𝙲𝙷𝙰𝚁𝙻𝙾𝚃𝚃𝙴

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Reflection Questions:

#1.

My initial impression of Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present is wow.

How does someone dedicate themselves so intensely to a practice that, as she says – will take you 40 years to be taken seriously and people still look at you as if you are crazy. This is a different, impressive, and powerful type of dedication.

Maybe she is crazy.

Either way she knows her mind.

It is a talent to be able to have the creativity to come up with this sort of self torture. I don’t know whether to applaud or to be concerned. I think this type of performance, while I do admire it, definitely has aspects that are problematic. Marina is pushing herself to an extreme – while this example may be one of the less graphic ones, it is still incredibly strenuous. I understand that she is in an enclosed space but that does not mean safety isn’t a concern. She is not putting others at risk (though maybe environmentally), but she is taking herself in to a gray area of harm. She could could fall asleep and crash and have some injuries physically, but she is also putting mental stress on herself and her body. Doing anything where you are pushing yourself so extremely is going to have some lasting affect, whether its hours, days, months, or years.

This makes me more concerned for truck drivers who do this for a living who are driving on real roads with other people.

#2.

Watching Marina Abramovic’s documentary I have learned that performance art is more than just people acting or doing something to invoke a reaction. I do think an important part of performance art is to see how it is perceived from people but it is more than that. I think it can be a gesture to demonstrate humanity.

In the documentary, Marina talks about the amount of training that goes into these performances.

“The purpose of this whole thing is that they really have to perform three months, which is very big, um, kind of obligation. So they have to create their own charismatic space, and for that you have to consider some training.”

She emphasizes that it is not an easy thing to get into the mindset of doing close to nothing for so long. She says it is more difficult than doing something because it is demanding all of you. For anyone doing performance art in a situation where you have to be focused on the present moment and nothing else for so many hours a day is, I think, close to a meditation.

Another important feature of performance art highlighted in the documentary is the ephemeral quality. Performance art by nature is fleeting and momentary, it is important if you want it to live on, to have proper documentation. At several points they show Marina being photographed and talking about selecting prints of the performances. While the documentation of it is an important quality, it is also special that it is relatively temporary because it gives it a unique characteristic – being framed by time.

One other key feature of performance art, at least in the case of Marina Abramovic, is that it is real. Real people, real dedication, real emotions, real things happening in real time. The quote “when you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup” sparks this idea. Marina, and others in the video say that “they have lost” if they were to use a fake knife and ketchup. This is because the performance no longer becomes real and it loses it’s relevance. When Marina takes the razor blade to cut into her own body, that is real pain. And real questions about humanity that come from it. Marina is showing truth.

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