A Brooklyn performance artist had an opening in a local gallery this weekend for her next big piece: a live birth. 
 
 Marni Kotak, who is 36 and eight months pregnant, is planning to go through the birth of her first child in front of an audience in an art gallery in the Bushwick neighborhood. The gallery has installed a shower and a refrigerator and already has about 15 people signed up to watch. 
 
 In preparation for this weekend's “opening” at the Microscope Gallery, Kotak also brought along her grandmother’s bed, a rocking chair and her own paintings that are related to her pregnancy, including a framed sonogram. 
 
 On Monday, she met with her midwife and doula in the space where she expects to give birth any minute, though on the gallery website the “Birth of Baby X” installation is officially supposed to run “October 8-November 7.” 
 
 This is not Kotak’s first, uh, unconventional work. She also staged reenactments of losing her virginity and attending her grandfather’s funeral, according to the website. ||||| Now that Facebook has decided to publish a timeline that includes all of our online goings-on since birth, we wonder what a tangible chronicle of this would look like. Enter the very pregnant performance artist Marni Kotak, who is transforming the Microscope Gallery into a home-birth center where she will turn the birth of her baby into a work of art. Her exhibit "The Birth of Baby X" kicks off her long-term project "Raising Baby X," which will document her child's upbringing "from birth through attending college and developing an independent life," according to her website. Starting Saturday, she'll be making the gallery home as she waits for the contractions to start (due date is uncertain according to Kotak's doctor, but some time during the span of the next 5 or 6 weeks). Then, she'll have her baby right there with the assistance of a midwife and a doula. As the 36-year-old tells us, "I know it will be challenging, but I think if people give birth in the completely inhospitable environment of hospitals, hooked up to IVs and monitors, and strapped with stirrups into a bed, I can give birth in an art gallery." We dare Mark Zuckerberg to top that! We recently got to ask Kotak some questions about her project. 
 
 You've reenacted the funeral of your grandfather and the first time you had sex, and you've stated that you're "most concerned with the question of how one can have and convey a real experience." Can you explain how a performance art experience is different than, say, an onstage performance? A performance art experience is more real than an onstage performance if it possesses a raw immediacy that cannot be captured, and therefore cannot be acted out, as in a work of theater. 
 
 In an onstage play, the performers have scripted lines that they have memorized and they are playing roles. Performance art is essentially closer to real life in that it takes place in fleeting moments that can never be repeated, objectified, or commodified. 
 
 In "The Birth of Baby X," I will be completely engrossed in the act of giving birth before a live audience. I will be focused on delivering my child into the world in the healthiest manner possible, rather than on how I look or what the audience may think. Everything I have learned about the birth process is that the more you surrender your mind and don't try to control the event, but let your body do what it naturally knows how to do, the better your labor progresses. This, to me, provides for the most authentic performance art situation. And the ultimate creation of this life performance will be a living being! 
 
 Who are some of your influences? My biggest inspirations are the '70s performance artists like Marina Abramovic, Hannah Wilke, Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, and Carolee Schneeman, in which the performances focused on the visceral experience of the body, often testing the limits of human experience. 
 
 There is a whole range of artistic practice that can be referred to as performance art. However, I feel that the best performance art takes place when the artist is not trying to perform, but is rather completely immersed in an authentic action. 
 
 Most of your art performances deal with real life moments in your life. Why do you think it's so important to capture these moments -- even the mundane ones -- as art? I am driven to hold onto an authentic personal experience in a world that has essentially become consumed by an unreal hyper-reality. When I first graduated from Bard and began performing in New York in the late '90s, art was ironic and driven by semiotics and critical theory, and, with the rapid emergence of "new media," the concept that reality was being replaced by a hyper-mediated simulacrum. As a young woman, I had to believe there was more to life than that. Otherwise, what was the point? I would keep saying to myself in the back of my head: "I have to believe that this life has real meaning and value." 
 
 If you weren't making art, what else would you be doing? Ideally, I am always making art, as my art is my life and vice versa. So, I am trying to approach every life situation from that standpoint. In that way, it almost doesn't matter what I am doing, as long as I am staying true to myself and am open to present moment unfolding. Or, in another fantasy, I could be a Russian spy, and my code name would be: Marnitov Cocktail. 
 
 Do you think our culture has a fascination with chronicling our every move -- i.e., on Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Do you think it is because people want to make life seem relevant and/or meaningful? I like this question, because I have always had a deep-seated disdain for Facebook. I have an account because it seems to have become an essential communication tool of today, but I use the site solely to stay in touch with friends, who happen to use Facebook, about my upcoming shows and projects. I never log on just to post status updates or such about the details of my life. My life is for me to experience in an authentic way and not for Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the company's shareholders to make more money from. 
 
 But to answer your question more directly, yes, I do feel that people today are desperately seeking a sense of meaning in their lives. Facebook is feeding into that and providing -- what I see as an ultimately empty -- solution for a hyper-mediated world. What people who spend so much time on Facebook seem to forget is that it is essentially a corporation that is profiting from the nuances of their everyday experiences. Sadly, the more time that people spend on social networking sites and the less time they spend engaging in authentic experiences with friends and family in the real world -- and yes, I do still think there is a real world -- the more they are denying the significance of their own human experience. This in turn leads to a greater sense of desperation to find meaning in their lives, more wasted hours on Facebook, and so on and so forth. It is a vicious cycle. 
 
 Do you think reenacting a moment diminishes its actual value? I feel that it is never possible to re-enact a moment exactly. Although the intense nostalgia that is part of what drives my work would like it to be otherwise. I am profoundly aware that every precious moment in my life can never be re-lived, and that ultimately I will cease having life experiences. What does live on, however, are emotional residues, memories, of the original events. And so what I have tried to do in my performance re-enactments is to tap into those emotional residues and, in doing so, serve as a kind of conduit for audience members who have likely had similar or related experiences. 
 
 Whatever the case, an attempt to re-enact a life event doesn't diminish its value if it is done through actually going back into what the original experience felt like. The danger is in if one tries to re-create an event by simply re-enacting a scripted set of actions. This would not pay tribute to the original experience, and would yield rather hollow results. 
 
 What do you hope people take from your performance at Microscope Gallery? I hope that people will see that human life itself is the most profound work of art, and that therefore giving birth, the greatest expression of life, is the highest form of art. This child is the greatest work of art that Jason and I could ever make together. 
 
 So often I find that people overlook how our lives are full of the most amazing, shocking, challenging, beautiful, and disturbing experiences -- far more interesting than anything anyone could put together as a "performance." 
 
 My performance at Microscope will begin as I install the show, setting up my own home-birth center in the space, and will span the entire duration of the exhibition. Part of giving birth is the mental and physical preparation for the event. A lot elements go into a traditional home-birth, and I received a whole list of necessary supplies from my midwife. I will be installing an inflatable birthing pool and a shower in the gallery, along with my deceased grandmother's bed, the rocking chair that my mother rocked me on when I was a baby, shag carpeting, a surround video projection of ocean waves crashing on the shores of my favorite Cape Cod beach, artwork made by my husband and the child's father, Jason Robert Bell, and a small kitchen area for food and drinks. 
 
 All of these elements are incorporated to make the labor process as smooth and as comfortable as possible. As this will take place in front of an audience, rather than in the privacy of my home, I am doing extra mental preparation at the advice of my doula (who along with my midwife will be present at the birth) to let go of my mind and totally go into my body. She told me that once I really enter active labor the body just takes over and I won't care at all what is going on around me. My focus will be on having my baby. I know it will be challenging, but I think if people give birth in the completely inhospitable environment of hospitals, hooked up to IVs and monitors and strapped with stirrups into a bed, I can give birth in an art gallery. And in giving birth in front of the audience, I am showing them, as in my previous performances, that real life is the best performance art, and that, if our eyes can be opened to it, all of the meaning that we seek is right there in our everyday lives. 
 
 "The Birth of Baby X" opens Saturday, October 8, through Monday, November 7 at Microscope Gallery, 4 Charles Place, Bushwick. The hours are extended to 7 days a week, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and, the gallery says, "we will remain open or reopen if the birth is in process." Visitors to the show can get on a list be notified of when she goes into labor. Go to Runnin' Scared for all our latest news coverage. 
 
 [ACruz] [@chelipj] 
 
 Sponsor Content ||||| Cardi B is making mommy moves! 
 
 The 25-year-old rapper (whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar) and husband Offset of Migos welcomed their first child together, daughter Kulture Kiari Cephus, on Tuesday, July 10, Cardi B announced on Instagram Wednesday alongside a nude maternity photo. 
 
 The baby girl is the first child for Cardi B and the fourth for Offset (birth name Kiari Cephus), who has three children from previous relationships: sons Jordan and Kody and daughter Kalea Marie. 
 
 The birth of their daughter comes two weeks after the new mom confirmed that she and Offset, 26, secretly tied the knot this past September. “Well now since you lil [nosy] f—s know at least ya can stop saying I had a baby out of wedlock,” Cardi B tweeted on June 25. 
 
 Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. 
 
 Cardi B and Offset John Parra/Telemundo/NBCU Photo Bank 
 
 RELATED GALLERY: Cardi B and Offset’s Road to Marriage: The Comprehensive (but Still Super Short) Guide 
 
 After months of speculation, Cardi B confirmed her pregnancy on Saturday Night Live in April when she proudly debuted her baby bump during the second performance as musical guest. 
 
 In May, the “Bodak Yellow” hit-maker came clean about the sex of her baby on the way on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show after host Howard Stern asked her directly, “Do you know what you’re having … what are you having?” “Yes. I’m having a girl,” Cardi B replied. 
 
 Cardi B had dropped a hint that her baby on the way would be a little girl while catching up with The New York Times ahead of the Met Gala, where she repeatedly referred to the new addition as “she.” 
 
 Cardi B at the 2018 Met Gala Courtesy Erika La Pearl 
 
 Cardi B performing at Coachella Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella 
 
 RELATED: Pregnant Cardi B Twerks to Celebrate Second No. 1 Single, Sings About Being Ready to “Give Birth” 
 
 During a May appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Invasion of Privacy rapper revealed that Offset had already come up with the perfect moniker for their new addition. “My dude named the baby,” she said. “I really like the name.” 
 
 She also joked that the sexy moves she broke out for her Coachella performance were responsible for the pregnancy. “I was just trying to show the world how I got pregnant in the first place,” the star said about clips of herself twerking and dancing on the ground at the festival, adding about one pose, “Like that, that’s how it happened. That’s where I [was] that day.” 
 
 In April, Cardi B confirmed she knew exactly when her baby was conceived while talking to Power 105.1’s show The Breakfast Club. “No, it wasn’t planned. It was just one night … it was a good night … that one night, it had to be that night,” she said. 
 
 Cardi B and Offset Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images 
 
 RELATED GALLERY: Oh, Baby! All the Celeb Parents Who’ve Shared Stories About Conceiving Their Kids 
 
 In her interview with The Breakfast Club, Cardi B also admitted it “disgusts” her that people have reached out to her online to more or less tell her that motherhood will ruin her professional success. 
 
 “It just really bothers me and it disgusts me because I see a lot of women online like, ‘Oh I feel sorry for you, oh your career is over,’ ” she said. “As a woman, why can’t I have both? Why do I gotta choose a career or a baby? Like, why can’t I have both? I want both.” 
 
 The rapper admitted she “kinda, sorta” considered terminating her pregnancy for a short time, “But then I didn’t want to deal with the whole abortion thing. I just didn’t want to.” 
 
 “And it’s just like, ‘You know what? I’m a grown woman. I’m 25 years old. I’m gonna say this in the most humblest way … I’m a schmillionaire, you know what I’m saying? And I’m prepared for this.’ ” 
 
 Cardi B performing on Saturday Night Live Youtube 
 
 RELATED VIDEO: Cardi B Says Offset Has Picked Baby’s Name as Rapper Hilariously Reveals “How [She] Got Pregnant” 
 
 In early June, Cardi B clapped back after receiving critical comments on social media after a video surfaced of Offset smoking while standing next to the then-mom-to-be at what appears to be a club. At one point in the video, a large cloud of smoke can be seen traveling from Offset to in front of where Cardi B was standing. 
 
 “SINCE YA CARE AND ARE SO CONCERN about my baby … Hit me in my DM for my registry and send me some [Pampers] and baby formula,” she quipped, adding alongside four crying-laughing emojis, “Don’t just comment like you care about my baby show it!! SEND THEM PAMPERS!” 
 
 In another comment, she wrote, “My child is great i be in the OBGYN faithfully but since you so concern about the health you want to split these medical bills with me?” adding, “I figure you would since you sound so concern about health.” 
 
 RELATED: Pregnant Cardi B to Stop Performing as “Shorty Keeps Growing”: “I Can Barely Breathe Now” 
 
 The new parents — who got engaged in late October onstage at Power 99’s Powerhouse concert in Philadelphia, weeks after they secretly wed — graced the cover of Rolling Stone‘s July issue, where they opened up about their plans for their daughter. 
 
 “I want a lit baby shower. My baby shower’s not starting at no 5:00. My s— is going to start at 9 p.m. because that’s how I celebrate, that’s how Caribbean people celebrate,” she told the magazine, laughing. 
 
 “I don’t like baby showers that be at 5 p.m. in the backyard, eating, cooking hors d’oeuvres. Nah,” added Cardi B. “S—, I might even drink some red wine. Red wine’s healthy, right?” 
 
 RELATED: These Are the Lavish Items Reportedly on Cardi B’s Baby Registry — Including a Mini Bentley! 
 
 And the rapper got her wish. On June 26, the spouses celebrated their baby girl on the way at an extravagant shower in Atlanta, with a theme of Bardi Shower: A Bronx Fairytale. 
 
 Alongside an exclusive set of photos, Vogue received details on the shower from its event planner, Karleen Roy, which she described to the outlet as “a magical and imaginary Bronx land fit for the quintessential baby girl … only this time there is a plot twist in this lavish story: It’s a magical, whimsical land, but FOR THE CULTURE!” 
 
 Cardi B and Offset's baby shower Cardi B/Facebook 
 
 Cardi B and Offset's baby shower Offset/Instagram 
 
 RELATED: Kris Jenner Offers to Be Cardi B’s Midwife After Pregnant Rapper Confirms Secret Wedding 
 
 C.Wayman Floral & Events provided the more than 25,000 flowers, which were used to build various animal sculptures, subway-car models, a 16-foot decorative piece and more. Vogue reported the night’s entertainment was provided by the Ballethnic dance company and hip-hop orchestra group Orchestra Noir, while guests noshed on refreshments like piraguas, soul food, coquito cocktails and a five-tier cake with as many flavors. 
 
 The baby girl’s extensive library setup included children’s books like Viva, Frida and Buenas Noches, Luna, and the on-site “Bardi Baby Bodega” offered multiple items for parents such as bottles and diapers wrapped in pink ribbon. Guests went home with purple baby blankets, which Vogue described as “a nod to the epic self portrait shawl Cardi once wore to the airport.” 
 
 RELATED: Offset Isn’t Intimidated by Cardi B’s Accomplishments: “I Wanted Real, I Also Wanted Successful” 
 
 Of her baby girl, the “I Like It” rapper promised in her Rolling Stone interview that she’s “going to tell her everything” as she grows up — no secrets and no games. 
 
 ” ‘You have a choice. I could maintain you. I could spoil you if you go to college. Or if you want to be independent, go ahead. When you a teenager and you 18, 19, you can’t get no job that pays you more than $200 a week,’ ” Cardi B explained of a potential future conversation. 
 
 ” ‘You want to become a stripper? ‘Cause I became a stripper ’cause I ain’t have no choice. You gonna be getting your ass smacked by n—s that have less money than you, less of an education than you, but they going to feel like they better than you because they feel like you need them. You want to live like that?’ ” she added. “That’s how I’m going to talk to my kid.”
– This one isn't for the squeamish: Performance artist Marni Kotak's next piece involves her giving birth ... live ... in a Brooklyn gallery. The 36-year-old's "durational performance" runs though Nov. 7 at Microscope Gallery, which the Los Angeles Times reports has been altered to fit Kotak's needs: It now features a shower, her grandmother's bed, refrigerator, and rocking chair, along with a framed sonogram. The gallery will be open from 11am to 6pm until the birth occurs, and will extend its hours if need be for the blessed event. (Kotak is 8 months along, and timed the show, "Birth of Baby X," to coincide with her due date.) "I will be completely engrossed in the act of giving birth before a live audience," Kotak tells the Village Voice. "I will be focused on delivering my child into the world in the healthiest manner possible, rather than on how I look or what the audience may think." She shares plenty more thoughts, on Facebook ("my life ... is not for Mark Zuckerberg"), her influences, and what she'd be doing if she wasn't making art (one option: Russian spy, code name "Marnitov Cocktail"); click to read.