I personally wasn’t a big fan of Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, which saw Abramovic sit in a chair for 716 hours and 30 minutes, while audience members take it in turns to sit opposite her. Perhaps this was because I was watching it on a video, rather than seeing it in person, but I felt like the performance became more of a spectacle than a thought-provoking performance. As Sean O’Hagan stated in an Interview with Abramovic in 2010 “the performance soon took on a momentum of its own” (The Guardian, 2010). Though some of the audience where there because they were fans of Abramovic, it seemed as if, especially in the later performances, people had gone to see her purely for bragging rights. Some people just wanted to be able to say that they had sit opposite Abramovic, even if they weren’t fans of hers in the first place. “People who sat with her more than 10 times formed their own club, and a group of New York artists gave out badges – “I cried with Marina Abramović” – to those who had broken down before her.” (The Guardian, 2010).  This is somewhat highlighted by the fact that celebrities, such as the actor James Franco, attended the performance.

However, what I did like about the performance was how she managed to connect with her audience. Despite some of them perhaps being there for the wrong reasons. Though all she did was look at each audience member that sat opposite her, she did it in such a way that it made each them feel like she was sharing a vulnerable moment with them. Some audience members shed tears, they were so moved by the moment they had shared with her. In the documentary we watched in our session, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, they showed one girl who stripped off her clothes when she entered the space, and was quickly covered and ushered out by security. Later, in a short interview with her, she stated that she wanted to be as vulnerable with Abramovic as she was being with her audience. Abramovic has been quoted saying she was hoping for “emotional connection with anyone who wants to look at me for however long” (The New Yorker, 2010), and it was certainly something that occurred.

I would love to see this kind of audience connection in my own Site Specific performance, though perhaps not quite to the same level as handing out badges or stripping off their clothes. Part of our group’s main focus when creating our piece is making the audience think. We don’t want them to be just passing spectators, we want them to really get involved with the performance. Although our performance will be much different to Abramovic’s, looking at the way she manages to connect with her audience might also help us to connect with ours.

Works referenced:

The Guardian (2010) Interview: Marina Abramovic. [online] Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist [Accessed 16th February 2015]

The New Yorker (2010) Walking Through Walls. [online] Available from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/08/walking-through-walls [Accessed 16th February 2015]

Image from: http://www.amorfm.mx/una-gran-historia-de-amor/