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Day 24 - Life imitates art?
David Blaine has uttered relatively few words since he entered his Perspex home. But the illusionist has been demonstrating a surprising literary tendency in the things he does say. Piecing his comments together with those of his friend and collaborator Harmony Korine, there are clues to the artistic inspiration for Above The Below.
Last week Korine revealed in an interview with The Guardian that Above The Below was inspired largely by a Franz Kafka short story. The Hunger Artist is a tale about the decline of a once-celebrated starvation artist.
In the story, a key focus is the reaction of the artist's audience, which creates an obvious parallel with Blaine's real-life feat. As Above The Below progresses, it seems the response of the audience is just as interesting as the state of the man in the box. This is as it should be according to Korine, who says that there's "no right or wrong way to react" to it. David views his feat as performance art, and as with any artwork, creating discussion is part of its job.
Meanwhile, Blaine has himself been talking about literature. Late last week he listed some of his favourite works, which included another Kafka story, Metamorphosis. Blaine didn't say whether his current feat had been directly influenced by the story, but the tale, about a dramatic physical transformation that changes the individual’s relationship to the world, has clear resonance with the illusionist's real-life feat.
Another notable reference came when Blaine listed The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh as a work he had enjoyed. Did the painter's life inspire the now-infamous illusion at Blaine's pre-box press conference, in which he appeared to sever his own ear with a knife? It certainly seems possible.
During the weekend, Blaine has also been talking about the life of Dostoevsky. Earlier in his feat, while writing in his diary, Blaine held up a sign asking for guidance on how to spell the author's name. Despite this uncertainty Blaine seems knowledgeable about the writer. He described how, after enduring life in a Siberian prison camp, Dostoevsky emerged to produce potent works that reveal "humanity at its worst". Perhaps the illusionist feels that his own suffering will lead to similar artistic enlightenment.
Blaine has also cited Herman Hesse's Damien as influential in his own life. Again, this is a novel that sparks interest in the ways that people react to things. "If you hate a person" Hesse wrote in Damien, "you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us".
The response of Blaine's audience gets more and more positive as time goes on. But there are still those who want to detract from his endurance feat, like the man arrested last week for firing paint bombs. It is easy to imagine Blaine smiling wryly after this latest attempt at sabotage, which arguably said more about his audience than it did about the illusionist himself.
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