Marina Abramovic: Grandmother of Performance Art 

Zoe Hollinshead

Throughout the latest presidential election, both the Republican and Democratic candidates have been the topic of media firestorms, mostly regarding incriminating evidence against their characters, and consequently the level of integrity we as Americans could uphold them to as leader of our country. Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton’s emails, and the emails of those who worked with and for her, were leaked numerous times, and one email in particular speaks to my research topic. A forwarded message from Marina Abramovic, controversial performance artist, sent to Clinton’s chief of staff, John Podesta, contained an invitation more meant for Podesta’s lobbyist/art collector brother than anyone else, to a “spirit cooking dinner at my place,” and sparked more reality TV-esque gossip and outcry. (It should be noted that “Spirit Cooking” is also one of Abramovic’s works that involved her painting “recipes” on walls with animal and menstrual blood). Through Tony Podesta, longtime art collector of Abramovic’s works, Abramovic mentioned that John Podesta was welcome to join and Tony merely forwarded him the message, which then ended up in a massive WikiLeak.  In the ensuing days following the leak, far right conservatives and conspiracy theorists wrote scathing articles, labeling Abramovic an “occultist” and by association everyone involved in Clinton’s campaign big, bad Satanists, under the premise that because she said “spirit cooking” in her email, they were going to recreate this “satanic ritual” in her home. Abramovic openly denounced the criticism her invitation brought about, and explained that it was a completely normal dinner having nothing to do with her work of the same name. She told reporters at ArtNews, “It was actually just a normal menu, which I call spirit cooking. There was no blood, no anything else. We just call things funny names, that’s all.” And went on to explain it was a donor dinner for a Kickstarter campaign. A Kickstarter campaign turned into a cult gathering, spirit cooking, blood bathing American travesty fully endorsed by the terrible Democrats. This gained little media attention from major news outlets, and thankfully the outrage stayed relatively cocooned, however this instance rose broad questions regarding the relationship between political interests and avant-garde art, and the risks implicated in being a politician and having associations, however miniscule, with controversial artists. When I first saw, “Marina Abramovic embroiled in WikiLeaks Scandal,” all I could wonder was how could a performance artist, whose work while provocative, is rarely ever directly political, get involved in something like this? How is she always so easily and so eagerly labeled anything BUT what she is, an artist? Throughout her entire career she has been undermined and ridiculed as “silly” and “attention seeking,” and is still sometimes only recognized in a negative light in work like “Spirit Cooking.” Through examining Abramovic’s life’s work and beliefs, I was able to gather interesting context about her motives, and the self awareness she seeks to gain through her work. While researching, I attempted to draw conclusions, by focusing on what is arguably her most famous piece to date, about what makes her work aesthetically attractive and artistically fulfilling, and if some of the more popular philosophical arguments regarding what makes something a work of art could be used to defend her.  

Marina Abramovic was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia and began her performance art career after completing undergraduate and graduate programs in fine arts. She originally studied more common forms of art, and focused on painting and sculpting, but quickly found that using her body as her medium allowed her the artistic platform in which she felt most compelled to create. From the beginning of her journey in performance art, Abramovic had very concrete ideas about the intention behind the pieces she created. To date, all of her works revolve around a set of themes that she explores and reimagines in her installations. One that she reiterates whenever talking about her work, and seems to be her most vital component in creating, is the idea of limits. Abramovic believes that the limits of our body and mind can be pushed far further than we believe, and that in the act of performance we are capable of the impossible. She attempts to test the physical limits that our minds impose on our bodies, and bypass them completely. This notion that the body’s limits are escapable by removing mental roadblocks can be found in almost all of her famous work. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, when asked about hitting her limits during a performance, Abramovic stated, “The mind is a huge enemy because, every time you try to do something out of your comfort zone, it will make you not do it. But we all have this extra energy in our body. We might use it when we’re in extreme situations, trapped or in a plane crash or a fire, and we’re able to run out. But we don’t need to wait for this drama.” Abramovic reaches that level of drama in her work, subsequently accessing and utilizing that extra energy to create moving and surprising pieces. Abramovic also finds ritual to be a large part of her work. While her work was not originally considered an artistic discipline, she has always been extremely disciplined in her work. She has spent time in Tibetan monasteries and among Australian aboriginal peoples, in order to learn from their devotion to ritual and their ability to master mental and physical control. In another portion of the Harvard Business Review she describes ways in which she prepares her self for the strenuous nature of her work. “You have to train the entire body: training physically, thinking about nutrition, not taking drugs, not ever drinking. And I learn from Tibetan monks, Aborigines in Central Australia, shamans in Brazil. To be able to sit on the chair in The Artist Is Present, I trained my body for an entire year. I didn’t have lunch, so my body wasn’t producing acids to make me sick. I drank water only by night so I wouldn’t have to pee.” In a more artistic sense of ritual she maintains a kind of ceremoniousness in all her installations with her dedication to the performance and the audience as active participants within her world. She has likened it to having a congregation, in which the audience is active, however she remains the leader and primary sharer of experience.  Lastly I found performer-audience relationship to be a constant source of exploration in her work. She continually seeks to blur the lines between who is the spectator and who is the artist. She pursues a sense of exchange that is tangible and expansive throughout the entirety of the piece. It is important that the audience realize they are creating the performance environment with her and are in some respects equally responsible for the final product. In having these set of motifs, she has been able to shock and entrance audiences all over the world, and has illuminated interesting aspects of humanity and societal tendencies that manifest themselves within her pieces.  

Abramovic’s earliest set of well-known works are called the “Rhythm Series.” In 1974 she premiered one of her most controversial works, entitled “Rhythm 0.” This piece involved her standing motionless in a room amidst 72 different objects. The objects included things like perfume and feathers, but also more sinister items, such as whips and scissors, and even a revolver with a single bullet. The audience was given the directive to inflict and perform any action to her over the course of a six-hour period. During this time, she stated that she would hold herself responsible for anything that happened and would remain passive for the entirety of the performance. In doing this, Marina’s art became just as much a performance by the audience as it was for her. The audience took full advantage of the allowance she had given, and therefore irrevocably changed the piece and made it what it was, while simultaneously taking part in a kind of study on human empathy and compassion. In an interview for the Marina Abramovic Institute, she talks about how innocently the performance began. “They would play with me, they would give me a rose, they would kiss me, look at me.” But after a period of time, she says they became more aggressive. “They cut my neck and drank my blood…opened my legs and put a knife in between, one person took the pistol with the bullet to see if I would really with my own hand push the target.” She says it was one of her hardest performances and that it pushed her to her limits. She remained passive throughout, and the performance only ended after about six hours when the art gallery director came in and stopped the show. Marina states that right after it ended she began walking towards the crowd again, and all of those who had inflicted pain upon her, shied away from facing her. She was now human, instead of this passive being, and people were unable to look her in the eye after she regained her humanity.  

This piece sparked intense dialogue, mostly because of the role the spectators played, and the passivity Abramovic maintained. This piece utilizes all of Abramovic’s recurring themes that I mentioned earlier. Her endurance was tested as she had to remain awake and alert for six hours, while undergoing intense mental and physical distress. Her throat was slashed and all of her clothes cut off, yet she made no moves to end the performance. Even when her life was threatened by a loaded gun, she remained submissive. The only hint of her suffering came in the form of tears, that some of the more empathetic spectators would wipe away. One could only imagine the amount of mental abandonment she was channeling during the six hours, and it is understandable when she says this piece tested even her limits. The ritualistic aspect of this performance comes in the form of her solidarity to her initial promise of passivity. Most people would end a performance once their life was threatened or their dignity admonished to a certain point. But, Abramovic finds her work deeply spiritual and only feels she has failed when she hasn’t given her complete all. She puts herself in this kind of sacrificial role, as she completely devotes herself to the art, for the sake of the art.  

I would argue that the most intensely profound aspect of the piece was the role the audience played. It is not surprising, at least for me, to know that the audience began by playing nice, and slowly became more and more aggressive and less and less empathetic as the night wore on. There is the old age question that asks is evil born or created? This piece seems to me to speak more to the “created” side of human nature’s hostility. In the beginning, the audience was nice with Abramovic as they tested the truth in her promise of passivity. As more and more time went by, and they failed to elicit a reaction from her, the more violent they felt comfortable being. We are taught to always take into account how our actions affect others physically, and to be receptive to the way people react when we make choices that affect them. When the reactionary aspect of this exchange is taken out, we, as the audience feel like we can rightfully inflict pain because of the lack of objection. Abramovic said they could, and there she was, so why not? However, the moment she regained her humanity, and was now not a body detached from soul, it was too much for the audience to even look her in the eye. This speaks to how easily we allow ourselves to slip into vicious tendencies when there doesn’t seem to be a consequence, but the cowardly nature we take on when forced to face what we’ve done.  

Critically speaking, classically inclined art connoisseurs do not find Rhythm 0 or really any of Abramovic’s work to be artful. When analyzing form, there is not much characteristically to evaluate. Abramovic uses her body as the medium, and throughout the performance it is constantly being changed, but without the formulaic aspect of other performance arts such as dance or theater. Her work relies solely on action and interpretation, the latter which art philosophers such as Susan Sontag are vehemently against as being able to classify something as a work of art. However, I did find that when analyzing her work in terms of the beliefs of Edmund Burke, a valid argument can be made in favor of her work. Burke writes that the source of sublime human experience in terms of art comes from, “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is any sort of terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror…” Abramovic’s work, if nothing else, plays with the ideas of pain and danger, and excites those parts of us that wish to be close to such danger. Burke also writes, “-I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we attribute any considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to a consideration that tragedy is a deceit, and its representations no realities. The nearer it approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect its power.” So the idea that Abramovic allows us this close-up look at pain and suffering, but maintains that it is a “performance,” gives the audience the chance to experience an emotional reaction to the art, and experience the sublime through her work. Burke argues that we find delight in others’ suffering, and serves to entice us to come closer, whether that be because of sympathy or curiosity, or some other pull. Regardless, Burke is making the argument that we experience the sublime in art when we are able to partake in what seems to be real, and is an imitation of what we wouldn’t necessarily want to happen in our own lives, but permits an up close look to a reality we know doesn’t really exist. Rhythm 0 was a real experience for Abramovic, but was a far more detached one for her audience. They were all present and receptive in the space, yet Abramovic’s passivity allowed it to take on the false reality needed in performance, and subsequently gave an artistic experience to her audience. In Abramovic’s work, it is real, but it is a performance, and that marriage of the two is what creates a sublime artistic experience for her, and for her audience. 

Bibliography

Beard, Alison. "An Interview with Marina Abramović." Harvard Business Review. N.p., 26 Oct. 2016. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <https://hbr.org/2016/11/marina-abramovi>. 

Jones, Jonathan. "Marina Abramovic: The Latest Target in the Rightwing Culture Wars." Jonathan Jones on Art. Guardian News and Media, 07 Nov. 2016. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/nov/07/marina-abramovic-john-podesta-latest-target-right-wing-culture-wars>. 

"Marina Abramović Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works." The Art Story. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.theartstory.org/artist-abramovic-marina.htm>. 

“Marina Abramovic on Rhythm 0 (1974)." Vimeo. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <https://vimeo.com/71952791>. 

Olheiser, Abby. "No, John Podesta Didn’t Drink Bodily Fluids at a Secret Satanist Dinner." The Washington Post. WP Company, n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/04/no-john-podesta-didnt-drink-bodily-fluids-at-a-secret-satanist-dinner/?utm_term=.167beeeadc06>. 

Russeth, Andrew. "Marina Abramovic on Right-Wing Attacks: ‘It's Absolutely Outrageous and Ridiculous’." ARTnews. ARTnews, n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.artnews.com/2016/11/04/marina-abramovic-on-right-wing-attacks-its-absolutely-outrageous-and-ridiculous/>. 

Watson, Paul Joseph. "“Spirit Cooking”: Clinton Campaign Chairman Practices Bizarre Occult Ritual." Infowars. N.p., 04 Nov. 2016. Web. 20 Dec. 2016. <http://www.infowars.com/spirit-cooking-clinton-campaign-chairman-invited-to-bizarre-satanic-performance/>.