Marina Abramovic is sitting still all day, everyday, staring straight ahead. You can go visit her, at the Museum of Modern Art, where the chair she sits on is surrounded by a large square, outside of which a crowd, outside of which the whole museum peers down on this undramatic spectacle. Inside of the space there is a table and another chair, and you can go in and sit on that chair.
As long as I stayed there watching, the young man who sat across from her did not move. I watched for maybe half an hour, then went away and came back; he was still there—then went away and came back and again and again. I was impressed! After all, Marina Abramovic has trained, while this guy must be weekending from a sysadmin job or the like. After an hour or two he must have left, and I'm sorry I didn't see the turnover; such events must be quiet tempests.
The guard at the edge of the square was asked whether you'd be allowed to do anything when you sat before Abramovic. The guard, who must have been briefed, hesitated, and answered: "It's some time for yourself. How much time in the week do you get for yourself, with your phone ringing, and all the people around? People think they're gonna go in and make her laugh, break her concentration; it's not about making her laugh, it's a time for yourself."
Is Marina Abramovic there for herself, or for what? She has made a life, over the last few decades, of performances requiring extreme patience and physical endurance. She screamed until she lost her voice (20-odd minutes) and she forced herself to accidentally stab herself with knives, then tried to repeat the stabbings like a musical score. She dared the public to use any of several objects on her—including several weapons—and came out alive. She is bloody tough.
I can't find a trace of narcissism in these projects. They seem very meditative, although they often involve another person. But somehow overtly social dynamics don't get to play a part. The physical ordeal of them seems to distract the performers and audience from any showboating, or much self-centeredness.
Consider the clown-workshop demonstration I once witnessed, where a member of the audience was asked to volunteer. He was taken behind a curtain, given one of those bright red noses, and asked to simply stand in front of the crowd. It was a little bit funny. Then he started to goof around a bit, acting bashful; it was cutesy. It began to kill the mood, I think because we felt we were watching a virile young man stupidly act like a child. Then the instructor asked him to find someone in the crowd he liked to look at. He started to gaze fixedly at someone. Then there was pathos—he was forced to reveal what he wanted to look at—and ridiculousness—here was this man standing with a big red nose and staring at the prettiest girl in the crowd! He was helpless and, yes, very funny.
We reveal so much about ourselves by what we choose to look at. Around the gallery are other performers reperforming Abramovic's original pieces. So I found myself staring at a naked woman, perched on a wall in a square of light, about fifteen feet up, moving her arms slowly through angelic poses. She was muscular—not waifish, she had big hips and was about 40, but strong. I kept thinking how she looked like someone really tough who I'd slept with once upon a time, with fervor. And as I stared at her and as she turned to me, I kept feeling she could see this in me. She could see I was somewhat lost to her, could see the guilt and the intimacy and the trust. When her stare graced me I would get vertigo and tip forward, catching myself.
These performers are giving themselves to us, using their present bodies in several ways: first, like the object of an old painting—something we can look at to know the human form; but also like the painter, looking and roving, seeing delicate things, seeing hidden things. And they are showing something about endurance, something about perserverance and strength. Something very admirable. And they are showing us something about meditation, about what can happen to the human mind when it is immersed in nothing of interest—when it stares off and gets vertigo and reveals itself.
Marina Abramovic had an artistic partner, also her life partner, for a decade or so. They did all kinds of performances together—throwing themselves naked against each other or against gallery walls. They stretched a bow between themselves, with the arrow pointed at Abramovic. They stayed in the Australian desert for several months with Aborigines, warding off flies and learning about the Aborigine life.
When they decided to split up, they did it by hiking the Great Wall of China from opposite ends, to meet in the middle and there to part. I absolutely love this gesture: to do something really grand and dramatic with your partner, and to do it with the maturity and the resolve to know it will be the last thing you share, after having trusted and shared in so much—and to know there will be life after that, when you leave alone, and greet the rest of your life that way.