NEW YORK (AP) ― It’s not the kind of performance that will win her another Academy Award, but British actress Tilda Swinton certainly has people buzzing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
But keep quiet, please. She’s trying to sleep.
The “Moonrise Kingdom’’ star has been engaging in a different kind of performance art. She’s presenting a one-person piece called “The Maybe,’’ in which she lies sleeping in a glass box for the day. The first performance was over the weekend, and the museum won’t say when it will come back for six more performances.
 |
Actress Tilda Swinton performs the art of sleeping in her one-person piece called “The Maybe,” in New York’s Museum of Modern Art on Monday. (AP-Yonhap News) |
On Monday, the display drew a line of spectators.
Erwin Aschenbrenner, a bemused German tourist, said it was “just what you’d expect to see at MoMA.’’
The actress “is so pale and not moving in there that she looks like she’s dead,’’ said Robbie von Kampen, 20.
After about seven hours a day on a white mattress in the glass box ― with only a carafe of water and a glass to get her through ― Swinton can stretch and walk away. But only when spectators leave.
So what’s the point?
“This makes me think about myself, looking at her,’’ said Quinn Moreland, 20. “You don’t usually get to stare at somebody like this; it makes me self-conscious.’’
“Yeah, it’s socially unacceptable ― it’s kinda creepy,’’ von Kampen said.
No one, not even museum curators, could say whether the mostly immobile Swinton is actually getting some sleep while people stare.
She wore a pair of grubby sneakers, dark sporty slacks and a checkered shirt. Her glasses lay on the mattress.
Swinton also starred in a glass box in 1995 at London’s Serpentine Gallery ― seven days, eight hours a day ― in an exhibition seen by 22,000 people.
The next year, she repeated the spectacle at the Museo Barracco in Rome.
