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This year I have been very fortunate in being able to travel a great deal. The year began in Kerry, where my son Theo and I spent Christmas with Ed Maggs and Fran Edwards, having gone there via a night in Dublin. In March I spent a wonderful week in Rome with my old friend Valerie Orpen who knew where all the Caravaggios were as well as which restaurant served the best offal. In April Theo and I went first to Barcelona where we were entertained by my friends Michael and Judy and then on to our house in the French Pyrenees to avoid being in London for the Coronation. In July I took the Eurostar to Paris and on to Perpignan and the mountains where I stayed until early September. After only two weeks I was back in Paris, enjoying the company of Catherine and Steve, visiting the market, cooking and seeing shows. And now, finally, I have just returned from Lisbon, where I stayed with my good friend Camila who teaches at the university there.
But first there was the Marina Abramovic show at the Royal Academy. I have been there three times so far – it closes January 1st – and each time my opinion changes. I have never been a great fan of performance art; the ego of the performers always irritated me, but I found Marina Abramovic’s show very moving at times, perhaps because many of the pieces were done on film, playing to the camera rather than an audience, though the viewer’s role remains the same. She works in the tradition already fully established by Dada and Fluxus, particularly Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ (1964), as well as Carolee Schneemann, Vito Acconci and, of course, Chris Buren’s ‘Shot’ (1971). In almost every case she succeeded in being absolutely there, grounded in the human condition, with our attention fully engaged: she and Ulay slapping each other’s faces, Marina violently brushing her hair; she and Ulay taking turns to scream at each other; Marina holding a bow while Ulay points an arrow at her heart (‘Rest Energy’ 1980) for four minutes ten seconds. She said, ‘It really was a performance about complete and total trust.’
The famous performances are there: ‘The Artist Is Present’ (2010): Marina in silent eye contact with members of the public, eight hours a day for over three months: a strangely moving event with both participants filmed. Being so focussed and attentive made many of the public participants cry. ‘Rhythm 0’ (1974), the masochistic event where Marina laid out a table of implements for the public to use on her body, including a variety of knifes and choppers as well as a gun. There was a much smaller selection of more kindly items like a rose. The audience stripped her to the waist, cut her, wrote on her skin, and even held a loaded gun to her throat. The active audience was mostly men. The performance turned part of her hair grey. It certainly grounded her in the moment, but at what cost? In ‘Rhythm 5’ she lay at the centre of burning five-pointed star until she lost consciousness. The RA press release says these pieces ‘pushed the boundaries of self-discovery, both of herself and her audience. They also marked her first engagements with time, stillness, energy, pain, and the resulting heightened consciousness generated by long durational performance.’
We squeezed between naked models forming the portal to the next room; a re-enactment of her ‘Imponderabilia (1977), though many people took the easy route around the side. I went with three different friends. The first time with Camila who was a bit shaken by the very real presence of the naked bodies; Jill, a veteran documentary film-maker who took it all in her stride; and Vanessa, herself a performance artist who was much more excited by the later stage of Abramovic’s work where she explores the energy of crystals. The critics were quite upset by this piece. Time Out said: ‘The couple are too close, you push them aside to pass, their balance gets shifted, their backs get pushed against the wall. It’s so intrusive, so full of questions of intimacy, misogyny and closeness, that it’s almost stomach turning.’
The audience are understandably not permitted to take pictures of the nude performers, so I’ve used Abramovic’s original performances with Ulay. In other rooms, however, I took a lot.It’s a huge exhibition, but the audience seemed to enjoy the crystal energy room the most; sitting on polished rock seats, pressing their foreheads against rock, wearing giant crystal shoes, laying down with a crystal pillow. On my three visits I recorded Camila, Jill and Venessa trying out the same exhibits: First the rock headrest:
Then the clumpy crystal shoes:
And exit through the crystal portal. You could almost feel the weight of the light as the spots illuminating the crystals were very bright. Jill enjoyed this room and thought it was the most fun in the whole show. Vanessa loved this as she is very into crystals and she stayed in the doorway for ages, having ‘crystal shower’ as she put it while a line backed up.
I also tried some of them out and the rock chair headrest did feel very comfortable.
Overall, I feel that Abramovic does change the audience’s perceptions of life: she makes them more aware of their vulnerability, their strengths and, by shifting the focus of everyday behaviour, suggests new possibilities and hopes in the viewer.
