PERFORMANCE ART AS FORM OF POPULAR CULTURE (THE CASE OF MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ)

 Abstract:

One of the main principles of conceptual artist Marina Abramović is that the artist must not make an idol of himself, but on the other hand in certain social and cultural circles today, she has the status of a Hollywood icon. Her omnipresence, registers not only the elite art scene (MoMA New York, La Biennale di Venezia, Центр современной культуры “Гараж” Москва), in various forms of artistic expression (spectacle “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović”, documentary “Marina Abramović– the artist is present”, A Biography “When Marina AbramovićDies”), but also in the media like the New York Times and BBC News, even in those characteristic for popular culture (the hit series “Sex and the City”, man’s fashion magazine ”L’UomoVogue”, or music and video clips onthe You Tube), turned Abramovićin one of the most charismatic, most commercial and controversial artists of the century. Therefore, we could say that this showbiz artist, who in her long career, transformed the art performance from an alternative to a mainstream art.

 

Key words: Marina Abramovic, performance art, performativity, popular culture, media culture

 

To speak of performance art today, without putting into practice the enticing character of the live act whereby the activity of the artist is brought to the fore, is a truly ungrateful undertaking. Still, seeing as the theme of this conference demands a view from “below”, and popular culture is already a certain “view from below”, my perception of performance art as an unconventional performing practice will take on a redoubled view: the first will follow my theoretical observations of this alternative art form, while the second will seek the drives that led the conceptual artist Marina Abramovic to overturn of the definition of performance art – from alternative to mainstream art. As hers has been a long and fruitful one, I will only focus on the last five years of Abramovic’s career. During that period, the hybrid nature of this artistic practice has been confirmed, as well as her leading status in our mediatized society, leading to a lasting shift in the perception of both art and artist. 

 

Performance, Media Culture and Spectacle

The era of digital technology has created the kind of society where, by transforming written culture into media culture, media have become the organizing principle of life. As a techno-culture of sorts, media culture is the most profitable segment of global economy today, perhaps one of its leading exponents. Focused on the commercial effects of show-business which swaddles virtually the entire globe, media culture establishes rapid and mass communication with all target groups. It is one of the most popular products of the gigantic entertainment industry which packages art and culture into a marketable product, as the primary function of both is sacrificed.

 

I make this claim fully aware of the turnaround caused by performance art in an era of consumerism and mass media, as a new type of “speech”, as a specific form of artistic expression, which connects the domains of aesthetics and public activity to a greater extent than ever before. It made its first steps in the 1960s and ‘70s, or even earlier, during the avant-garde (futurism, cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, constructivism), acting against the establishment, the museums, the galleries, and all commercial values, even as a radical form of resistance against all political and moral injustice. During the 1980s, however, when commercial art became very popular, performance art suffered a decline, with no clear chances of survival or development. Not until the ‘90s, as part of video installations and contemporary dance, would performance art cultivate a different, more pragmatic atmosphere, aiming to erase the borders between art and media (instead of those between art and life).

 

In its broadest definition, performance art is an individual or group act which explodes production-reception conventions by erasing the borders between real actions and fictional representation. It may or may not include stage effects, can be expressed using empty gestures of complex narratives, can last a few minutes or several days, can be performed only once or repeatedly, be the result of improvisation or long-term preparations. It is an act which is reminiscent of the “open work”, a piece of – art – work which constantly renews and reveals itself, both as an event and as a specific reality emphasizing the singular character of the “living moment”, a work which will never be reproduced in the same way, although it may appear so. Its disruptive poetics does not include only written texts, stage props, musical sequences, painterly elements, but also digital recordings, video and film presentations, always put to use in different combinations. Today, performance is the most extravagant and the most expressive poly-genric art form, an inter-medial and intercultural hybrid. It is not only a specific type of body art, but is also live art, shifting the dividing lines between reality and media. But when it transcends its local setting and reaches the global scene as a product on the market, ignoring the distinction between high culture and low culture, it is perceived a spectacle.

 

As one of the most significant products of our mediatized society – in all its forms: news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle establishes a monopoly over our time. It is used to package everything that can be supplied as a product with a price. This global trend, adopted in the commercialization of art, can be recognized in the work of Marina Abramovic, the world-renowned performance artist, whose energetic considerations are framed in the terms of the mass psychology of the spectacle. 

 

Artist – Space – Audience

Being globally famous and recognized, however, does not only require good marketing and increased media presence, but also demands an awareness of the need to transform and popularize artistic spaces, museums and theatres as places of real gathering, because performance art is not simply an act of presentation and performance which releases an enormous quantity of authorial energy and imagination, but also a place where a special synergy between the author/performer and the audience is born. Marina Abramovic has proven quite adept at this. I have in mind not only what has been perhaps her most significant piece so far – The Artist Is Present (2010), performed in the atrium of New York’s prestigious MoMA, where she establishes an energetic dialogue with the audience, exhibiting her body as an abstraction, as a readymade, for 716 hours and 30 minutes, with no physical contact or verbal communication, following the same principle that applies to paintings and sculptures – but also the 2011 retrospective exhibition in the Russian Tate Modern, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, where Marina introduced the project entitled “Measuring the Magic of the Mutual Gaze” (fig. 1) as a continuation of the sitting performance from MoMA, but this time using EEG to represent the brain activity of the audience during the mental contact with her. Or “The AbramovicMethod” (fig. 2), in Milano’s Padiglione d’ Arte Contemporanea (2012), where she confirmed that the observer must become a participant, because that is the only way he can have the double experience of being the observer, and being the observed.

 

I also have in mind the most extreme example of bizarre audience contact – this year’s performance in London’s Serpentine Gallery (2014) titled “512 Hours”, where Marina Abramovic spent 512 hours alone with the audience, wandering through a gallery space bereft of any scenery and details, once again broaching the dilemma: how do you perform/present/stage a work of art that leaves no material trace?

 

A characteristic of traditional performance art was that it left no trace, no material record. The performers were present in real time, the here-and-now, not in the simulations of time offered by digital technology today. Thus, the performance art of yesterday could not be subject to commercialization. The use of today’s new technologies has brought into question the traditional essence of the “unrepeatable” form of the artistic expression. Now it is documented and archived, reprinted, reconstructed and recontextualized, thanks to electronic media (television, internet, video and digital recordings), which are not closed projections, but rather borderless and bodiless zones where the fixed point of view and time distinctions no longer make sense. Yet, regardless of all these privileges of the “new” era, Marina Abramovic’s mega-performance in New York was seen by more than 850,000 visitors, making it one of the most significant cultural events in the history of MoMA, because live performance is what it is – incomparable and exclusive, art par excellence.

 

Another Abramovic piece deserves enormous respect. This music and stage spectacle, directed by Robert Wilson, premiered at the 2011 Manchester International Festival. “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” is a surrealist fable with operatic elements. The artist enacts 12 different characters and is joined by the masterful Willem Dafoe, the narrator of the show, as well as the avant-garde musician Antony Hegarty(from the band Antony and the Johnsons) and Svetlana Spajicperforming Serbian dirges with her folklore band. The spectacle that is “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” (fig. 3) is third in the line of theatrical versions of the artist’s biography, commencing with the scene of her death and continuing with “sound images” and details of her life in a three-hour retrospection.

 

All of this indicates that for Marina Abramovic, the conceptual artist, the reception of the performance (not justartistically, but as a commercial product as well) entails the activity of the senses as well as the intellect. Why so?

 

Performance and Performativity

It is clear that, as an act of performance, performance art and its reception are a specific communication process where the biggest role is entrusted to the audience. “Through performance, I found the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the audience through an exchange of energy, which tended to transform the energy itself. I could not produce a single work without the presence of the audience, because the audience gave me the energy to be able, through a specific action, to assimilate it and return it, to create a genuine field of energy”, says Abramovic (http://www.theartstory.org/artist-abramovic-marina.htm).

 

Even when the interaction with the audience does not have a verbal character, the performance creates certain significations and effects. They are not immanent to the performance, of course, nor are they pre-set in the observer, but rather result from the performativity of the unstable context where the act takes place. But although the essence of performativity is indivisible from the representational and the observational, it cannot be seen as identical with the performance. Performativity is, in fact, the discursive potential of the performance, in certain situations rendering the latter an event, instead of a “talking about”. Or, to paraphrase Deleuzeand Derrida, performativity is nothing but the virtual discursive referentiality of the performance. It is an interpretation that transforms what it interprets, as well as the reality it belongs to, in the very moment of its actualization. Its meaning does not depend solely on stable external referents, nor on latent internal ones. Performativity has meaning only when the context (space, time, the performer’s agenda, his/her identity and relation to the audience) is inscribed in it, and it is inscribed in the context. This is why no performance should be examined without regard to its performativity (see Ambramovic’s series of photographs, such as Homage to Saint Therese (2009) – “The Kitchen,” fig. 4 – or Back to Simplicity(2011) – “Black Sheep,” fig. 5).

 

Artist and Myth

The power of mass media has changed the image of the artist. Today, artists create their own code and space wherein they build the myth of themselves. The Marina Abramovicmyth began in Belgrade’s pop-art circles and the popular Student Culture Centre, and includes the van she shared with Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen), whom she lived with while knitting sweaters to eke out a living; the time spent with the Aborigines in the Australian deserts; the goodbye to Ulay at the Great Wall of China, after walking 2,500 kilometers; the work with the Tibetan monks and the spiritual preparations in an Ayurveda yoga retreat in south India as preparation for the MoMA performance.

 

This extreme life trajectory – hardly imaginable, let alone do-a(m)ble – was a long time in the making, only to be transformed today into an urban myth. With support from the media, their comments and broadcasts, the myth of Marina Abramovic’s life and art can be heard even today within various target groups, as they enrich and multiply it with every retelling. For example, the comments regarding the founding of an International Culture Centre in Cetinje (in the halls of the former household appliance factory Obod), which received wide support among Montenegrin authorities. Or the articles concerning the prestigious “Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art” in Hudson, New York, which many consider a potential “Bauhaus of our times,” an interdisciplinary educational center, a hub for performance art. Abramovic secured 600,000 dollars in funds through an on-line crowdfunding campaign (a powerful reminder that this electronic medium is inevitable and can be a powerful tool in popularizing alternative art). However, the intention of the pragmatic Abramovic, who once thought of performance art as an alternative art, a creative live performance whose beauty lies in its singular, one-off character, said in an interview: “Any artist who has the courage to do a performance without documenting it is the most radical. But I can’t help it – I document all my performances, because my mother is such an orderly woman – I believe in KGB files. But in an ideal world, it should be just word of mouth” (Interview with Marina Abramovic and Monica Bonvinici,http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/do_it_again/).

 

This performance art diva, referred to by many as the “exotic Serbian vixen” and a “lightning rod for controversy,” is a frequent guest of not only internet portals and popular TV shows, but the readers on the NIN weekly too, who were privileged to receive a digital video recording of the MoMA performance as a gift. She has been the subject of several documentaries, theatre plays, as well as written biographies, the most famous of which is “When Marina Abramovic Dies: A Biography,” written by her former assistant James Westcott. Letting the media talk about her, but talking about herself in abundance too, Marina Abramovic designs and redesigns her persona, deconstructing the stereotype of the Balkan woman. 

 

Commercialization or show-biz art

Marina Abramovic does not experiment solely with her own biography or her own body, the audience and the space (museums, theatres and restaurants), the written and visual media (newspapers, art magazines, books, billboards), digital and electronic records (videos, CDs, the Internet, YouTube and on-line portals), earning large sums from the popularization of her art and its promotion among the elites and the broader population alike.

 

Even when she is not on stage displayed like a museum show-piece or work of art, Abramovic maintains her media presence - occasionally posing in a Givenchy dress or being on the cover of a glamorous fashion magazine (fig. 6, 7, 8), making music videos such as the one for “Cut the World” by Antony and the Johnsons, or collaborating with the rapper Jay-Z, as a VIP participant in the “Picasso Baby” performance (Pace Gallery, New York, 2013), a reinterpretation of her master work The Artist Is Present. Collaborating with celebrities from the movie and music industries, she was criticized by many for her aggressive presence in the media as well as the flirtations with show-business, in addition to remarks that, obsessed with her own mythology, she is consciously building a cult of her personality and risks endangering her reputation. Could the reputation of a “rock-star artist” derail her career and turn it into a trivial matter? Taking her work so far into consideration, she will certainly continue to cause a great deal of interest in the public sphere and will be mentioned not only as an art doyenne or the “grandmother of performance art,” but also as a provocateur, a flirt, a saint and a psycho. One conclusion is beyond doubt, however. Formerly an avant-garde and alternative form of artistic expression that fought the establishment, performance art has become both an artistic as well as a cultural and social paradigm, wherein many recognize the code of this civilization, erasing the borders between art and media. Abramovic’s recent exhibitions and astonishing performances are the pinnacle of artistic production world-wide, which is measured in millions of dollars – much like the fees commanded by artists and curators who take part in mega-projects – and this only confirms the claim that this performance art mega-star, perhaps the most intriguing and most enticing living artist of the century, who has created more than 50 performances in 40 years of artistic activity, has a clear vision of how to conquer the Pop-Pantheon, restoring the artists’ status of being the dominant figures on the scene, as a result of the successful blend of her work and personality. 

 

 

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