How comfortable are you with performance art?
Grand dame of performance art Marina Abramović injects some live action into the Royal Academy. Go check the limit of your comfort zone.
Horror, fascination, distress, sadness: having spent over 50 years as a performance artist, Marina Abramović is anything but dull. Love her or hate her, hardly anyone can be left untouched. She says that she does not concern herself with the audience’s reaction to the exhibition; she does her best and then the rest is up to you, the viewer.
Even so, it’s hard to believe that she doesn’t care, as most of her work is about interaction with the public. Some of it has turned violent. You’ve probably heard by now about the naked people in the door, possibly also about the performance where she was almost shot, and another one where she didn’t eat anything for 12 days while being observed by the gallery visitors. Possibly she doesn’t concern herself with the nature of the reaction, as long as there is one.
I went to see her show at Garage Art centre in 2011. The naked people in the door were there too. I took my mum. ‘You bet I do,’ she answered when I asked if she remembers it. In that show there was no alternative door, if you wanted to see the show, you squeezed between the naked pair. But I was a little slimmer then, so for the current show at the Royal Academy I skipped that particular privilege and walked the other way.
No, I don’t find performance art comfortable. Or exciting. I think it is always supposed to be challenging. Is this why this show is the first within the Royal Academy’s main galleries to include live performance? Slightly more surprisingly, it is also the first to be dedicated to a female artist. Abramović is used to breaking the boundaries, even at 76. But she doesn’t want to be labelled a feminist or any other -ist for that matter. Born in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) she says she has had enough -isms in life.
Will there be a new direction for the artist? She mentioned that after her brush with death earlier this year she is considering venturing into humour, in an effort to inject some fun into her art practice. Will she, won’t she? Everything is possible with Marina. She’s already started – commissioning an illustrated satirical book about herself by artist and satirist Miriam Elia entitled Marina and the Curse of the Royal Yugoslavian Academy of Art, especially for this show.
While there was no confirmation that Marina herself will be doing any performances, other artists are re-performing her works daily at the Royal Academy. Abramović was at the forefront of performance art in the 1970s, she also championed re-performing in the early 2000s. First, she was re-performing other artists’ works with permission. Now, she trains a new generation of artists at her Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) in her method of long-duration performances. Some of the students are taking part in the show at the Royal Academy.
Re-performance, as Maria notes, is not an exact recreation of the original. The way each new artist will tackle the work will be different, but new audiences will be able to experience the effect of the real-life performance carried out under instruction from the original artist.
What is more uncomfortable – watching other people attacking the artist’s body, or other people looking into the artist’s eyes? The artist washing piles of raw bones, or the artist having a cross bow directed at her chest? Marina plays with fear and pain in a multitude of ways. If George Orwell’s 1984 became reality, the artist could help the government find suitable fears for everyone. But Marina says that, in seeing her face the fear, we should be reassured that it is ok and that it can be conquered. If she can do it, so can anyone else. But can we – if we can’t even bare to watch?
Imponderabilia was first performed in 1977 with her then partner, the German artist Ulay. In 2023 it still ends up as the lead image on most reports of the show. There is no nastiness, not even of a psychological kind – just two naked people standing opposite each other in a doorway. Yet, 46 years after it was first staged (and closed by police for indecency), it still winds people up. Yet it is possibly the most innocent thing you will see in the show. The other performances involve a naked person lying uncomfortably under a skeleton, a naked person sitting uncomfortably on a bicycle seat attached to a wall, and finally – the grandest of them all – a person left in the gallery for 12 days with no food and no books, not to mention no social media (gasp), but required to shower three times a day. That, too, sounds uncomfortable.
If all this nakedness makes you question the meaning of art, see what her other works make you question. The increasing violence of Rhythm 0 (1974) is a concise metaphor for the human soul, or lack of. It’s hard to imagine this performance being re-created, but you can watch the video, together with a display of items that were used during the performance – all the way from honey to knives. The original performance had to be stopped when the audience, who were allowed to do anything they wanted with Marina’s body using the provided objects, became increasingly violent, culminating in a gun held at the artist’s neck.
While you can’t touch the weapons, there are objects in this exhibition with which you can interact. Abramović is known for performance art, but she also does installations and sculpture – in a twist this sculpture becomes her way to engage the visitors. You can sit on one, lean on the other, stick your feet into the third. Marina wants you not to fear, but to explore instead.
After all the shock and horror of her early performances, which pushed Marina’s body to its limits, comes the gently-deceptive lull of her later works. Marina spent significant periods of time in the Australian outback and with Tibetan monks. Her fascination with meditation, stillness and silence is evident throughout her work. The video of her lying atop a tall metal structure, her long hair flying in the wind, storm clouds brewing in the background, could be used to advertise a meditation app.
Both the first and last works of this exhibition are about the opposition of physical stillness and mental exhaustion. In the first room, we are met with a multi-channel video installation that records her performanceThe Artist is Present (2010) where Marina sat in the gallery every day for three months and visitors could sit opposite her for an unlimited period of time, looking into her eyes. There were smiles, there were tears. The last work is a re-performance of The House with the Ocean View (2002) – this time three artists will take their turn at putting themselves through 12 days of mental and physical fasting in front of prying visitors’ eyes. Each will go through this experience in her own way.
For your turn, you can get a set of cards at the shop to train in the Marina Abramović method for reaching higher consciousness and confronting life’s challenges, no fasting required. One card tells you to lie down and hold your breath. How comfortable are you with that?
Comfortable or uncomfortable, you will be happy to leave the gallery and step into Piccadilly. But a Marina Abramović show you won’t soon forget. My mum certainly hasn’t.
Marina Abramović is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 23 September 2023 – 1 January 2024. Check performance schedule for performance dates.
What a fantastic read! It’s a shame I can’t see it but tbh I’m not sure entirely that I’d want to? L
So timely as I received this whilst on my way to the RA. So well written, comprehensive and reflective. Thank you- I feel well researched now! Angela