Sitting and Smiling

Last updated
Sitting and Smiling
Presentation
Hosted byBenjamin Bennett
Created byBenjamin Bennett
Length4 hours
Production
No. of episodes325
Publication
Original releaseJuly 28, 2014
Provider YouTube

Sitting and Smiling is an endurance art performance by Benjamin Bennett. In a typical performance, Bennett looks into a video camera which is recording him while sitting and smiling motionless for four hours.

Contents

Bennett uploaded his first Sitting and Smiling video on July 28, 2014. Over the next several years, he uploaded similar videos at a rate of about one per week. Currently, his videos have earned more than 31 million views with over 380,000 subscribers. [1] [2]

Bennett cites Claire Bishop's 2012 Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship as an inspiration for his art. [3]

Walking and Talking

On February 24, 2019, after reaching 300 Sitting and Smiling videos, Bennett began a new video series entitled Walking and Talking, in which he walks and talks continuously for four hours, or until his camera battery runs out. He speaks in an extemporaneous and reflexive manner, describing his subjective experience in real time, with subjects such as philosophy of mind, consciousness, and nonduality arising out of his self-reflection. [4]

Incidents on stream

During the fifth stream, a burglar attempted to make a scene of entering his home. When he was unable to open the door he said "Hello?", then proceeded to shut the door and leave. This incident stacked attention online and the video currently has over 8.3 million views. [5]

In a separate incident in his 52nd livestream, Bennett clearly urinates himself, with a wet puddle seeping out from under him and gradually evaporating over the remainder of the footage. He never acknowledges this or breaks his composure and continues to sit and smile to the camera. [6]

During streams 238 and 257, Bennett cries intermittently during the stream. He does seem to break composure a bit and makes sounds while crying, but then returns to sitting and smiling.

Critical response

"There isn't really a purpose. My inbox is full of people asking me why I'm doing this, but I don't think that question is really applicable to this type of activity."

Benjamin Bennett,2015 interview with Vice Media [3]

One reviewer commented that "One of the strangest aspects of this project is its apparent lack of explanation." [7]

Other reviewers said that the performance was "bizarre", [8] "tip of the creepy iceberg", [9] and "bonkers". [10]

A writer for The Atlantic wrote:

Sitting and Smiling is, therefore, an extreme version of engagement with the present. It takes concepts like mindfulness (it is perhaps not coincidental that Bennett's cross-legged pose recalls the stance of meditation), attention to the present, and discomfort with the speed and busyness of modern life and pushes them to until they are unpleasant, even unbearable. ... By making the videos borderline unwatchable, Bennett suggests that experiencing time in a way that is unmediated, focused, and 'real' is impossible. But, of course, Bennett manages it, smiling the whole time. [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

I am sitting in a room is a sound art piece composed in 1969 and one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known works.

Legislature broadcasters in New Zealand are broadcasters of the New Zealand Parliament House of Representatives. Television channel Parliament TV and radio network AM Network are funded by the New Zealand House of Representatives to broadcast full and unedited coverage of its proceedings. The Office of the Clerk also funds a fully independent written, audio and video political reporting service of Parliamentary proceedings called Parliament Today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tehching Hsieh</span> American artist

Tehching (Sam) Hsieh is a Taiwanese-born performance artist. He has been called a "master" by fellow performance artist Marina Abramović.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endurance art</span> Kind of performance art involving hardship

Endurance art is a kind of performance art involving some form of hardship, such as pain, solitude or exhaustion. Performances that focus on the passage of long periods of time are also known as durational art or durational performances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucas Cruikshank</span> American YouTuber (born 1993)

Lucas Alan Cruikshank is an American YouTuber and actor who created the character Fred Figglehorn and the associated Fred series for his channel on the video-hosting website YouTube in late 2006. These videos are centered on Fred Figglehorn, a fictional six-year-old who has a dysfunctional home life and "anger management issues".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Me at the zoo</span> First video uploaded to YouTube

"Me at the zoo" is a YouTube video uploaded on April 23, 2005. It is the first video to be uploaded to the platform. The 19-second video features YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim, who was 25 years old at the time, in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo in California, noting their long trunks. It was recorded on Karim's camera by his high school friend, Yakov Lapitsky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Figglehorn</span> Fictional character

Fred Figglehorn was the central character in an Internet video series created by American Internet personality Lucas Cruikshank from 2006 to 2015 and revived from 2020 to 2021. It yielded other spin-off series and a relationship with Nickelodeon, including three movies and a television series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Techno Viking</span> Internet meme that went viral in 2007

Techno Viking is an internet phenomenon or meme based on a video from the 2000 Fuckparade in Berlin, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vlogbrothers</span> YouTube video blog channel

Vlogbrothers is a video blog channel on YouTube. The Internet-based show is created and hosted by the Green brothers: John Green and Hank Green. The first incarnation of the brothers' online broadcasting was the "Brotherhood 2.0" project, preceding the establishment of the pair's regular vlogging activity through the Vlogbrothers channel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overly Attached Girlfriend</span> Internet meme

Overly Attached Girlfriend (OAG) is a fictional character and an Internet meme originating in a YouTube video published on June 6, 2012. The character was created by Laina Morris. The video was a submission to a contest held by Justin Bieber who challenged fans to create a "Girlfriend" counterpart to his hit song "Boyfriend". The video, which satirized elements of the Bieber song that have been perceived as clingy, featured Morris staring at the camera with a fixed smile while singing about Facebook-stalking her boyfriend and other themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slo-Mo-Tion</span> 2012 single by Marilyn Manson

"Slo-Mo-Tion" is a song by American rock band Marilyn Manson. The song serves as the second single and is also the fifth track from their eighth full-length studio album Born Villain. The title of the song was revealed when Marilyn Manson appeared on That Metal Show in December 2011. The song was first released on May 1, 2012 along with the Born Villain album, and was officially released as the album's second single worldwide August 13, 2012. An EP of remixes was released in Canada via Dine Alone Records on November 6, 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roman Atwood</span> American YouTube personality

Roman Bernard Atwood is an American YouTube personality and prankster. He is best known for his vlogs, where he posts updates about his life. His vlogging channel, "RomanAtwoodVlogs", has a total of 5 billion views and 15 million subscribers. He also has another YouTube channel called "RomanAtwood", where he used to post prank videos. The channel has been inactive since 2016. His pranks have gained over 1.4 billion views and 10.4 million subscribers. He became the second YouTuber after Germán Garmendia to receive two Diamond Play Buttons for his first two channels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Devil in I</span> 2014 single by Slipknot

"The Devil in I" is a song by American heavy metal band Slipknot. Released as a single from the band's fifth album, .5: The Gray Chapter (2014). It is the second single for the album and the first to be released to radio and music channels, with the previous single "The Negative One" being a digital only single.

<i>11B-X-1371</i> Short black and white Internet horror video released in 2015

11B-X-1371 is a 2015 viral video sent to GadgetZZ.com, the Swedish tech blog that publicized it. The black-and-white segment is two minutes in length; its title came from the plaintext of a base64 string written on the DVD. It depicts a person wearing what appears to be a plague doctor costume walking and standing around in a dilapidated abandoned building, with a forest visible through former window openings in the wall behind it. Accompanied by a soundtrack of loud, discordant buzzing noise, the masked figure holds up a hand with an irregularly blinking light. The film did not have any credits or claims to authorship.

<i>Punchirikku Parasparam</i> 2015 Indian film

Punchirikku Parasparam is a 2015 Indian Malayalam-language short film directed by Hari P. Nair and produced by Ramesh Pisharody. It stars Mohanlal, Renji Panicker, Pearle Maaney, Dharmajan Bolgatty, and Pisharody. There are no dialogues in the film, instead it features musical score composed by Rahul Raj. The film had an initial release on YouTube on 31 October 2015, and was released in social media on 1 November in the day of Kerala Piravi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Pepper</span> English media personality (born 1989)

Samuel Pepper is an English internet personality. He created his YouTube channel in 2010, accumulating over 2 million subscribers and 55 million video views as of October 2020. He joined TikTok in 2020 and has amassed more than 1 million followers there as of October 2021. Pepper began streaming on Kick in the summer of 2023, where he live streams mostly IRL and Stake.com gambling videos.

Wrinkles the Clown is a character created by an unidentified performance artist living in Naples, Florida, United States, as part of an elaborate art project. Wrinkles is a curmudgeonly homeless man who dresses as a clown and hires himself out to parents to scare kids for "a few hundred dollars," offering to come to their homes and frighten misbehaving children. The character first appeared in a video uploaded to YouTube in 2015, depicting him emerging from beneath a young girl's bed in the middle of the night. Subsequently, the character appeared in several more videos, either frightening children at their homes or engaging in disturbing behavior such as waving to motorists from a darkened roadside. Concurrently, stickers bearing the clown's face and a telephone number began appearing around Florida and quickly went viral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2 Hours Doing Nothing</span> 2020 viral YouTube video

"2 Hours Doing Nothing" was a two-hour video created by Indonesian YouTuber Muhammad Didit, published on his YouTube channel Sobat Miskin Official on 10 July 2020 at 11:21:44 UTC. The video features Didit staring at the camera in his bedroom for two hours. It was originally intended to be a 10-minute video. It surpassed four million views and a mobile game of the same name was later published. Along with the channel, the video is now deleted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Backrooms</span> Fictional location

The Backrooms are a fictional concept first mentioned on a 2019 4chan thread. One of the best known examples of the liminal space aesthetic, the Backrooms are commonly depicted as an extradimensional space containing impossibly large expanses of empty rooms accessed by "no-clipping out of reality" in certain areas.

Cartoonito is a programming block that airs on weekday mornings. It premiered on September 13, 2021, on Cartoon Network, and a dedicated section on the streaming service Max. Cartoonito targets a preschool audience around two to six years old. Cartoonito marks the first dedicated preschool block on Cartoon Network in over fifteen years.

References

  1. ↑ "Benjamin Bennett - YouTube". YouTube .
  2. ↑ Putney, Dean (7 October 2015). "Internet man sits and smiles at camera for hundreds of hours". Boing Boing. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  3. 1 2 Suzdaltsev, Jules (22 January 2015). "This Guy Is Filming Himself Sitting and Smiling for Four Hours a Day". Vice. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  4. ↑ "Walking and Talking #85". YouTube . Benjamin Bennett. 26 August 2021. Event occurs at 0:00:00. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
  5. ↑ "Sitting and Smiling #5". YouTube . Benjamin Bennett. 25 November 2014. Event occurs at 2:36:30. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  6. ↑ "Sitting and Smiling #52". YouTube . Benjamin Bennett. 20 February 2015. Event occurs at 2:47:00. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  7. ↑ Rutherford-Morrison, Lara (20 January 2015). "This Man Sits, Smiles, And Stares At You For Four Hours, Creating A Black Hole Of Existential Angst (Enjoy!)" . Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  8. ↑ Tickle, Glen (20 January 2015). "Artist Benjamin Bennett Films Himself Sitting and Smiling for Hours at a Time in His Series 'Sitting and Smiling'". Laughing Squid. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
  9. ↑ Parra, Sara (19 January 2015). "Sitting and Smiling is Just the Tip of the Creepy Internet Iceberg". New Media Rockstars.
  10. ↑ Reilly, Nicholas (23 January 2015). "This man is filming himself smiling for four hours a day". Metro.
  11. ↑ Kennett, Timothy (6 March 2015). "Art That Makes You Experience the Pain of Passing Time". The Atlantic. Retrieved 31 August 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.