Microsoft Just Pulled an Ad Featuring Marina Abramovic After Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists Accused Her of Satanism

You thought the current moment couldn’t get more surreal? Well,
we have news for you. A new stranger-than-fiction art-centric clash
has erupted, and it involves the software behemoth Microsoft, the
world-famous performance artist Marina Abramović, and hysterical
cries of Satanist ties from a far-right political group.

It all started on April 10, when Microsoft uploaded a video ad
for HoloLens2, a headset designed for mixed reality, that
prominently features the artist. Less than a week later, the ad
vanished. (ARTnews first reported the
video’s disappearance.)

The now-deleted video follows Abramović as she discusses her
mixed reality work The Life, which premiered at London’s
Serpentine Galleries in early 2019. The work offers visitors the
opportunity to experience an intimate encounter with the artist in
a 19-minute performance using the mixed reality Hololens2 headset,
which enables the wearer to see both their real surroundings and
virtual additions. (One of the work’s three editions is due to be
sold at Christie’s in October with an estimate of $700,000.)

Before long, the video caught the attention of the far-right
internet. Days after it was posted, the ad—which, just to be clear,
contains no mention whatsoever of Satanism—was given a “thumbs
down” by more than 24,000 users on YouTube.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment about the removal
of the video. After being pressed for more information, the
representative did not deny that it had been deleted, saying
simply: “Microsoft doesn’t have anything additional to share here.
Thanks!”

Screenshots and clips of the video have circulated
around Reddit as well as Twitter and other social media.
According to ARTnews, many of the disapproving votes came
after Infowars, a far-right blog run by Alex Jones
that has promoted
conspiracy theories as news, published a story attempting to
connect the new Microsoft video to an earlier theory
that Abramović is
a Satanist.

Abramović did not immediately respond to an email from Artnet
News seeking comment.

It was four years ago that the artist first became a subject of
interest among the far right, after the emails of Hilary Clinton’s
former campaign chairman, John Podesta, were hacked and made
public. Among them was an invitation forwarded by
John’s brother, Tony Podesta, a lobbyist and art collector, to a
gathering of significant donors to her Kickstarter campaign.

Those who pledged over $10,000 in support of Abramović’s
now-aborted art institute were invited to attend an intimate dinner
party with the artist called “Spirit Cooking with Marina
Abramović.” The event’s name was a play on a series of 1990s
performances in which she used pig’s blood to write phrases such as
“fresh morning urine sprinkle over nightmare dreams,” or “with a
sharp knife cut deeply into the middle finger of your left hand eat
the pain” on the walls of museums. In 1996, she also created an
“aphrodisiac cookbook” of the
same name.

The dinner itself—which John Podesta did not attend—was,
Abramovic later said, just a “normal dinner” with about 10 guests.
But seizing on the name and Abramović’s nontraditional art,
internet conspiracy theorists labeled it evidence
of a “sex cult” or “bizarre occult ritual”
that had ensnared high-ranking Democratic operatives.

Abramović defended herself at the time, saying: “I’m outraged,
because this is taken completely out of my context. Anybody who
wants can read my memoirs and find out that [my work] is far away
from Satanism.” But on the internet, it seems, Marina is no match
for angry YouTube commenters.

The post Microsoft Just Pulled an Ad Featuring Marina
Abramovic After Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists Accused Her of
Satanism appeared first on artnet News.