WARNING!!!!

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since the beginning of her career, during the early 1970s where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works.

Abramović has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, sculpture and Transitory Objects for Human and Non Human Use in solo exhibitions at major institutions in the U.S. and Europe. Her work has also been included in many large-scale international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). In 1998, the exhibition Artist Body - Public Body toured extensively, including stops at Kunstmuseum and Grosse Halle, Bern and La Gallera, Valencia. In 2004, Abramović also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo show, The Star, at the Maruame Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan.

Abramović has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America. In 1994 she became Professor for Performance Art at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig where she taught for seven years. In 2004 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Institute in Chicago.

She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her extraordinary video installation/performance piece Balkan Baroque‚ and in 2003 received the Bessie for The House with the Ocean View‚ a 12-day performance at Sean Kelly Gallery.

In 2005, Abramović presented Balkan Erotic Epic at the Pirelli Foundation in Milan, Italy and at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. That same year, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy Pieces by the Guggenheim at their International Gala in 2006 and by the AICA USA with the "Best Exhibition of Time Based Art" award in 2007. Abramović's work is included in numerous major public and private collections worldwide. She was the subject of a major retrospective at the MoMA - The Artist is Present - from March 14 through May 31, 2010.

Marina Abramović lives and works in New York.

Kupala Night, also known as Ivan Kupala Day (Feast of St. John the Baptist; Russian: Иван-Купала; Belarusian: Купалле; Ukrainian: Іван Купала; Polish: Noc Kupały), is celebrated in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia currently on the night of 6/7 July in the Gregorian or New Style calendar, which is 23/24 June in the Julian or Old Style calendar still used by many Orthodox Churches. In Poland (Mazowsze and Podlasie) it is celebrated on the night of 23/24 June. Calendar-wise, it is opposite to the winter holiday Koliada. The celebration relates to the summer solstice when nights are the shortest and includes a number of Pagan rituals.

Some early mythology scholars, such as Sir James Frazer, claimed that the holiday was originally Kupala; a pagan fertility rite later accepted into the Orthodox Christian calendar. There are analogues for celebrating the legacy of St. John around the time of the summer solstice elsewhere, including St. John's Day in Western Europe.

The Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian name of this holiday combines "Ivan" (John — the Baptist) and Kupala which is related to a word derived from the Slavic word for bathing, which is cognate. The latter is reinterpreted as John's baptizing people through full immersion in water (therefore his biblical title of the Baptist). However, the tradition of Kupala predates Christianity. Due to the popularity of the pagan celebration, with time it was simply accepted and reestablished as one of the native Christian traditions intertwined with local folklore.

The holiday is still enthusiastically celebrated by the younger people of Eastern Europe. The night preceding the holiday (Tvorila night) is considered the night for "good humour" mischiefs (which sometimes would raise the concern of law enforcement agencies). On Ivan Kupala day itself, children engage in water fights and perform pranks, mostly involving pouring water over someone.Wiki

1.http://fotograf-frolov.com/blog/20/
2.http://pustunchik.ua/interesting/festival/Na-Ivana-Kupala
3.http://www.stfond.ru/articles.htm
4.http://ivnv.ru/gl/series/kupala/
5.http://voropaev-savalin.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/blog-post_9953.html
6.http://rusveter.ru/ijun.htm
7.http://genefis-gbr.ru/festival-ivan-kupala-2010/
8.http://magnitiza.ru/eto-interesno/ivana-kupala-obryadyi-ritualyi-zagovoryi/

http://duecuorisudueruote.weebly.com/1/previous/2.html

by Paola and Andrea.

Scannese(Scanno,Abruzzo))women dressed with the typical costumes and the fabulous filigree jewelry set forth in the jewelry shops of the main course 

PHOTOGRAPH BY JULES GERVAIS COURTELLEMONT, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIChttp://natgeofound.tumblr.com/post/71222469917/portrait-of-a-woman-dressed-in-clothing-typical-of

Greeks by Louis Dupré , Voyage a Athenes et a Constantinople, ou collection des portraits, de vues et costumes grecs et ottomans. Paris: Dondey- Dupré, 1825.http://rumelia.tumblr.com/page/6

-Ioannis Logothetis, notable of Livadeia, Greece.

-Maiden of Livadeia.

-Woman from Athens.

-Greek wedding in Athens. [The bride is in the foreground, while the groom is being shaved in the background]

The Sarakatsani (Greek: Σαρακατσάνοι) are an ethnic Greek population group,[4][5] who were traditionally transhumant shepherds, native to Greece, with smaller presence in neighbouring Bulgaria, southern Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. Historically centered around the Pindus mountains and other mountain ranges of continental Greece, the vast majority of the Sarakatsani have currently abandoned the transhumant way of life and have been urbanised to a significant degree.(Wiki)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarakatsani

Two native speakers of Istro-Romanian from New York speaking the almost-extinct language. apparently there are more Istro-Romanian speakers in New York than there are in their native Istrian villages in Croatia. they belong to the wider Aromanian nation and are also called Ćići, Vlachs, etchttp://rumelia.tumblr.com/tagged/aromanians