This movie is interesting to me because Marina Abramovic has really unique ideas about what art is and how to create it. It seems like this performance is about vulnerability and connection with total strangers. Everyone taking part in this performance is being observed and it's amazing how much can be said through just a gaze. I was also surprised how emotional the experience was for everyone involved. Marina really was present for each and every person. She wanted to be there and committed herself to being present to each and every person.
I also watched a ted talk with her and found out that she does all kinds of interesting performance pieces and engages the audience in surprising ways. She talked about performances in which the audience members put on lab coats, gave their cell phones away, covered their eyes or ears and even counted grains of rice for six hours as a way of working through frustration and emotional challenge. Another one was her trying to wash the blood off of beef bones six hours a day for six days. And she described a breakup after 12 years together that became a performance piece as her and her ex each walked away from each other for three months along the great wall of China.
She is a unique artist with a very personal way of engaging with her audience but she doesn't have the illusion that her art is directly changing anyone. As she said, "The only way to change consciousness is to start with yourself."
Performance: A Hidden History
Performance art's "ephemeral nature" seems to be one reason that it hasn't been recorded very often. As technology progresses, we are more and more able to record performance art in the various locations that it takes place. Another reason could be that "performance art" includes many other forms of art, each with its own specialists.
"We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind," Marinetti's 1909 Futurist manifesto declared. "With the manifesto, we establish Futurism because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, cicerones and antiquarians… from the numberless museums that cover her like as many graveyards." I thought this quote was especially interesting because it shows the potentially revolutionary nature of performance art, seeing how performance can be done almost anywhere.
Performance art also seems to be potentially very powerful, emotionally. The flexibility and freedom that multiple mediums offer creates a larger palette and more pathways for expression. The combination of multiple mediums, flexibility in location and emotional power has allowed for new ideas to emerge into public consciousness during many periods. The Zurich Dadaists and Bauhaus cabaret performances are examples of performances in which the audience is allowed to experience the creation of the artwork rather than ponder fixed items at a gallery exhibition.
