Lady Gaga Goes Nude In Video To Promote Marina Abramovic Institute’s Art Project Funded By Kickstarter

Lady Gaga has stripped down for a promotional video featuring exercises designed by Marina Abramovic, a New York-based Serbian performance artist, who wants to open an educational institute to exhibit and preserve long-durational art work.

The video, which lasts for about three minutes, shows Gaga walking across a field blindfolded and cradling a crystal as she practices the Abramovic method, which according to the artist’s website are a “series of exercises designed to heighten participants' awareness of their physical and mental experience in the present moment.”

Abramovic has started a campaign on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform, to set up a center called the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI) in Hudson, N.Y., which is said to be the first organization exclusively dedicated to practicing the exercises, which are said to help build the ability to concentrate.

And, she roped in Gaga to be her star student after the “Poker Face” singer showed up to one of Abramovic’s shows in 2010, which led to a surge in the number of young people visiting the show.

Having witnessed Gaga’s influence on the young audience, Abramovic decided to call the singer when she launched the Kickstarter campaign seeking donations for MAI’s development. "I was very impressed with how humble and how incredibly determined and hardcore this kid is. She said, 'I want you to teach me. I want to be your student,'" Abramovic told MTV News.

Referring to the nude scene in the video, Abramovic told MTV News that Gaga insisted on being naked, although she was provided with a white nurse's uniform for the exercise.

“She is a hardcore student," Abramović said. "I had to blindfold her and she was in the forest for three hours, eaten by mosquitos and spiders, scratched by the bushes. It was quite incredible. Whatever I told her she met the exercise absolutely to the end, never complaining. And my exercises are pretty tough."

As of Friday morning, the Kickstarter project had raked in $255,385 of their $600,000 goal with 16 more days to go.