In London Discovering the Abramović Method

Kati Saira (3/2014)

11. VI–2. VIII 2014
Serpentine Gallery

 

"See! There SHE comes," I call out, unable to restrain myself, to the people standing in the queue at the door of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. After a moment of silence people take out their cameras and a lively hum starts up. "Have you seen Marina before? Have you met her?" asks a grey-haired man in his sixties who has flown especially to London from Dublin. "No I haven't", I answer. "But how did you recognize her from such a distance?" the gentleman doesn't leave off. I remain silent. I don't actually know how I recognized her, but standing in a queue in the light drizzle, early on a Sunday morning, with a few dozen other people an hour before the gallery opens everything seems possible. Marina Abramović arrives at the gallery accompanied by five other people, including the exhibition's co-artist and choreographer, Lynsey Peisinger. The performance has begun, even before its official beginning.

 

A queue in front of Serpentine Gallery, photo by Kati Saira

 

I

From 11 June to 25 August 2014 Marina Abramović welcomes visitors to the silence and emptiness of the Serpentine Gallery in London. For a total of 512 hours, six days a week from 10 am to 6 pm. The grandmother of performance art receives each visitor to the gallery with a warm and sincere greeting and a shake of the hand. At 6 pm when the gallery closes she sees them off with a friendly goodbye. As you enter the gallery watches, telephones, cameras, laptops and large bags must be left in a locked cupboard. The word "Silence" is written on the wall of the gallery. I am reminded of the first minutes of Arvo Pärt's "Silentum", which I heard recently. The entry into nowhere can begin.

In an early interview, Marina Abramović said that the public needs to take a more active role and with the artist create a spiritual/mental state where objects no longer assume importance and where there is a significant transfer of pure energy and wellbeing.

On entering the first room I see a round wooden platform in the centre of the space, chairs and on the chairs there are earplugs. There is an abundance of light, the gallery staff or the audience's silent attendants are dressed in black and have received instruction from Lynsey Peisinger. It is unbelievably light and there is a good energy. Lynsey steps onto the platform and soon the gallery visitors, accompanied by the attendants, arrive and with closed eyes also stand on the platform. Silence. Peace. Energy. The audience has become the performers. The performers have become the audience.

 

II

Abramović began doing performance art in her homeland in former Yugoslavia, in the 1970s and for the last decades has dealt with the same issues and themes – the relationship between the performer and the audience, the limits of the human body and the possibilities of the mind. In 1974 under title "Rhythm 0: 1974" she tested the connection between audience and performer. Over a six-hour period Abramović, in a completely passive state, gave the public the opportunity to do whatever they wanted to do to her using 72 selected objects.

These objects included for example a rose, honey, olive oil, scissors, a pistol and a bullet. During the first hours the public behaved calmly and was composed, but as time passed and as the public saw that the artist remained passive, people began to behave more aggressively – they cut her clothes, one took aim with the pistol, and another scratched her stomach with rose thorns. Marina Abramović has said in conclusion "If you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you."

"Rhythm 0: 1974" demonstrated people's cruelty and tendency to become monsters, if they are given the chance. Abramović handed the audience a mirror, helping them to see inside themselves, to see who they really are.

I step onto the podium. I am without an attendant. More and more people are gathering (the first one hundred are admitted, then as many as exit the gallery). I close my eyes. There is energy, silence and the opportunity to look inside myself.

 

III

MoMA, New York, 2010. Over the course of three months, for 736 hours and 30 minutes, Marina Abramović allowed the public to sit opposite her on a chair – for as long as anyone wished. The performance was titled "The Artist is Present" (2010). To be here and now, not in the past nor in the future, is difficult. Abramović said later that she had never seen so much loneliness, anger and sadness as she did during those three months sitting in MoMA. Once again she had held up a mirror to the audience.

I don't know for how long I stand on the platform – my watch is locked away in the cupboard. I feel happiness, peace and the wish to act, to do something good for myself. Just think – to be on ones own – here and now. I step into the next room. At the door I see Marina Abramović. She is standing – in silence. I understand that actually I haven't come to the gallery because of her, but because of myself. She has created this opportunity for me – to take a break from my thoughts and obsessions. To be cleansed.

In the new room I see small school desks, each desk with its own chair. There are 20 altogether. On the desks there are grains of rice and lentils, and also white paper and a pencil. At the tables, in the silence, having withdrawn into ourselves we become separators of white rice grains from green lentils – each of us has become a performance artist with an audience that moves between the desks and chairs. This is one of Marina Abramović's methods ¬– separating rice from lentils and then counting them. Not for anyone else, but our own good. This method tests your self-control, perseverance and your mental and physical power of concentration. Separating the rice from the lentils and counting them forces us to separate both physically and mentally from everyday life and routines. As time passes I think of myself less and less as the centre of the world. The "real" world around you falls away and disappears. Purity. Unconscious consciousness. An honesty is created in regard to the audience and oneself. There is a desire to count the grains properly, because you can't lie to the audience ¬– then you would be lying to yourself. Again, the mirror effect.

I finish the task in two hours and 15 minutes (I calculate the time once I have left the gallery and am sitting in the park). 4439 white grains of rice, 1544 green lentils and 1 reject (a dry lentil, grey in colour). I leave the room. My outlook is clear, a wide smile and my spirit is cleansed from all kinds of excess. I enter the third room, where people are walking in silence and calm. The attendants are present, the audience is present. I enter an energy and start walking, with my eyes shut. It is called Slow Walking. In my thoughts I am at the airport. Far, very far from London, but I feel good. I am here and now, it is as if I am learning to walk again – right foot, left foot, eyes to the floor as if it were the first time. I lose my sense of time, only my empty stomach reminds me that it is time to leave. To eat. To drink. In the park I drink pure water using Marina Abramović's method – for ten minutes. Slowly, being present here and now. I feel like I am drinking pure, fresh concentrated water for the first time.

 

IV

For her work "512 Hours (2014) Marina Abramović gains power from Brazilian shamans. She travelled to Brazil after her MoMA performance "The Artist is Present". It was from them that she learned how to create the energy, which can be felt in the gallery and which is sometimes so strong it could be cut with a knife. From shamans she also learned that the reason she never feels at home anywhere because she isn't from this earth. Marina apparently came from far away among the stars and has come to earth with the purpose of teaching mankind how to overcome pain.

Marina Abramović has great ambitions. When people personally experience the methods she has developed over the last forty years and when these methods are used to change people's awareness, it is an opportunity to create a model society. Abramović is in the process of forming the Marina Abramović Institute (MAI), which will open in 2015 in the city of Hudson, New York State.¹ This will be the platform for a model society.

After leaving the gallery I felt that I loved myself, people, London and the whole world. Immaterial art is honest, special and experiential.

 

¹ See Hedi Rosma, Popularizing Art. The Abramović Method.  – KUNST.EE 2013, No 4, p 3.

 

Kati Saira is an Estonian social worker with a master's degree working in Helsinki. When the Marina Abramović Institute opens in 2015 she plans to go and work there.

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