Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramović

The Grandmother of Performance Art

She wanted to explore her body's physical limits and find the connection between love and hate and body and mind. In her film "The Star", she explains how she put her body through pain and blood shed, and how to watch hospital operation to push her body and mind to its limits. She also wanted to surpass the barrier of fear, pain, and death. 

Rhythm 10

Her first performance where she focused on rituals and gestures. In the video she lined 20 knifes up and played the Russian hand game where you lay your hand on a surface and stabbed the areas between your fingers. Every time she cut herself, she would pick up a new knife. She cut herself twenty times in this process. So she replayed the tape, listened to the pain and sounds of her body, and tried to replicate her movements. By doing this, she connected the past with the present. "Once you enter into the performance state, you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do." 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-HVwEbdCo&feature=player_embedded

Rhythm 2

On stage and in front of an audience, Marina took a pill that is usually prescribed for catatonia. Catatonia is a condition where the muscles tense up and remains in a single position for hours at a time. Marina's body acted violently to the drug. It looked like she was having a seizure and she was moving uncontrollably. Ten minutes after the pill wore off, she took an antidepressant pill. Her body was fine, but her mind was gone. She doesn't even remember anything after the second pill. The reason she wanted to do this is because she wanted to experience what happens when her body in an unconscious state, but still being conscious.

Rhythm 0

  

She stood in front of an audience for a 6 hour performance. There was a table with 72 objects on it. These objects could bring pleasure and joy, while others could bring pain and harm. Some of the objects were a feather, honey, a rose, a gun, a bullet, scissors, a whip, a scalpel, comb, olive oil, wire, cake, knives, sulphur, and other items. People grabbed objects and did as they pleased to Marina. At first, people were played with Marina cautiously, but then the crowd became violent. They cut her clothes, stuck thorns in her stomach, someone loaded the gun and aimed it at her neck, 

Marina learning experience, "What I learned was that if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you."

The Artist is Present

In the Museum of Modern Art from May 14 to May 31 2010, Marina sat in a chair on a stage and had a chair on the opposite side of her where someone else could sit. She sat there for hours and hours without moving, to test how long she could do it. The people in the museum took turns sitting across from her and trying to sit as long as they could. She was seeing how long she could last sitting down for hours. This performance attracted celebrities such as Bjork and James Franco. James Franco only lasted about a minute and twenty seconds. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trw9vYV_g6c

Lady Gaga praised and loved her. Marina emailed a question to Lady Gaga asking, "Who creates limits?" And Gaga responded, "We create our own limits. Marina is a limitless human being, and she is amazing."

Marina cut a star over her stomach with a razor and began to whip her stomach and back. The whole sitting on a block of ice.