Performances such as “walking to each other starting from one end of the Great Wall of China, standing naked in a narrow doorway, Ulay holding a bow stretched towards the Marina”, which Marina performed with her lover Ulay, made a mark in the history of art.
We have compiled for you the interesting performances that the artist made alone and with Ulay, which are not forgotten even after years.
Performance art is the artist’s leaving a mark on the space with his body.
Performance, one of the art forms, is an experience that brings the artist together with the participants through space and time.
Theater, cinema, literature, painting, sculpture, film, video, sound, digital media etc. performance including arts; the body wanders in motion or motionless in the triangle of space and time.
Abramović’s unforgettable performance: Rhythm-0
In Marina Abramović’s most famous performance, Rhytm-0, the artist would remain passive for hours. There was a sheet of paper on the table, she, that said she was an object and that they could use the 72 objects there, including the feather, flower, scissors, knife, and scalpel, as they wished.
In the first 2 hours of this show, which lasted for 6 hours in total, the participants watched the artist, kissed and began to undress. After a while, they began to cut and burn themselves with cutting tools, put roses in their throats and abused them. Towards the end of the performance, one of the participants even put a gun to Marina’s head. When a fight broke out with the intervention of someone else, it was decided to end the show.
With this performance of the artist; He wanted to show how a person’s inactivity changes the behavior of another person, after which stage he will start using force, the effect of reaction and inaction on the use of force, and when animal instincts will emerge. She succeeded in displaying this desire with an unforgettable performance.
Minutes spent at the tip of an arrow stretched towards the marina, which could jump out of the bow at any moment: Rest Energy
One of the unforgettable works of Marina and her performance artist lover Ulay is undoubtedly “Rest Energy”. A flat room, a woman, a man, an arrow pointing at her heart.
This impressive performance, which made the audience gasp, was simply the depiction of “a single word or a single action can pierce the heart of a loved one”.
He lived for 12 days without eating, going to the toilet, talking: House with the Ocean View
In the public performance House with the Ocean View, Abramović; For 12 days, she lived in 3 rooms without eating, talking or going to the toilet.
The artist continued his life in front of the audience without any privacy concerns. Thus, the audience experienced being able to watch a person’s private life without feeling that they were “doing something wrong”. This performance was one of the best examples of confronting human impulses.
To react to the massacre, he sat in the basement for 4 days in animal carcasses: Balkan Baroque
In this performance, which Marina put on to curse all wars, especially the Balkan War, she sat on bloody animal bones in a basement and tried to separate them from meat for 4 days.
The basement started to get hot and smelly after a while. Marina, in conditions that cannot accommodate people, completed 4 days.
Standing naked in a narrow doorway, they tested the audience: Imponderabilia
In this performance that took place in the arts center, Marina and Ulay stood still, naked and facing each other, in the doorway inside. Visitors who wanted to enter or leave had to pass through this door.
They described the performance as “whether Ulay and Marina’s acquaintance was a threshold in each other’s lives”.
Ulay at one end of the Great Wall of China and Marina at the other walked towards each other: The Lovers
For the performance of “The Lovers”, they walked towards each other for 90 days, almost 20 km a day. In fact, while designing this performance, they were going to get married when they met in the middle, but they tried to get bureaucracy permission for 5 years to exhibit the work, and when they got permission, they already gave up on the idea of getting married.
However, they did not give up on exhibiting, but the end was very different. When they met in the middle, they would part. They did the “break-up reunion” and thus ended their relationship.
Marina and Ulay together again after 22 years: The Artist is Present
Actually, The Artist is Present performance was a solo performance by Abramović. Artist; He was sitting at a table for 8 hours every day, for a total of 750 hours, just looking at the participants, who changed every 5 minutes, without making any contact or talking.
In her own words, Marina said that while all this was going on, she was drowning in her own thoughts while trying to escape from the physical world and experience a brain drain. She even had tears in her eyes frequently during her performance.
Surprisingly, Ulay joined the show and sat across from Marina, and everyone began to watch them with full attention. Marina broke the no-touch rule and grabbed Ulay’s hands. It took its place among the unforgettable performances of the artists who could not hold back their tears while looking at each other.
- Sources: The Collector, Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Gaia Magazine, Kooplog, The Guardian
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