'Art is not just about another beautiful painting that matches your dining room floor. Art has to be disturbing, art has to ask a question, art has to predict the future.’
Marina Abramovic

I recently watched a documentary about the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic (‘Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present’, by Matthew Akers, 2012). 

Creating work since the early 1970s, Abramovic is considered ‘the grandmother of performance art.’ Using her own body as her medium, she has explored themes of physical endurance and mental strength; artistic and female identity; the relationship between performer and audience. It’s pretty challenging stuff.

Abramovic jabbed a knife between her splayed fingers. She kneeled naked before a large industrial fan. She took psychoactive drugs in front of an audience. She set fire to a wooden five-pointed Communist star, lay inside it and fainted from the lack of oxygen. She placed 72 objects on a table - a rose, a feather, honey, scissors, a scalpel, a gun, a single bullet - and informed spectators that they could apply them to her in whatever way they wanted - to give her pleasure or inflict pain - without being held responsible for their actions. 

‘The veneer of civilisation is very thin, and what’s absolutely terrifying is how quickly a group of people will become bestial if you give them permission to do so.’
Chrissie Iles, Whitney Museum of American Art

In 1976 Abramovic teamed up with German performance artist Ulay. 
They ran into each other repeatedly. They sat back-to-back, tied together by their ponytails for sixteen hours. They drove a van around a square shouting numbers through a megaphone. They stood naked in a narrow doorway and invited the public to squeeze between them. They sat silently across from each other. They yelled at each other. Ulay pointed an arrow at Abramovic’s heart.

'Performance is all about state of mind.’

In 1988, in a piece called ‘The Lovers’, Abramovic and Ulay walked the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. After this experience the couple separated.

It’s easy to dismiss or mock performance art. It’s daft, unhinged, attention seeking. But let’s pause for a moment to reflect on what the artist is trying to convey. What are we to make of such bold and provocative staged events? 

Firstly Abramovic doesn’t want her art to be easy. She actively embraces the disagreeable and uncomfortable.

'From a very early time, I understood that I only learn from things I don’t like. If you do things you like, you just do the same shit. You always fall in love with the wrong guy. Because there’s no change. It’s so easy to do things you like. But then, the thing is, when you’re afraid of something, face it, go for it. You become a better human being.’

One can’t help but be struck by Abramovic’s fierce determination, her stamina, her willingness to address her vulnerabilities and fears. Indeed she talks more about the mental process required to create the work than about the output itself.

'Artists have to be warrior. Have to have this determination and have to have the stamina to conquer not just new territory, but also to conquer himself, and his weaknesses. So, it doesn't matter what kind of work you're doing as an artist, the most important is from what state of mind you're doing what you're doing.’

Some of the meaning behind Abramovic’s work may reside in her childhood. She was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1946.  Her parents, renowned Partisan fighters during World War II, gave her a strict, disciplined, religious upbringing.

‘So basically you are looking at many Marinas. You are looking at the Marina who is product of two Partisan parents, two national heroes. No limits. Willpower. Any aim she put it in the front of her. And then right next to this one you have the other one who is like a little girl. Her mother never gave her enough love. Very vulnerable and unbelievably disappointed and sad. And then there is another one who has this kind of spiritual wisdom and can go above all that. And this is actually my favourite one.’

Few of us would put ourselves through the trials that Abramovic has inflicted on herself. But many may share her conflicted identity. Her work prompts us to consider the resonances that childhood experience have throughout our lives: our fragmented selves.

'I realized that this is the theme I return to constantly - I'm always trying to prove to everyone that I can go it alone, that I can survive, that I don't need anybody.’

The documentary follows Abramovic as she prepares for a 2010 retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. At that show she introduces a new piece, ‘The Artist Is Present.’

'The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.’

Abramovic sits at a table in the museum atrium in a long monotone gown, and invites audience members to take turns to sit opposite her for a few minutes before being moved on. She remains at her station for seven and a half hours, six days a week, for three months - in silence, without food or water.

‘The inability to keep going, the potential of giving up, will become part of the performance if it occurs.’

Abramovic stares serenely at the visitor in front of her. The visitor smiles back and blinks and fidgets a little. There are furrowed brows, intense gazes and deep sighs. Occasionally a woman holds her hand to her heart. Time slows. People are very conscious of their breathing. Many burst into tears.

‘There are so many reasons why people come to sit in front of me. Some of them they’re angry, some are the curious. Some of them just want to know what happens. Some of them they are really open and you feel incredible pain. So many people have so much pain. When they’re sitting in front of me it’s not about me any more. Very soon I’m just a mirror of their own self.’

With a month to go Abramovic removes the table and so creates an even more intimate experience. As the show gains celebrity, it attracts long queues, repeat visitors, cultish fans, eccentrics and exhibitionists. A man has scored 21 onto his arm to mark the number of times he has sat with the artist.

I felt sorry for one woman who disrobes as soon as she gets in front of Abramovic. She is immediately removed by Security, but explains after that she was only trying to make a respectful tribute.

‘I wanted to be as vulnerable to her as she makes herself to everyone else.’

I found ‘The Artist Is Present’ rather moving. I was struck by the intimacy that can be created so suddenly between two strangers, the power of the eyes to convey feeling, the magic of interpersonal chemistry. The work suggests the preciousness of silence and time; the craving we all have for human connection; the need to be loved.

There’s a touching moment in the documentary when Ulay joins Abramovic at the MoMA event. He settles opposite her, arranges his jacket and stretches his legs. She looks up, at first surprised. She smiles, sighs and stares intently. He shakes his head reassuringly. She breathes deeply, gulps for air and slowly turns to weeping. They reach across the table and hold each other’s hands.

'If you experiment, you have to fail. By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you’ve never been, where failure is very possible. How can you know you’re going to succeed? Having the courage to face the unknown is so important.' 

'Why don't you look up once in a while?
The sky is bright, the time is here.
Why don't you call him just to say hello?
Oh, the light was right, we all thought so.
I don't want to take anything from you.
I want to see you living.
I want to see you through.’

Nadia Reid, ‘I Don’t Wanna Take Anything from You'

No. 298