Marina Abramovic is a Serbian born Performance Artist based in New York.
She began her work in the 1970's and since then has challenged the limits of the body, the mind as well as her audience.
Alot of Marina's work could be viewed as being quite extreme whilst retaining a strong sense of symbolism.
I will be completely honest and say Performance Art was an area I had little to no understanding of and I really just didn't "get it".
It was only when I took some time to research Marina and watched a documentary about her that my mind suddenly clicked and I understood what she was trying to do.
I also totally fell in love with her!
One of the most extreme performances she has done in the past, in my opinion, was back in 1974 and it was called "Rhythm 0".
She laid out 72 objects on a table which included some nice things like a feather, honey, a rose etc. but it also had harmful things like scalpels, knives, rose thorns etc.
For 6 hours, Marina let her audience take something off the table of their choice and use it to either be nice to her or to be cruel.
She wanted to see how the audience would treat her as she stood passive and silent for the entire time.
At the beginning, people started off being nice with her but then it quickly turned quite violent.
She had rose thorns dug into her stomach, had her clothes ripped off and one person even aimed a loaded gun at her head.
At the end of the 6 hours, Marina stood and walked towards the audience who all ran away from her to avoid being held responsible for their actions.
She said “What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you.”
Marina performed a piece called "The Artist is Present" in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010 which was filmed for a documentary under the same name.
For three months, she would sit in the same position for 7 hours each day while the Museum was open and the audience was invited to sit opposite her for as long as they liked.
Neither person could speak instead they just looked at one another.
I know what you're thinking.
This sounds a bit ridiculous.
I know it does, trust me I do.
I was even trying to explain it to my Mum last night and hearing myself talking about it out loud sounded really pretentious and ridiculous.
But I can honestly say it was one of the most moving and beautiful things I've ever seen.
She sat opposite thousands of people over the three months but looked at each one as if they were the first to sit.
Alot of people started crying when they sat opposite her and I can honestly say I was on the verge of tears myself.
In Modern society, we forget how important it is to just be with another person with no distractions like mobile phones.
To just truly be in a moment with someone is such a beautiful thing and that's what she did except it was with thousands of individuals.
She even had a few well known faces sit in front of her like Bjork, James Franco and Alan Rickman.
So if you appreciate art and how far a person will push themselves for a performance, I strongly recommend watching this documentary which is currently available on Netflix.
C.
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