Marina Abramovic’s pieces have been found to:

‘put the audience in a deeply disturbing and agonising position that invalidated both the established conventions of theatrical performance and generally human responsiveness to a given situation.’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2008, p12)

Upon viewing some interviews with Abramovic, I started to think about how being motionless can make you as the performer vulnerable towards the audience and give them a greater connection to the piece itself. After looking at her piece The artist is present

where she would sit and stare at people for a certain length of time, it is clear that even though she is seated throughout the entire process she is present and completely focused on the person sitting opposite. It seems the performer can do work with just the power of their mind, allowing the audience to develop their own interpretation of something which is more minimalistic. To test this theory, within our lecture we were told to sit opposite someone and look at them for ten minutes (the amount of time each person was allocated in Marina’s performance). For me, my mind was relatively blank within this time. I just sat in the same position and held the gaze of the person sitting opposite me. Once the time was up we were then told to remain in our seats and carry on the experiment for another hour and a half. After the initial shock which had no time to sink in, I remained seated in my initial position and continued to look. Personally, I tried to stay completely still and not let my gaze leave the person opposite. I felt quite selfish throughout the next hour or so, because rather than focusing on the person opposite me it seemed I was running over a to do list within my head.

I had an opportunity to really look at someone and instead I was thinking about things that would affect me personally in the future. It could have been the fact that we were in a room where a group of us were all performing the same task. Although the task seems very straight forward, the results of everyone’s personal reactions were extraordinary. My partner for example began to fall asleep within the task which was in complete contrast to how I had tackled it myself. This idea of doing something that seems a minimalistic task can actually produce more interesting results when it comes to viewing it. This is because if there are no rules each person will tackle what seems a simple experiment completely differently. Looking into invalidating conventions with what is seen as the norm will also be interesting when it comes to producing more experiments in weeks to come.

Works Cited

Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. London: Routledge.