inside another, and a place for liquids to drink. You will never have to get out of the chair unless you need to. The attendant will take you where you want. Even if you fall asleep — which people might after a 6- or 24-hour performance — you will dream of the performance because you will have in a sense not left it. This is all designed for long-duration experience.”

Abramovic anticipated the crowd’s next question. “And what about bathrooms?” Palpable in the room had been the uneasy suspicion that the facilities would be located in the wheelchairs themselves, but no. “There will be private bathrooms at the institute! Three categories: men’s, women’s and artist’s… a new category. I am designing special toilets based on the ideas of Robert Filliou, a great artist and thinker.”

She then opened the floor to questions.

“Why did you choose Hudson of all the places in upstate New York?” a twenty-something woman asked. (Abramovic has a home in Kinderhook, 15 miles north of Hudson.)

“Rem Koolhaas has said to me ‘Real art is not happening in cities. It is happening outside cities,’” Abramovic answered, to huge whoops and applause from the audience. “Originally I was going to do something like this in New York City, but I am so glad I decided not to. The first time I came to Hudson I travelled out here and felt this great release of tension. I believe it’s important to have to travel out of New York City and come here to Hudson for the institute, as a journey, that is an important part of the experience. So much is beginning to happen in Hudson, restaurants are opening here, there’s the Basilica, the diner is here now — I believe it’s important to have a diner — and there’s a lively music scene. The train is making a line that will travel one hour from New York, or so I’ve heard.”

She continued, “There is the St. Charles Hotel opening across the street, I believe.” A few nods around the room. “I would like to work with the designers of the hotel to have it correspond with the institute. For instance, one idea I had was to have the televisions in all the rooms only tune to one channel, a channel that shows what’s going on in the institute across the street.”

Then she said, “There are plans to build a homeless shelter near here. I want to meet with the person responsible for building this shelter. Are they here?” Everyone looked around (they weren’t). “Anyway, I want to meet with them because we have to embrace this kind of thing. I want to know everyone in the community. I want to know you.”

A middle-aged man asked, “What will the open hours of the institute be?”

“I was toying with having it be open six hours a day,” Abramovic said. “And maybe have it be open for 24 hours for special projects.”

“Will the six-hour duration apply to all mediums?” asked a young woman.

“Yes!” said Abramovic. “Painting, film, dance, performance, everything will be long-duration. The institute will have many different chambers that ritualize everyday activities. Sleep, meditation, drinking water. Rooms with crystals and magnets. But the main space will always have something happening in it, works that I commission. My dream is to ask David Lynch to create something for the main space that lasts 362 hours. Matthew Barney has also asked me if he could create a long-duration piece for the space.” (During the WGXC radio interview the day before, Abramovic had mentioned Antony Hegarty, Laurie Anderson and Björk as possible sponsors once the space got going.)

“How much will admission be?” asked someone sitting in front.

“This is something I have put a lot of thought into,” Abramovic answered. “I don’t want it to be elite. I don’t want to charge a lot of money for entrance so only rich people come. That is something I hate. It is difficult for me to decide how to charge a fee for a six-hour experience. But I come from ex-Yugoslavia, which is Communist, so we have different ideas about these kinds of things. I will make a decision.”

“Will there be employment for locals from the institute?” asked a woman.

“Yes!” said Abramovic enthusiastically. “This has already been happening, of course. But when it is open I also want to keep the permanent staff very minimal, but then other projects will have additional staff. But yes. There is so much work to be done, and it will continue. With projects like this you can’t just drop a global concept out of the sky and plop it down somewhere, you have to work with the community it’s in, together to make it happen, to be involved.”

“Will the institute create work that a family can enjoy?” asked a younger woman, who was sitting with her husband and young daughter.

“A good question,” said Abramovic. “I think long-duration artwork may be difficult, or perhaps different, for children to experience. I’ve done long-duration work for kids and seen them react differently, some paying attention, some sitting on the sidelines distracted or bored. I do have ideas for the types of things. I also think it is an important challenge today to teach children how to concentrate.”

A smattering of applause for this.

“Do you think there is a problem with opening something like this and gentrifying the town, so that rent prices and other things go up so the artists can’t afford to live there anymore? How do you plan to address this issue?” asked a woman, who got a few ‘tsks’ from the audience.

Abramovic’s answer was delivered in a big voice, but seemed to sidestep a true answer. “Yes, this is the wonderful thing about escaping the big cities where these kinds of things occur. It is important to escape big cities where the limitations like this don’t exist. That’s why I am so excited to be doing something like this in Hudson.”

Did Abramovic not understand the question? Was she deflecting it? The question was a valid one, but it seemed an unusual one to ask about a burgeoning place like Hudson. With its low rent prices, space to burn, oodles of empty buildings and surrounding small towns in all directions, it’s hardly a trendy borough of NYC. While there’s already markings of a thriving bohemian culture in Hudson, it has stirred actively for two decades but never quite peaked. As a four-year resident of Hudson myself (I live in the neighboring town of Catskill with my partner, and we both work in Hudson and spend most of our time there), from my perspective younger local artists have expressed nothing but enthusiastic curiosity about Abramovic’s plans for the institute. Older locals, some of whom don’t even appear to like art, seem collectively supportive of anything that brings attention. If locals are worried about anything, it’s that the institute might not happen, like so many things up here haven’t.

“The institute will take millions to finish.” Abramovic told the crowd as the event was winding down. “When I first bought the building I spent $125,000 of my own money putting in a new roof. I originally wanted to fund it myself. But it was at that point I realized I couldn’t spend anymore of my own money, that’s why we have to raise more money. I want to dedicate the next ten years of my life to this project. I feel it’s my legacy.”

Then it ended. Abramovic told everyone that two of her films would be playing in the space until 5, and all they were welcome to stay and watch. She invited people to look at the model. “And I want to meet you all,” she added.

This…

… will become this.

Everyone’s first look.

The new roof was the first thing Abramovic had constructed after purchasing the building. Its cost — $125,000 — was what made her realize she wouldn’t be able to fund the institute on her own, as she’d originally planned.

Watch where you step!

Crumbling balcony.

Institute Director Serge Le Borgne addresses the crowd and explains how he met Marina Abramovic in Paris in 1997.

Marina Abramovic explains “long-duration” art next to a projection of the model for her Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (a model you poke your head inside of to view the interior).

In the future everyone will sign 6-hour contracts, wear lab coats and noise-cancelling headphones, and get pushed around in wheelchairs.

Zzzzzzz.

A woman from Albany asks Abramovic about activities at the institute that families might enjoy together, while her daughter quietly plays a video game.

Abramovic, mobbed by attendees after her presentation.

You got the impression people were already proposing long-duration projects for Marina to commission.

You are here.

Rem Koolhaas’ model of institute’s interior main space and other chambers.

Post-presentation, people don’t seem to want to leave. A good sign!

Mark Allen is a writer and performer living in New York.