Abby

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Marina Abramović

“When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”

My Impressions:

My first impression from the documentary is that Abramović’s performances are raw, vulnerable, and uncompromising. I was struck by “The Artist Is Present” (2010), where she sat silently at a table in MoMA, meeting the eyes of each visitor. When her former partner Ulay sat down, the personal and emotional history between them collapsed the boundary between “performance” and “life.” That moment showed the power of her work to move both artist and audience beyond acting into a lived reality.

sincerity, endurance, and vulnerability

Performance art pushes against the museum and art market because it’s live, temporary, and can’t be owned like a painting or sculpture. Once it’s over, it only exists in memory. Abramović works around this by selling photographs and videos of her pieces. It’s not the same as being there, but like buying merch from a band, it supports the artist and keeps the work circulating. Some argue this weakens the idea of performance art as a one-time experience, but I think it helps keep her work alive and accessible to more people.

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