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Marina Abramović
632 Plays9 months ago
In this first episode of Exhibitionistas we look back on one of the most exciting exhibitions of last year, Marina Abramović at the Royal Academy. What better way to start a podcast than chatting about the retrospective exhibition of the grandmother of performance art?
Music: Sarturn.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Exhibitionistas' Podcast and Hosts
00:00:10
Speaker
Hi there and welcome welcome to the very first episode of the podcast Exhibitionistice. So let me tell you a bit about us. We are two art lovers, one who happens to be an art curator and the other who is not at all professionally involved in art. I am the irritating know-it-all Joanna Pierre-Nebes and Emily Harding is the other co-host.
Exploring the Marina Abramovich Exhibition
00:00:33
Speaker
So in this episode, we look back on a blockbuster of 2023, Marina Abramovich at the Royal Academy. We talk about so many things, from the advantages and disadvantages of performance reenactments to Emily actually having done her own kind of performance in the exhibition.
00:00:51
Speaker
you will see. So just a little comment about the fact that after we recorded this episode Abramovich's foray into cosmetics came to light and I'm actually really glad we did not know about it. It's all over Instagram and the press and people don't know what to make of it. Anyway without further ado welcome to the very first episode of exhibitionistas
00:01:15
Speaker
where we visit exhibitions so that you absolutely have to because it's such a pleasure and the biggest pleasure of all talking about it.
Goals and Excitement for the Podcast
00:01:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the exhibitionist's podcast where we explore the work of an artist through their solo exhibition. We visit exhibitions so that you have to. I am the co-host of this podcast. My name is Joanna Pierre Nevis and I'm a contemporary art curator and writer.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I'm Emily Harding. I'm an art lover and Joanna's friend. So we decided to do this because we love having a good chinwag about exhibitions after we go and see them. And we wanted to share it with you. So every other week we'll talk about an exhibition we have both seen separately. And one of us will share the backstory about the artist. So Joanna, do you want to introduce the artists for this episode for our listeners?
00:02:13
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. But first of all, I want to say I'm so happy to be doing this with you, Emily. It's really, really fun to be able to share our conversations with our listeners. This is our very first episode. It's amazing. I know. And what an episode. I mean, I just cannot wait to dig in.
00:02:31
Speaker
We're in it for a ride.
Marina Abramovich's Life and Influences
00:02:33
Speaker
So we're talking about the, I think one of the most important exhibitions of 2023, Marina Abramovich at the Royal Academy from the 23rd of September, 2023 until the 1st of January, 2024. So it last day, yesterday we're recording on the 2nd of January was the last day of the exhibition. So Marina Abramovich was a pioneering performance artist
00:02:59
Speaker
that risked her life to push the boundaries of the art form. And it is safe to say that she lived a drama-filled life.
00:03:08
Speaker
She is called the grandmother of performance arts, but there's so much to her. So she was born in 1946 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia. She says that she feels like she belongs to a country that no longer exists. She doesn't feel Serbian. And she had a very disciplined upbringing. She described her upbringing as being raised to be a soldier. So her parents
00:03:35
Speaker
were very harsh, very severe, very emotionless. She was never kissed by her mom. She was at times physically punished for supposedly showing off. She could not bring any friends home. And her parents, by the way, were national heroes. So they were part of Tito's partisans. They worked for the government. But then at home, it was a very difficult environment. No cuddles. Man, that's rough.
00:04:01
Speaker
No cuddles. And do you know until what age this went on? Uh, tell me. Well, until 29. 29, she had a curfew. Stop it. That's funny. That's like this generation sort of gets the, you know, the flack of being too coddled and too mothered. And it's like, wow, a curfew of 10 when you're 29.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, she had a first husband, I forget his name, he was also an artist, but she was still at her mum's house and she, so of course obviously she was already a performing artist when she was, you know, under this very
00:04:36
Speaker
rule and she would be then out and about whipping herself, fainting from the fumes of a performance and then would go straight home. There's even a little anecdote which I find really funny. So she did a performance where she was inside a five-pointed cross that she set on fire with petrol and the fumes were so intense that she ended up fainting. She burned herself, she had cut her hair and clipped her
00:05:03
Speaker
at her nails and someone in the audience, a doctor, had to rescue her so she was all burnt. Her hair was a mess. She flew home and when she got up in the morning she went to the kitchen to have breakfast in the state
00:05:17
Speaker
And apparently her grandmother was holding a trade that she dropped on the floor when she saw Marina's weird state. I bet she was a sight. So it's like you're there. You're pushing your art form to the limits. You're putting your body on the line, literally being saved from death. And your first thought is, I've got to dash home. I have a 10 o'clock curfew.
00:05:40
Speaker
I mean, that says so much about her upbringing. But it does say a lot about her work as well. So, fear not.
Abramovich and Ulay: Artistic Partnership and Influence
00:05:48
Speaker
In 1975, she went to Amsterdam to do a performance called Thomas Lipps, and that's when she finally left her country and led a completely different kind of life.
00:05:59
Speaker
Thomas Lips is a performance where she does a lot of things, including cutting a five-pointed cross on her stomach and whipping herself violently. And the German artist Ole tended to her wounds and started a relationship that would last for 13 years. That's a meet-cute of the ages. Listen, there's no other story like this one.
00:06:24
Speaker
That sounds just like how Peter and I met, you know? It's love. It's love and work because they actually started not only a personal relationship, but also a work relationship. It was a complete, complete partnership. That would actually notoriously end when they both walked towards each other in the Great Wall of China. Their meeting point was also the last goodbye.
00:06:50
Speaker
So that's how they ended, you know, they decided to separate, which again, you know, after that meet cute, you have the divorce of the century as well. Yeah, right. Sort of book ended with a drama. But what is interesting, you know, Emily, about the Abramovich-Ulay partnership is that they, of course, you know, Abramovich's work was very influenced by the 60s. She was influenced by
00:07:15
Speaker
Jan Palanche's self-immolation in Prague in reaction to the Soviets. But she, in this, well, when she met Ule, she already had a complete body of work. She was an artist in her own right. But then when they got together, the work became about the male-female relationships through these very intense
00:07:36
Speaker
sometimes violent actions that were long in time, that were about endurance. But so after the separation, she went on to have a solo career. She remained in Amsterdam for a number of years, but she now considers herself to be a nomadic artist.
Abramovich's Continued Success and Retrospectives
00:07:55
Speaker
In 1997, she was awarded the International Prize at the Venice Biennial for a work called
00:08:02
Speaker
Balkan Baroque, which is part of the Royal Academy exhibition. Right, really kind of remarkable room for sure. It's a very intense room, isn't it? Another thing that's so admirable about her is that her career has, in terms of performance, and her performance in particular is so draining.
00:08:23
Speaker
but she continues to do it. She's now 77 years old and she continues to surprise us actually with performance. It's incredible because she was just prolific and relentless with her output throughout her 50 plus year career. Super impressive. I can only imagine when they separated the
00:08:43
Speaker
pressure that she had of people asking, oh, what is she going to do next? Especially being a woman. When there's a duo of artists, there's always this question of who does the work. Jack White, Meg White, classic example. Our classic reference. Our listeners will get used to Jack White references, I think.
00:09:04
Speaker
But so she had a retrospective exhibition in 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art, which was called The Artist is Present. And this placed her in the mainstream and popular culture. Yeah, sorry. This is my first awareness of her,
The Art of Reenactment in Abramovich's Work
00:09:22
Speaker
for sure. People, I mean, heard of her at least, know her name through this exhibition, where she allowed other performers to reenact her performances.
00:09:36
Speaker
one of the major contributions. I mean, there are so many by this artist to performance and to the history of performance. She is, by the way, Emily, as you know, very militant about performance. She really is someone who defends performance as an art form. I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean, that that warrior-soldier upbringing and that discipline that was imbued within her from her mother, you know, that has really endured. It's pretty incredible.
00:09:58
Speaker
For the history of performance this is really important and this is
00:10:03
Speaker
Listen, the artist this present was even adapted by Jay-Z for a music video.
Abramovich's Influence on Pop Culture
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's so cool. I had no idea. Yeah, I had no idea about this until you mentioned it and that it looked it up and it is amazing to watch it, but yeah. And she obviously became friends with Lady Gaga when you think of it. You know, people don't know this, but Lady Gaga's meat dress at whatever event it was, I have no idea. Yeah. She was inspired by Janis Terbach.
00:10:30
Speaker
who was also a very important performance artist. Lady Gaga is very, very knowledgeable and she's really, really attentive to whatever's going on in the art world. Another thing to say about the exhibition is that people queued outside of the museum and even slept in the streets to have a chance to participate in the performance. And an eponymous documentary was made about the details of the preparation and the duration of the performance, which was
00:10:59
Speaker
75 days sitting facing members of the audience one by one and at this time she's already about 62 years old so
00:11:08
Speaker
I would have happily been in that line. Well, I have a little anecdote, speaking of being in the presence of Marina Abramovich, because she had an exhibition in 2014 here in London at the Serpentine Gallery, and I went there with my daughter. You were saying when we were talking about the exhibition that when you went there, you suddenly thought, oh, wait a minute, this is performance. Yeah, exactly. Is she going to be there?
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Yeah, so she was present. I think the exhibition was called 512 Hours, something like this, which again is what she usually does. She did the same at the MoMA, which is to state the number of hours that she will be present during the exhibition. There were tables with rice, all the exercises she does to prepare her performers.
Audience Engagement and Personal Interactions
00:11:57
Speaker
And my daughter was there with me, and she had a belly ache, and so she was crouching against the wall. And Marina Abramovich took her hand and put her to sleep in one of the areas of the exhibition. No. And gave her a hug, I think. Way. Oh, she gave her a cuddle, even though she was not cuddled. Yes. Oh, amazing.
00:12:20
Speaker
Oh, wow. Incredible. Wow. So she saw your daughter. I mean, it's hard to imagine what this exhibition was like. It was like, was she among the people who were...
00:12:32
Speaker
visiting the exhibition or was she somehow kept separate? No, she was always there walking around. So because there were different areas, she guided a few people she connected with, I suppose, or she felt needed help. So she was always there. It was quite impressive because there you were counting grains of rice. And Marina was looking at you. I have to say my memory of it is kind of a blur.
00:12:58
Speaker
because I was in a state of excitement, not only for myself, but for my daughter. I was just watching her, which in itself is an experience, isn't it? It is the experience of the exhibition. When you go as a mum with your daughter and then Marina Abramovich takes care of your daughter, I think sometimes we have a very restrictive idea of what it is to visit an exhibition or what you take from an exhibition. And that's what I took from it. I wasn't that interested in the exercises,
00:13:26
Speaker
But I was so interested to see the interaction between Abramovich, my daughter, and then my daughter with the work. And to see what other people were doing as well. It's interesting how the kind of impact an exhibition can have on you. Especially performance, yeah, because it's so ephemeral, right? I mean, even this exhibition that she had at the RA, if you go more than once,
00:13:50
Speaker
you're going to have a very different experience because it's all about what's happening in that moment, like a concert, like music. I mean, it's never, ever the same deal. By the way, Emily, don't you think we should say it is the first exhibition of a female artist in the main galleries of the Royal Academy?
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, shocking. I mean, it is 20, well, it was 2023. It is now 2024. But yeah, it's incredible that they have, you know, they're 200 years old, the RA, and in 200 years. And this is the first time that they're having a solo show for a woman in their main galleries. It's very long. And I hope they learned the lesson because it was full of people.
00:14:40
Speaker
it was really really popular and it's not cheap either, I mean 23 quid. That really shows you a lot about the appetite for performance and kind of the excitement of having an experience like that with an artist. Maybe in the case of performance, if we're thinking about going back as you referenced, I think it's really important to think about maybe a ticket that would allow you to go in
00:15:06
Speaker
a second time for free, because it's so expensive and you can't see the whole show. Maybe you'd like to introduce the show a little bit, by
Artistic Experience and Exhibition Layout
00:15:14
Speaker
the way. The exhibition is a retrospective, so it aims to include major pieces of her work throughout her 50-plus year of performance art, so really, really ambitious, especially considering, as we've noted, she wasn't there herself.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as I walked in, I was considering this. I didn't really consider this fact that she may not be there until I bought my ticket. And then I was like, well, I wonder how impactful this is going to be. You know, how much am I going to really feel this through images and video? And I hadn't realized at the time that there would be people replicating her performances.
00:15:51
Speaker
But in any case, there are some performance artists there that are replicating some of her previous work. So you get some of that immediacy. So super, super ambitious aim for the show. So it's not chronological. It starts with that very famous piece that you mentioned from 2010 at the MoMA. The artist is present. And then you go through that room immediately into Rhythm Zero, which is something she performed in 1974 and for me was
00:16:19
Speaker
certainly the most memorable and disturbing piece of work in the exhibition. I mean, beyond that, it deals with her response to communism, her parents, the bloody war in the Balkans of the 90s. There's a huge section of the work that she performed with Ule, which is obviously a significant room, rooms really. I think that for me, that was the room that I found the most impactful in the sense that
00:16:49
Speaker
You have archival images, you have black and white videos, you can only imagine technology was not the same at the time.
00:16:56
Speaker
in the 70s and beginning of the 80s, and the way it was displayed. I don't know if you had the same experience of it, but when I got into the room, I couldn't hear anything. I was talking with my friends, and the sound experience was not overwhelming at all, especially when you think that you have, I don't know, 15 videos over there, more.
00:17:20
Speaker
And then as I started watching the videos and coming back to the beginning, I mean to where you enter, I could hear all the videos at the same time. And it was a sort of cacophony, which wasn't the experience as I went in, which tells you a lot about how experience and how your senses work.
00:17:40
Speaker
how augmented the experience, the sensorial experience of an exhibition can be. I thought the room was really impressive. Yeah, and that is where I was getting shaken down by security, so I probably didn't necessarily notice the cacophony.
00:18:00
Speaker
Emily was taking pictures, Emily was taking pictures of the naked people. I was guilty as charged. So I was taking pictures throughout the exhibition for the podcast so I could sort of remember things that stuck out.
00:18:15
Speaker
And I walked into the room, the, you know, the Ule and Marina room, and they have a performance artist reproducing Imponderabilia, which is the doorway where you have two naked people facing each other, and attendees are invited to walk through. And this is something that she and Ule did in the 70s, and it's being recreated here.
00:18:38
Speaker
I walk into the room and I just hold my phone up like I'm at a concert and take a picture from afar. Okay. I just want to say it was discreet. And, but obviously I was not discreet in taking the picture because anybody with eyes could have seen what I was doing. I was not trying to be sly because I had no idea that it wasn't acceptable to do so. I didn't see the sign. And so, yeah, so the two security people come over and they were like,
00:19:05
Speaker
delete that off your phone, delete that off your, so I was like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm an idiot, you know, absolutely, I'll delete it off my phone. So I open up my photos and there was only one, they were like, where's the rest of them? And I'm like, I just took the one.
00:19:19
Speaker
So did they go over your pictures? Did they ask to see your other pictures? So yeah, they kind of scrolled through a bit to make sure that I didn't have any other contraband on my phone. So can you imagine if you had had Naked Emily and Naked Peter in there, they would have been like, delete those!
00:19:36
Speaker
No, no, no, that's me. I don't think anyone would have confused Peter and I with these gorgeous naked people that were at this exhibition, not dissing us, but yeah, there wouldn't have been any confusion there. But yeah, so then they got their boss over and he showed me how to delete from the deleted section, which I actually had no idea it was a thing you could do.
00:20:03
Speaker
And as these two security guards were getting like a little bit, like a little bit in my face, you know, I did ask them at one point, could you please just take a step back because they were all over me and all over my phone. Peter was gone. He was not to be found. There were naked people in the room. He was otherwise. He was drawn. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So why do you think that you we have a discussion with my friends that I went with my daughter.
00:20:33
Speaker
Why do you think that you can't take pictures of the performers? Because they are filmed. I mean, they are in the catalogue. They're in, you know, in exhibition. At least, you know, in the documentary, The Artist is Present, you see the performers. So why do you think
00:20:50
Speaker
We can't take
Image Control and Audience Participation
00:20:51
Speaker
pictures of them. I mean, I guess it's about control of the image, right? I mean, yes, they're being filmed, but they're being filmed in the way that the artists maybe have agreed to, that the exhibition has agreed to rather than, you know, any that could be used for, you know, purposes other than what everybody has agreed to given the sensitive, sensitive material. Yeah, yeah.
00:21:18
Speaker
I guess this is my Jack White reference coming in again. He doesn't allow people to... We went to a Jack White concert together and we were very surprised to see that they took our phones. And for him, it's all about the performance, isn't it? About being present, speaking of
Challenges in Performance Reenactments
00:21:36
Speaker
being present. And I think that's one of the lessons that Marina Abramovich teaches us.
00:21:40
Speaker
is the idea of being present. And it's true that when you have your phone, you always have a screen mediating your experience. I mean, they are doing a lot of work. And by the way, just, you know, do you know that they can't be like the performers can't do the same, they can't do the same endurance exercise that Ule and Abramovich did because of the unions. So they have to be replaced, they can't stay throughout the whole day.
00:22:06
Speaker
which changes the performance a little bit, you know, the work laws. Because we were there at the time where the passage was empty, there was no one there. And we had to wait for the performance to arrive, so it was a whole thing. So we had to wait, people were queuing. It changed, I think, somewhat the experience of the performance. It was still interesting to see how they arrive, how you,
00:22:36
Speaker
suddenly your body is prepared to perform. They stare at each other, which is something that I hadn't noticed and I didn't know from pictures of the performance. This was the first time I experienced it. And I hadn't realized that they actually stare at each other. And then the documentary, The Artist is Present, they film the last day and the last minutes of the exhibition and the performers who are performing in Ponderabilia start crying and hurt each other.
00:23:05
Speaker
So it really is an intense performance for the performers as well. I think when it is performed by someone else, it becomes something, I don't know, what do you think? I mean, so much of who, from what I understand, of who Marina Abramovich is, is, you know, is that goes back to that training of being a soldier, a warrior, I mean, of really
Defining Artistic Elements in Abramovich's Work
00:23:28
Speaker
working through, you know, being very exhaustive in what you can bring to a performance.
00:23:34
Speaker
I mean, that is if you were to crack open and find the DNA of her performances, I think that that's one of the things you would find. So it's inevitably going to change it if people are doing two hour shifts or I don't know, four hour, whatever the shifts are for the performance artists. But do you think that
00:23:57
Speaker
in some ways that affects the performance and the experience of the performance? Or do you think that it's part of it? Because as soon as you accept reenactments, then how does it affect the performance? Do you think that it's still... Because Ole, we didn't talk about it a lot yet, but Ole and Marina Abramovich definitely were working about their own dynamic as a couple.
00:24:18
Speaker
and a couples dynamic, a straight couples dynamic. And when you're not a couple performing, then it is something completely different. We don't even know the sexual orientations of these performers, so it becomes about something else, but it's still male and female all the time. I wondered, for example, wouldn't she want to explore
00:24:40
Speaker
you know, this performance with a same-sex couple, but then maybe she wants to make it something beyond the couple because she's no longer with Ule. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's inevitably a different work of art. I mean, you're not, you're not, for all the reasons you've described, you're not necessarily feeling that that connection between the performers, that Ule and Marina will have had your
00:25:06
Speaker
You don't know the level of exhaustion and concentration it takes to stand there for hours and hours is wildly different than what it takes to stand there for two hours or four hours, not to diminish that.
00:25:21
Speaker
you know, achievement in and of itself. But yeah, but yeah, it's totally a different thing. I mean, it's I mean, I didn't feel like I thought I was experiencing an idea of Abramovich's I didn't feel like I was experiencing an Abramovich piece maybe is the Oh, okay. Interesting. She does talk about the fact that it's a little bit like
00:25:46
Speaker
interpreting a Brahms piece or Mozart piece is going
Abramovich's Institute for Performance Art
00:25:52
Speaker
to be different. We are not playing Mozart the way it was played when he was alive, for sure. So maybe that's, you know, it's like a partition. She did establish the Marina Abramovich Institute, where she now wants to promote performance, but also
00:26:09
Speaker
define the rules of performance, making sure that performers, I mean, performance artists are paid, they get their fees whenever performances are reenacted. But maybe, Emily, I'm sorry, I cut you off because we do speak a lot when we're together. Do you want to just say a few words about the rest of the exhibition? Because it's not always as intense.
00:26:31
Speaker
as the Ulei Abramovich room. Yeah, for sure. So there was the Ulei and Abramovich rooms and then it culminates in the Walk on the Great Mall of China where they formally separate
00:26:49
Speaker
But after Xi and Ulei separate, so they separated on the Great Wall of China, she got a lot of inspiration from nature on this three-month walk to meet Ulei in the middle of the Great Wall of China.
00:27:04
Speaker
And she started using energy from nature to create works of art, using crystals and natural elements to create chairs and things that you can lie down on and put your head on certain gemstones.
00:27:22
Speaker
She was very interested in the crotch and the heart and the head. So there's sort of various points at which those line up and people can participate in this art. And it was great. Like at this point in the exhibition, you're totally exhausted. I like the head crotch heart thing because I thought
00:27:45
Speaker
Like you said, after the whole very draining experience of watching people slapping each other, whipping themselves, holding an arrow to the other person's heart like she did with Ule, you're so drained.
00:28:01
Speaker
But at the same time, you have such contained energy in your body that when you arrive at this room, I thought it was really interesting to, I mean, whether you believe it or not in the chakras or whatever, it was really interesting to know that an artist was thinking of my crotch. I thought it was really interesting. Oh, thank you, Marina. Thank you.
00:28:25
Speaker
always so thoughtful, but it's very rare. It doesn't often happen in an exhibition where the artist is like, by the way, be mindful of your brain, your heart, and your crotch area. And your crotch, yeah. You got to take care of the vitals, you know? And it is really remarkable how it goes from something very loud to something very
00:28:49
Speaker
you know, these are objects she's creating. So and the performance is the attendees engaging with these objects. So it's very quiet, it's very subdued, and it's, you know, very necessary, as we said, at that point in the exhibition, where you sort of distraught beyond that, it kind of goes into more, I would say quiet rooms, I mean, really examining her relationship to Catholicism, which was her grandmother's influence, she was partially raised by her grandmother,
00:29:19
Speaker
And it's really interesting because she says that her grandmother in some ways saved her life and made her childhood period and adolescent period a bit more bearable because you couldn't be religious, obviously, in
00:29:35
Speaker
communist Yugoslavia and in some ways her grandmother was very spiritual person and she does have a spiritual aspect to her work and that comes straight from her grandmother and that was really important to her so it's not surprising to see the final work like a bathtub full of chamomile and the text in the exhibition does explain
00:30:00
Speaker
I think in a bit of an esoteric kind of generalists way that I find unsatisfying, where it is explained that she started, you know, traveling, going to Dramsala, being with the Tibetan monks and other kinds of spiritual people, and that she understood that spiritualism, which I think, you know, is a bit unsatisfying and imprecise and sometimes a bit globalist, a relationship with
00:30:30
Speaker
very serious contextual practices. But that was the text. I guess the exhibition and the experience of the artworks is different. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I do sort of feel for the people who need to write those texts, right? It's like you're trying to condense some very big ideas into something that is palatable for people like me, you know, who are pretty novice, I would say, to art generally.
00:30:57
Speaker
you're touching upon a very, very big question in curating nowadays. Because, yeah, the Anglo-Saxon world is very much about explaining, contextualizing, having, you know, a very, very, actually, when I always look at jobs, you know, although I'm an independent writer and curator,
00:31:18
Speaker
I always look at jobs, and very often the Tate is looking for people who are curating those texts and who are writing them.
00:31:29
Speaker
and you are mediating for the public, you know, the exhibitions, because it is a hard, it is a tough job. It is a lot of work. You have to know a lot about the artist or the exhibition to be able to condense information. I am very critical of some of the texts. I find them sometimes very unhelpful. And I think that we've overdone it here on this side of the channel.
00:31:53
Speaker
as opposed to other countries like France or, you know, in other countries in Europe, where I think you are more left to your own devices and there's more trust in the visitor. And sometimes where I'm, you know, in Germany or when I'm in France or in Spain, I feel the need for those texts as well. You know, it's a very complex, it's very complicated and I think the key here is to find a tone and a perspective
00:32:23
Speaker
that allows for the viewer to have their own experience. But I think here I would be a bit critical of Marina Abramovich herself. I don't know if you watch her documentary. I think it's a 2016 documentary called The Space in Between, where she goes to Brazil. And she, because Brazil is a spiritual country, quote, you know, inverted commas. And I had to stop. I thought, you know, I love Marina Abramovich's work.
00:32:51
Speaker
I'm not going to continue watching this. She starts with a person called John of Gods who has been debunked as a big charlatan. He's been accused of sexual assault and she's looking at him with like watery eyes and I just, you know, I can bear it. So I think
00:33:09
Speaker
maybe there's something a bit of her generation as well of just like taking, I'm going to use that word, appropriating, you know, sometimes some cultures, which has become a bit problematic. But the work she does and the pieces she produces at the end of the exhibition, some of them are very strong and very Abramovich. I mean, they are not referencing any culture whatsoever. She's very much into crystals. She could teach a whole lesson, I think, about crystals.
00:33:37
Speaker
So yeah, that's another aspect of the work. Yeah, it's, you know, there's definitely you see a gear change in the kinds of work that she is doing, which makes sense. I mean, she sees herself as the instrument of her art.
00:33:54
Speaker
And I mean, the kinds of stuff any of us, what we were doing at 20 is very different than what we're doing at 40 and 60 and so on. So I really admire the fact that she moved with it rather than against it and thought, you know, she could have thought to herself, I am someone who's pushing the boat out always in this very extreme way.
00:34:22
Speaker
you know, she didn't always need to rely on that to have, you know, to have really impactful work. But speaking of that, I think we could focus on the beginning of the exhibition, one of our favourite two works and the relation that they both have.
00:34:37
Speaker
You're very right, Emily, when you say that she does. I mean, that's one of the things that we really like about her, isn't it? When we can follow the life of a woman. And I say woman because I think, you know, she's a very feminine person and she is a female artist who's now recognized and has a place of her own in the art world, which is not easy, especially for someone who's now 77 years old.
00:34:59
Speaker
And she has conquered that position and she's now opening the door to other performers as well that she talks about because she's now leading her institute and teaching other performers or at least preparing them or sharing the Abramovich method as she says so herself. And the artist is present, which is the first work of the exhibition is a work that she performed at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. So in 2010, there were reenactments of her
00:35:28
Speaker
performances it was a retrospective exhibition but at the same time she did a new work which was called The Artist is Present where she would sit in a chair the whole day for three months and would face someone and look at someone so be completely present for a person for each member of the audience that would sit across the table
00:35:52
Speaker
on the other side. And that was an incredible physical endurance and mindful exercise. And what's really incredible is that she says that she could never have done that piece
00:36:07
Speaker
in her 20s and in her 30s. In fact, the piece itself is related to Rhythm Zero that you referenced in the beginning of the podcast, which was a completely, for her, it's the opposite work. And the artist is present, and I don't know that many people know this, is in fact a sort of a reaction to Rhythm Zero. So Rhythm Zero was performed in 1974, I think, in Italy, in Milan.
00:36:34
Speaker
And it was six hours straight in an exhibition space where was there as an object. So there was a piece of paper stating that she had full responsibility for whatever would be done to her during six hours. She was an object with props that she had laid out on a table, 72 props of pleasure and pain. So there was honey, there was paper, there were roses.
00:37:03
Speaker
then there was a loaded gun, there were knives, lots of different tools that you could use on her. And so at the exhibition itself, they had an actual table filled with those same objects and then had images of the exhibition when she did it. And as you say, it was
00:37:24
Speaker
in Italy in the 70s so it's filled with like a lot of beardy men and she is standing there completely vulnerable saying for six hours standing there as an object saying do what you would like to do to me and so they did yeah and so they did I mean they cut her neck
00:37:45
Speaker
drank her blood from her neck. She still has a scar from that. They laid her on the table, opened her legs, put a knife between her legs, took the gun at the end. Someone took the gun and pointed it at her head and someone else yanked the gun away, so saved her. She does say that she wasn't raped because there were couples there who
00:38:09
Speaker
in some ways kind of maintain the sort of boundary, I guess. I don't know why you draw the boundary there where you're actually cutting someone. They took the thorns out of the roses and put them in her flesh. It was just awful. And she describes Rhythm Zero. And it's interesting the name when you think of Ground Zero as well. Maybe in New York she was kind of inspired by this idea of like going back to basics or, you know,
00:38:38
Speaker
an empty template. I don't know. Anyway, Rhythm Zero was the worst in humanity. And that experience remained with her. She says that when she went back home, she looked at herself in the mirror and she had a streak of white hair. So her hair turned white during those six hours, a bit of her hair, strand of her hair. And so she said that in 2010,
00:39:03
Speaker
Finally, 42 years later, she reacted to that experience with the artist's presence, which is a high consciousness experience. So she describes this as being fully present for the person in front of her. People cried. There were performance artists who wanted to be in front of her, just to stare at her, gaze at her, be in her presence.
00:39:26
Speaker
And she was there the whole day. And it was so powerful that people gathered around the space. If you know the Museum of Modern Art, it is a space that is very difficult for you to concentrate because you can see it from different levels. And you go up from stairs to sort of a platform. And it's so difficult. I mean, this was such a work of powerful concentration.
00:39:52
Speaker
And because of that, she says that she would never have been able to do this in her 20s and 30s because at 62, hope I'm getting this right, your mind, your wisdom is there to support you in this experience. And this is a work of maturity. And that I just love to see a woman in her 60s saying, okay,
00:40:15
Speaker
In your 20s and 30s, my boobs may have been, you know, perkier and, you know, my body may have been more energetic, but now my mind is stronger. And that's what you gain. Instead of describing herself as someone who's wrinkled, who's getting older, she does go there and say, you know, this is what you have at my age. This is what I have. And this was a powerful experience. And in your 60s, you can bring people up to a form of high consciousness.
00:40:45
Speaker
instead of bringing them down to bestiality almost. It was just a feral
00:40:52
Speaker
aspect of humankind. I love that. So that was really, I don't know if you've watched the film, Nyad. I haven't now. Yeah. So Nyad is a Netflix film that came out recently about a swimmer who swam from Florida to Cuba in her sixties. So she had attempted that when she was 28 and she failed. And she says in the film,
00:41:17
Speaker
because it's Annette Benning and Jodie Foster who are just the most amazing pairings. Jodie Foster's character, yeah, you can't go wrong, Jodie Foster's character, he's her lifelong friend and she is trying to convince her to be her coach and Jodie Foster's character says, I think Bobby is her name, she says, why are you crazy? You're 60 years old and
00:41:40
Speaker
Naya replies, well, yes, and that's what I have now, my mind and my mind's going to make me do this. And she did it. So for me, there was a direct relationship of like in the same month, two women saying, yeah, your sixties are amazing. You know, look forward to that. Getting better. Yeah, exactly. I know that that is an incredible arc though, from
00:42:04
Speaker
from The Artist Is Present to Rhythm Zero, and I guess in reverse really, how she did it in her life. I mean, and you think of, you know, the wherewithal that she talks about it took in The Artist Is Present to sit across from people for hours and hours. And when you see those images of her face in that first room,
00:42:27
Speaker
She looks tired. She looks like, you know, like there's just so much concentration kind of being spent to just be present with these people, as you say, in what is probably a really distracting environment with all these onlookers, you know, on multiple levels in this museum. But but I also think just, you know, the what she had to overcome to do Rhythm Zero. I mean, someone has someone is drinking your blood
00:42:55
Speaker
And you just override your instincts for self-preservation, which are massive, right? I mean, that's not even in the thinking mind. That's such a good point. In the binary mind to be like, you know what, stop doing that. I have to survive and save myself.
00:43:16
Speaker
to override fight or flight, to just hang with it even when it's that dangerous and potentially lethal. That just says so much about her fortitude.
00:43:34
Speaker
Why? I mean, that rhythm zero, I mean, so if we're talking about movies, so there's the movie that was out a few years ago, Free Solo with Alex Honnold. He's a guy who climbs El Capitan without any rope. Super extreme. This is one false move and your hand gets a bit sweaty and you lose your grip, you fall, you're going to end your life. That's it. There's no other way.
00:44:04
Speaker
And, and you're watching, you know, as a viewer, you're watching this documentary. And, you know, obviously he lives, you know, that he makes it through. But, but there's also like, I'm giving attention to someone who's doing something extraordinarily extreme. And for what, you know, do you want what I want my
00:44:27
Speaker
my kids to do that. So what is the complicity of the viewers in that? Do we want other artists? Would you want your kids?
00:44:43
Speaker
Like, doing that. To do this? Is that something we celebrate? And I, you know, I have, you know, conflicted feelings about that. But I think those are two different things. This is very different. That's why if Marina Abramovich is militant about performance art, I'm militant about art. And I think this is two very different things because Free Solo, I can't remember his name, is doing it for the sake of doing it faster, better.
00:45:11
Speaker
to a more extreme level. There's another one, there's another documentary about someone who's going to climb free solo the quickest. And I just find it was El Capitan that it was other, he started in Switzerland, he was a Swiss
00:45:32
Speaker
And with Marina Abramovic, she endured something with the audience. So the audience is there. Because when you're watching Free Solo, you're absolutely powerless.
00:45:47
Speaker
Whereas there, the power was given to the audience to do something. So I think in contemporary art, that's what's fascinating, is that people have this contemplative attitude towards art, which is wrong, this idea of being entertained. I want to go to a museum. And I think if there's anything to criticize, and I know where you're going as well about Marina Abramovich's work,
00:46:14
Speaker
is that sometimes it can become a bit sensationalist. It can become all about talking about the two naked performers, which actually was the least interesting experience, in my opinion, of the show.
00:46:28
Speaker
because as we talked about, not in this podcast, but before, I was very mindful of not stepping on their toes. And as soon as I realized, I had gone through the portal and that was it. So I think that that's definitely dangerous, the idea of even an experience like Abramovich's, as a female artist, for people who are making decisions at the Royal Academy,
00:46:54
Speaker
of saying, well, we did Abramovich, who is a female artist because she can, you know, she can bring lots of people in because it's a sensation because it's, you know, people are curious. There's a word to mouth kind of thing going on. Whereas if we invite a painter, it's not going to be the same. And that's, I think, a problem because when you're watching a painting and we will be talking about painters in this podcast, you're not, you know,
00:47:20
Speaker
It's not, unless it's supposed to be contemplative, and that's what the artist wants you to do, which is also important in what is contemplating and what is your body doing when you're looking at something. That's also really interesting. You're always participating.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah. You're always there doing something and you will not leave the same. Whereas if I'm watching Free Solo, I will never think about it again. To be honest, it's the kind of thing that I'm very, very, very weary of in terms of humanity and to even competition, even the Olympics. Oh, that person won for, you know, a tenth of seconds or a millisecond. Well, is that supposed to move me? Wow. I don't know. That makes me cry.
00:48:06
Speaker
The Olympics always make me cry. I'm like, wow, they work so hard and this is their moment. But it's the work so hard that makes you cry. It's not the millisecond, the tenth of millisecond that makes you cry.
00:48:21
Speaker
It's the preparation, it's all the work of the journalists beforehand where you know who they are, you know the favorites. It's the underdog country that never won anything that will make you cry. It's not Michael Phelps. Michael Phelps will not make you cry.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's the narrative that's built up around him and the moment and all of that. But I think your point about power is the crucial one, is that the experience in Free Solo is him and The Rock and his mental state. And I mean, maybe it's a bit like Nyad.
00:48:57
Speaker
It's about her and her mental state and kind of how she is approaching the water, et cetera, the elements. But yeah, the power for Rhythm Zero is really absolutely with the audience and to see what the audience did, which is nearly kill her and maim her. Yeah, to your point, there is a technicality. Because I think the film Naiad is amazing because it doesn't have that music
00:49:24
Speaker
when the performer is achieving something. It's just so technical to film. It's actually the people who filmed Free Solo. They were documentalists. Bramovitch, Nyad, Free Solo, they both have in common a highly trained body.
00:49:43
Speaker
and an endurance and a discipline that, you know, that we commoners do not have. Yeah. Well, she, I mean, she developed it, I guess, through Vipassana meditation. She she'd mentioned that in there, which certainly is, you know, I mean, that's apparent certainly in the artist is present of just sitting with whatever is. I was just thinking of like going back to what would you like to talk about? Balkan baroque?
00:50:13
Speaker
the Great Wall of China, what were the three works? I think those are the three works that are the most significant, I think, in politically, personally, in terms also of the limits of performance in terms of your personal life. Because both Balkan Baroque and the Great Wall of China
00:50:37
Speaker
they are both moments in her life where she becomes autobiographical. So I mean, so say a bit about Balkan Baroque and what that is. So Balkan Baroque is an installation that she did for the Venice Biennial in
00:50:54
Speaker
response to the war in the Balkans at the time. She wasn't living in her country of birth or region of birth because her country is being torn apart at that time and she was very worried and very obviously very touched by the situation there.
00:51:11
Speaker
and so she filmed herself and on so there's a main screen which is bigger at the center and then two screens where her mom and her dad um or figures that you suggest to you the viewer doesn't know but suggested the viewer that it's a mother and a father and then there's a pile of bones
00:51:32
Speaker
I think cows bones, that when this work was installed in the biennial, she was cleaning. So she spent her days there cleaning the bones of the blood and the remains of flesh. And mind you, the biennial is during the summer. It's in June. It opened in June. And so she says that after three days, there were worms on the pile of bones.
00:51:59
Speaker
It was the smell was horrific. So this is really a reaction to the war, but also to the local history and her own history. Her dad's holding a gun and she is talking about, she interviewed someone who worked with rats, killing rats for 35 years. And so she starts by saying, you know, to kill a rat and you should, you have to do this. And she talks about the behavior of rats, which obviously a rat is a traitor.
00:52:30
Speaker
and her parents were national heroes. It's a very complex layered text. And then she dances a typical dance of the area. I'm not sure it's Serbian, but something like that in a very sexy dance where her body
00:52:49
Speaker
it exudes confidence and sensuality, but it's also a bit menacing in this idea of taking the power. And also for a female artist, I think it's interesting that she chose that idea of taking power, of having, it takes us also to a whole other thing that we don't have time for, but a friend of mine, and I want to quote her on this, another American friend of mine, said, you know, which is,
00:53:19
Speaker
Emily, I betrayed you. And we're talking about performance. I don't recall why. And she said, well, it's very interesting because all the female performers, and even male, who were getting naked in the 70s, 80s, in the late 60s, they all have gorgeous bodies.
00:53:45
Speaker
And I think if you want to be very cynical, she did have a point. So I mean, just put it out there in terms of performers. I think contemporary artists now of other generations have a much more diverse array of bodies. So I think that's also something to be mindful of, I think. And she does work on that power. That's why
00:54:09
Speaker
made a point in saying that she did at Woodoulet was about heterosexual relationships. And the female body as well, it's gendered. I think we always relate to art in a very neutral way, which is something that we may talk about one day. I have an issue with the idea of universal and neutral. I think they're very patriarchal notions. We also need to come in to these experiments with
00:54:35
Speaker
a critical eye and think in terms of feminism, in terms of gendered bodies, what it means as well to have explored those relationships, heterosexual relationships, you know, would be interested in knowing how, you know, a gay woman would look at this exhibition where, you know, both in heterosexual relationships, you and I. So, you know, what would be the take on this exhibition? So yeah, so that was Bark and Baroque and I went on a tangent.
00:55:04
Speaker
No, good though. I mean, it is such an intimate work. She is in the midst of a really bloody war in her home city. I mean, Belgrade was not a pretty place during this time.
00:55:21
Speaker
you know, especially now with all that's happening in the world. I found it a useful reminder of, you know, just having this expression from someone who is in the midst of that, who is dealing with the death. I mean, I know that her brother and her brother's daughter, you know, escaped and stayed with her in Amsterdam during that period. And just the heartache of seeing
00:55:49
Speaker
you know, your home be destroyed. And this is something that obviously people in Ukraine, people in Gaza and Israel and the West Bank, I mean, you know, people in Sudan, I mean, you know, it's like the list goes on, Yemen, it's, you know, it's Syria, Aleppo, you know, so many places at the moment that are completely destroyed, you know, it's so
00:56:11
Speaker
heartbreaking. But what did you think of the, I mean, Olay doesn't consider the Great Wall of China, which has a title that I can't remember. Was the performance? What did you think of it? And what was your take on it? I mean, I just thought it was so emblematic of their relationship. You know, I mean, so in the booklet, it talks about how initially they talked about they might get married when they meet in the middle. But
00:56:39
Speaker
It had taken a long time for the permissions to come about, and it was 1988 by the time they could actually perform the work. So she starts at one end, he starts at the other, and they meet in the middle, and takes them three months to actually get to the center point where they meet. And this is the point at which they sort of dissolve their
00:57:03
Speaker
romantic and professional relationship. They started their relationship with her seeking his first aid after cutting a star into her stomach.
00:57:20
Speaker
that is a very kind of auspicious in its own way beginning. And this felt like a natural bookend for a couple that could not separate their personal and performative lives. I mean, that was antithetical to who they were as artists. So I mean, it felt, I think it actually would have been weird if it was like,
00:57:42
Speaker
Oh, and they went in the cafe and they had a discussion about where their lives were going and decided to amicably split. A conscious uncoupling would not have been something this couple would have done. So it felt Marina's walk to the center. She had a bunch of rubbings that she had done from the wall itself, which I mean, that was actually one of my favorite things in
00:58:08
Speaker
You know, that was just very much who they were and was very fitting of who they were. So it would have been possible. But I think to my point, I think it really, their work was really about themselves. It's inseparable. And Marina Abramovich continued her work unseparated from her life. There's really something to say about that kind of commitment. You know, she's almost like a priestess. She has that form of commitment.
00:58:38
Speaker
which is, I think, over time. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, I just, you know, she did separate herself a bit. I mean, when she moved into a bit more of the objects, and even her performative art later on wasn't necessarily putting her body on the line as it had in previous works of performance.
00:59:01
Speaker
But I mean, you just wonder like, what does it look like for Marina Abramovich to like, chill, you know, I mean, I was telling you that, you know, the other day, I just basically spent the day on the sofa in my robe watching napping really to Agatha Christie. She does. She does. She does.
00:59:21
Speaker
because after, for example, the artist is present, she said that she went into a Netflix, you know, almost Hallmark film kind of moment, period of her life. And she said that, so she chills. And she said, you know, before I would be so ashamed of that.
00:59:39
Speaker
So ashamed. And now I embrace the three marinas. They live happily together. And again, this is the teaching of someone who's reached a certain point in her life, 77 years old, still performing and saying, do you know what? Just be nice to yourself. You know, life is made of rhythms. And it's interesting that her first works were called Rhythm Zero, One, Two, Three, Four, Five. Life's made of rhythms.
01:00:06
Speaker
When you go on a high, you need to be on a low. And that's what she so cleverly said about the exhibition. The crystal part was so needed. So there's definitely there. Inno Vanity, Igo is there. And I think that's why she's so interesting. In The Artist Is Present was so moving about that piece.
01:00:25
Speaker
she gets something back from people as well. It's not just her bestowing her power and her magnificence concentration, she's also crying. So Peter and I, when we left the exhibition, we kind of couldn't really speak.
01:00:44
Speaker
for a little while. We walked up Piccadilly and went to Missoula zone as you do and got a nice curry and it wasn't until we sort of sat down with some comfort food that we could sort of talk about it but on the way there
01:00:58
Speaker
You know, you walk through Piccadilly Circus and there's these, you know, enormous images. And there was one of, I think it was a Kardashian or somebody, I don't know, who looked a bit like a Kardashian in any case. And the context obviously is trying to sell me perfume or a handbag or whatever it was. And, you know, thinking back to when I was walking into the exhibition thinking, am I going to feel this because she's not here?
01:01:27
Speaker
And I'm not actually seeing performance from her. I'm seeing images and video. And it's just like the power of the images from her just sitting there in the artist's present or during any of her performances. So incredibly powerful with her presence.
01:01:49
Speaker
And then just looking, you know, as we went to Masala Zone through Piccadilly Circus, this other type of image that is like so lightweight in comparison. So shall we wrap this up? And at the end of each episode, we will choose an artwork that we would like to have at home if, you know,
01:02:09
Speaker
If that could be the case, what would you like to re-experience or to have a first-hand experience of? I mean, it has to be the artist is present. It's one of those things where if I had known about it at the time and if I were in New York in 2010,
01:02:27
Speaker
I would have been in line or I hope I would have gotten myself off the sofa away from Agatha Christie to get in line and experience that. I mean, yeah, definitely. How about you? I think I have a sort of a completely unjustifiable thermo of the Ule Abramovich performances because
01:02:52
Speaker
One thing that when it comes to historical pieces of that time, when you look at the archival images, you forget the moment when they happened, which when Marina Abramovich was not Marina, the Marina Abramovich that Jay-Z admires now, you know, she was a young artist and that he was a young artist.
01:03:17
Speaker
And I think I would have loved to be present for one of their performances and see the tension and feel the tension and feel, you know, the befuddlement, the discombobulation of the audience, the rage, because performance instills a sort of rage in certain people, you know, and just watching Marina
01:03:45
Speaker
Abramovich and Ule slap each other. And I think I would have liked to feel not only the performance itself, but also the audience that went with it. And I think it was so interesting with Ule, and we didn't talk much about him, but he's such an interesting person.
01:04:01
Speaker
is that he went there. He went there at a time where you would say things like, you have to open the door for ladies. And it's so interesting to see that he respected her so much, that he hit her, that he was not condescending, and he went there. And I think that's so impressive. And I would have loved to be present in one of the first iterations of any of their performances. I would have loved that. See, now I want to change my answer.