04 Apr Marina Abramović: ‘Performance Is a Live-Force’ | Conversation

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/marina-abramovic-performance-is-a-live-force/

It included re-performances of seminal works such as Imponderabilia (1977), in which the public are invited to walk through two naked performers facing each other, and The House with the Ocean View (2002), in which a performer spends 12 days in a purpose-built space, without speaking or eating. It also provided an opportunity to engage with the artist’s Transitory Objects, a recent iteration of which instigated Abramović’s return to Brazil.

Marina Abramović, The House with the Ocean View (2002). Exhibition view: Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. © Marina Abramović. Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives. Photo: Attilio Maranzano.

Made from a combination of different materials such as wood, metals, geodes, and crystals, the Transitory Objects first emerged following Abramović’s final performance with her former romantic and artistic partner, Ulay, The Great Wall Walk (1988), during which both artists walked 2,500 kilometres along the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, eventually meeting in the middle.

It was a moment that marked the end of their relationship and the first time Abramović performed without an audience. During the walk, she experienced ‘various energy states’, which she came to believe were caused by the changes in minerals along her path. She saw minerals as being connected to the body, and this triggered an interest in creating objects that could serve as tools that the public could deploy in specific ways.

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Great Wall Walk (1988). © Marina Abramović. Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives.

In the late 1980s Abramović travelled to Brazil, led by her interest in minerals, spending long periods in mines in the southern area of the country. The video work Dozing Consciousness (1997), which is included in the artist’s current survey exhibition, documents her listening to and absorbing the energy generated by crystals covering her.

Marina Abramović, Black Dragon (1994). Exhibition view: Tachikawa Monument, Tokyo (1994). Courtesy Marina Abramović Archives.

Transitory Objects exist in different forms and dimensions that are made to converse with the scale of the body and include furniture-like pieces and walls embedded with crystals inset at intervals. One of the first of such works included Black Dragon (1994), comprising five sets of pillow-shaped blocks of rose quartz, mounted in vertical groups of three on a bare concrete wall in a Tokyo shopping district. A plaque instructed visitors to turn away from the busy street and press their head, heart, and hips against the blocks for a limitless time.

Most recently, Abramović travelled to Pernambuco in northeast Brazil for the unveiling of her new work at Usina de Arte, an open-air sculpture park in the countryside surrounded by small settlements. Set atop a grassy verge, Generator (2024) is a monolithic, 25-metre-long freestanding black wall from which large, rough-cut blocks of rose quartz protrude.

Marina Abramović, Generator (2024). Exhibition view: Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil (2024). Courtesy the artist and Usina de Arte. Photo: Andréa Rêgo Barros.

Akin to the early work presented in Japan, Abramović supplies a basic set of rules: to press head, heart, and stomach against the three crystals encrusted at different heights. The audience is invited to spend as much time doing so as they wish. The role of the artist and audience are inverted—the artist is not performing before the public, but providing the object and instructions for the audience to enact the work.

In this conversation, Abramović discusses seminal works that provide a context for understanding Generator not as sculpture, but as a powerful tool that can activate an experience in the public that interacts with it. In Generator, the audience is an integral part of the artwork, and the artist is the facilitator, present by way of the Transitory Object, even in her physical absence.

Marina Abramović, Generator (2024). Exhibition view: Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil (2024). Courtesy the artist and Usina de Arte. Photo: Andréa Rêgo Barros.

CBIn your documentary with Ulay, No Predicted End (2022), you speak about your life and work together in the 1970s and 80s. You mention that once an artist chooses a medium; they do not change. You have dedicated over five decades of your life to performance art.

MAWhen I was in my twenties, I had a painting professor who said two things to me that I’ll never forget. The first was: ‘If you are making drawings with your right hand, and you become so good that you can do it with your eyes closed, immediately change to drawing with your left hand, because you are repeating yourself and that’s terrible for creativity. You’ll please the market, but that’s not art anymore.’

The second thing was: ‘When you find your media and one idea, please stick to that, and if you have two ideas, you’re a genius, but be careful to keep the good idea.’

If you’re afraid of pain, you must liberate yourself from fear.

At that point I was a painter, but I started working with sound. Through sound I got to the body, and once I stood in public, I knew immediately [the body] was my medium and had no doubt that was the only immaterial form of art I could work with.

But that was in the 1970s. They didn’t think that was art. It was unthinkable to sell my kind of art at that time… I did not gain any success for a long time; I realised success comes and goes. You should never think that you are a genius, and you should be careful with your ego, because the ego is an artist’s biggest obstacle. The work is important, not yourself.

Ulay and Marina Abramović, Imponderabilia (1977/2024) (live reperformance), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Fabian Landewee.

CBWhat did performance give you that other mediums couldn’t?

MAI was painting passionately, making huge paintings. One day when I was painting clouds, I looked at the sky. There were no clouds and military planes came by. Their trail made this beautiful drawing in the air, and then they disappeared, and the sky was blue again.

I went to the military base and asked if I could have 25 planes to paint the sky. They called my father saying I was crazy and sent me home. At that moment, I understood I could make art with earth, fire, the body, water—everything. I didn’t need to go to the studio anymore.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBIn your early performances, there was a lot of energy and even violence. With time you progressed into a certain stillness. Could you comment on the tensions that arise in these different works?

MAAt the end of the sixties, we called it ‘Body art’. The body was where things happened. When I started, I would go to hospitals and see these hours-long operations of the hip, heart, spine. I wanted to see what the body was. Everybody sees this as masochism, but I hate pain. I stage difficult situations and we’re all afraid of pain, mortality, and suffering.

Performances are all about the experience. They’re time-based art, you have to go and experience it . . .

When staging these [performances] in public, I’m the mirror, and if I can do it, they can do it. If you’re afraid of pain, you must liberate yourself from fear. After that, I understood I was not afraid of pain anymore. It’s very possible to control physical pain, but emotional pain is a whole different subject. From there I became interested in how to stimulate being present in the moment.

I was 65 when I did my performance, The Artist Is Present (2010), at MoMA. I could never have done it when I was 20 or 30, not because I didn’t have the energy, but because I didn’t have the wisdom, concentration, motivation, or willpower, which I got much later.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBI find it useful to look at your work through a Buddhist perspective, because generally the art world is very attached to material, and what you have brought forward in your career is the power of immateriality. How do you see that duality—that it’s the immaterial that drives your work, but there’s also the materiality of the photographs and the objects that are generated from your art?

MALet’s compare it to Shamanism—shamans need so much stuff to perform their rituals, and once you have the experience of the ritual, all the stuff doesn’t matter anymore. It’s very similar to this; the objects in my work are like a tool to trigger the mind.

If we look at Generator here at Usina de Arte, it is a huge wall with crystals. It’s physical and there’s nothing immaterial about it, but I don’t call it a sculpture. I call it a ‘transitory object’ because it’s the tool to transit the experience to you. You can then do what you want with the experience you gained. That’s very important.

Performances are all about the experience. They’re time-based art, you have to go and experience it, then you have the memory of the experience, and you can tell other people what you felt, but you can’t touch it.

Marina Abramović, Generator (2024). Exhibition view: Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil (2024). Courtesy the artist and Usina de Arte. Photo: Andréa Rêgo Barros.

My generation hates me for inventing the re-performance [where someone else re-enacts my performance], where the new performer brings their own charisma, their own story. It’s better than nothing, because experience is everything. For me, photography and video are a reminder of history. Video is better because you have sound and movement; it’s closer to the real performance.

With [my collaborator] Todd Eckert, we made a piece called The Life (2018) using mixed reality technology. Thirty-six cameras captured me volumetrically. This is an incredible future because you are dealing with a kind of immortality. You can’t go through it as it’s not a hologram; it’s almost the electricity and molecules of a living person.

I can’t look at it. This work should only function when I am not there anymore, because that’s relevant. It means that it’s much more me than any video or photograph. It’s kind of the capture of a living force.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBBut it’s different to a re-performance, in that you can never have the same performance.

MAYes, because it’s different people, a different time. There’s a saying that ‘you can’t wash your hands in the same river twice.’

In my retrospective at the RA, we had this piece called The House with the Ocean View. You must be there for 12 days in a structure, with no food and no talking, and that’s the piece.

We had three women perform this work. Two of them followed exactly my script and one didn’t at all. I had to stand in front of the piece, and it’s not me anymore. Emotionally, it was incredibly difficult. When I went to see the third performer who is from Ireland, she wasn’t wearing the clothes that are supposed to be worn—she was there in her underwear and bra cleaning the floor, and I thought, ‘What is she doing?!’ But at the same time, I thought, ‘OK, that’s her interpretation, I’m not allowed to say anything. I gave her permission.’ It was an incredible struggle to accept the change. It was a very good exercise for the ego.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBHow do you deal with the tensions that arise from having a script, but also accepting unpredictability?

MAThis is an important question. With Imponderabilia, for example, where Ulay and I stand in the doorway and people are invited to walk in between us, we had different versions: two men, two women, or a man and a woman. Then he died, and in his legacy, he said he wanted this piece only to be performed with a man and a woman, so that meant we needed to cast people.

For Imponderabilia we cast 35 people, because they can only do one hour. It’s like with someone playing Bach—it can be played by a bad piano player or a great piano player. My Institute cast people, and we know exactly what we are looking for and those will be the ones who have enough energy and charisma to [perform].

Art doesn’t need to be beautiful. It doesn’t need to fit with the carpet or the wall, it needs to be something else.

When I was performing this piece, I never expected the institution to protect me. But this is a different time. For my retrospective at the RA, we had nutritionists, psychologists, healthcare, guards—a complete set of people for [the performers’] protection.

The public could either go past the people or exit another way. In my time, there was never any question that there could be another way. Now we are dealing with political correctness and what you can and can’t do, and in my case, I’m making a healthy compromise. I asked myself whether this piece would never be performed again, or if it could be performed but with these new rules. I prefer to perform it with the new rules.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBHow important is it to document your performances?

MAI realised I must be in control of everything. In 1975, the only thing we had from performances was photography. Then I went to Denmark [for the Charlottenburg Art Festival] and made Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975), and the festival wanted to make a video. I didn’t know anything about video. There was a video guy, and I was doing the piece in front of the public, combing my hair, destroying my face…

The idea behind Art Must Be Beautiful is irony. Art doesn’t need to be beautiful. It doesn’t need to fit with the carpet or the wall, it needs to be something else. When I finished performing, the public left and I looked at the video. While I was doing things with my hair, he had filmed my legs. I deleted the entire thing and said we would do it again.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

The place was empty. I said that the camera was going to be the public. We chose the angle [to show] only my face, and I told the video guy to press play and go and smoke a cigarette, which he did. Then I understood how important it is when you have nothing, to spontaneously let it go, and when you have something, you do something different.

In the seventies, we didn’t give instructions, so when the performance was happening the photographer would take two or three photos, go outside, smoke a cigarette, and come back. It was never continuous. In The Artist Is Present we had every person sitting with me in real time, recorded and documented. It’s an insane amount of time. Now, whatever I am doing is almost real-time and I have very good documentation for everything that I do.

Exhibition view: Marina Abramović, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (16 March–14 July 2024). Courtesy Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Photo: Peter Tijhuis.

CBIn performance, one can have an artist perform and the audience watch, and it’s an entirely different thing if the audience participates and is part of the performance. How do these two roles contribute to performance?

MANow I’m much more interested in the participatory aspect. In The Artist Is Present we had incredibly strict rules—if you were sitting in front of me, you couldn’t talk, touch, or interact with me, only eye gaze.

The public is watching. The person who is in front of me can film, can photograph, but there is nowhere to escape for the performer, except into [themselves]. This is an incredible emotional outburst for the performer.

In Rhythm 0 (1974), I put everything on the table, including a pistol and a bullet and the public could do anything they wanted to me. I knew for the first time that the public could actually kill me. It took me 35 years to create something like that again, with all the restrictions and my own spirit’s needs. These two pieces were the whole participation department at the beginning of the RA show.

Marina Abramović at the unveiling of Generator (2024), Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil. Courtesy the artist and Usina de Arte. Photo: Andréa Rêgo Barros.

CBHow does Generator pull together this incredible history of yours in performance?

MAHere we are away from the art capital centres; we’re dealing with normal people. I asked, how can you reach people, for them to come here in a leisurely way, make a picnic, come with kids, and at the same time give them an experience that can be profoundly spiritual if they spend enough time with it? That’s really how art goes to the community.

There’s a text with the instruction: press your head, heart, and stomach against the wall and the time you spend like that is limitless. Then they have the experience. It’s important to me that children use it because children are open-minded. I believe in what Marcel Duchamp said, about the artist not having to say everything. The public needs to complete the work.

Marina Abramović, Generator (2024) (detail). Exhibition view: Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil (2024). Courtesy the artist and Usina de Arte. Photo: Andréa Rêgo Barros.

CBIs the intention of a work of art to heal?

MAIt’s also a detox from technology, which is very important. You go there, you’re in nature, with the crystals, you put your watch in your pocket, switch off your telephone, no computer, and just give time to find your own spiritual centre, which we’ve lost.

Looking back, it’s been 55 years and if I think about the hierarchy of art as a pyramid, at the top is music, the most immaterial; second is performance art, and then there’s everything else. I think that performance art is deeply emotional, and because of immateriality, it has something so vital—it’s a live-force. —[O]

Marina Abramović is on view at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam until 14 July 2024. Generator can be viewed at Usina de Arte, Pernambuco, Brazil.

The Marina Abramović Institute was founded in New York in 2013 to preserve performance art, working with artists and institutions to support performance experiences.

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/marina-abramovic-performance-is-a-live-force/