Paige:}

What are some of your first impressions of Marina Abramovic’s performance works, based on the documentary? Use an image/example of one or two works to describe aspects you admire, and aspects you might agree are problematic?

My first impression of Marina was that all of her performances were so powerful in the way she would make viewers uncomfortable and the way she would make the viewers really think about the endurance and trust she would have to have in her performances.

I found this particularly apparent in her performance Rhythm 0 where she let the audience do whatever they wanted to her. This performance shows how people behave when given full control over another persons body. This performance also represents Marina’s passion to do anything for art even risking her own physical and mental safety to prove her point.

What have you learned about features of performance art based on Abramovic’s work? Name a few key features according to her examples. Include an image to illustrate. Consider her quote: “When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”

Based on Marina’s work I have learn’t that performance art is really about the experience and what is happening in real time. What I also learn’t is that the quote “When you perform it is a knife and blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.” is Marina’s way of explaining the “knife and blood” is that the experience has to be felt and performed through both mind and body and the “fake knife and ketchup” are like faking the performance or not deeply feeling it as it then just becomes a performance.