Walking across campus today, I was truly annoyed and disgusted. While a car was trying to turn a corner, their light green, a million bikers and pedestrians continued through, against the light, oblivious to another human being trying to do what needed to be done to get them from Point A to Point B....what happened to all the lessons we learned in Kindergarten about sharing and taking turns and treating others the way we want to be treated?...where did we lose that?
Perhaps it wasn't just the selfishness on campus that was laying underneath my skin. Perhaps it was the video clip I had just witnessed in my Design 001 class prior to the Great Intersection Debacle.
Posted on the New York times website, artist Marina Abramovic was being interviewed. A Serbian artist, Marina explores relationships between the audience and the performer. Raised by conservative perents in a time of revolt and revolution, Marina first discovered that she enjoyed performing and the reactions that followed when, as a young girl, she would create fake explosions to see the recation of her neighbors. While living at home under strict, military-like conditions and rules, Marina was peforming acts of cutting herself, burning herself, whipping herself, all before her curfew of 10 PM.
Her first performance piece, Rhythm 10, was performed in 1973, where Marina cut herself. Following that, Rhythym 5, Rythym 2, then Rythym 0, all performance pieces where Marina subjects herself to pain, all while testing her and her audience limits.
With her work featured in London and in New York, Abromovic had recently finished a show, the highlights of which we witnessed. My question, after watching the clip was "Is that art? Design? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY TO US MARINA?!?!?!?!!?"
With a warning that viewers may object to the controversial subject matter, it only got worse from there. While explaining her installation , "Rythm 0", and seeing on a table behind her a row of scalpels and knives, my stomach turned. According to Abramovic, the instillation was planned so as to involve the viewers into a very private view of her cutting herself with various knives, to the same rhythm each time, in the same place, while accompanied by a sound recorder so you could hear the flesh being cut. And that was only half of it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ennfeVSirDU
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Is this Art? Perhaps. To me it wasn't so much as Abramovic creating, with mediums, a conversation between artist and public, but rather her, the performing artist, to let the public dictate to HER what they were feeling and capable of when "no holds barred".
I can say with certainty that it certainly isn't design. Design solves a problem while working within boundaries and serves a higher purpose of raising the aesthetic value of our lives whether it be the furniture we sit on, the dishes our toast sits on or the New York Times paper we have spread open before us at breakfast.
In The Design Process by Karl Asperlnd, he lays out these 7 steps:
Inspiration
Identification
Conceptualization
Exploration
Definition
Communication
Production
Did Abramovic installation piece have Inspiration? From somewhere, I suppose. She quotes in the posted clip that " people see themselves in me. they face their fears." in reference to her second piece in which gallery attendees are invited to take instruments of torture and pain of their choice and inflict pain on her somehow, anywhere. any how. Down to the point of picking up a gun, which contained one single bullet in it, and shoot her. Where was her inspiration for allowing pain to be inflicted on her?
Identification? yes, she knew exactly how she wanted to engage her viewers but at what point did I, as the viewer, identify with her and relate to her artistic communication? In no way shape or form was I facing any personal fear because I do not surround myself with people who would hurt me and in no way am I going to suppose that random acts of violence will occur to me in my lifetime. Yes, rape and murder and robbery exists but I take the steps necessary to avoid the potential of such happening. And do I identify with the audience- the attendees- who are willing participants in this grotesque proof of the sickness of humanity, when, upon seeing the invitation to inflict pain upon Marina, gladly took part...
"A man pressed the gun hard against my temple. I could feel his intent. And I heard the women telling the men what to do. The worst was the one man who was there always, just breathing. This, for me, was the most frightening thing. After the performance, I have one streak of white hair on my head. I cannot get rid of the feeling of fear for a long time. Because of this performance, I know where to draw the line so as not to put myself at such risk." M. Abromovic, The Observer,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist
No. NO and HELL NO.
Conceptualization? I am sure the piece means something to her, as an artist, so as she was forming the concept of a dialogue between herself and the viewer, she had to be choosing in what way shape and form that this conversation would take place.
Exploration...was this an exploration of humanity and the depravity of the human spirit? an exploration of how far an artist has to go to gain attention in the over-saturation of talented and unknown artists, doing whatever it takes to get their " 5 minutes of fame"???
The Definition of this project was strong and precise in the first installation where she videotaped her cutting herself within definite parameters of how, when, where. But the second installation of where she allowed the public to inflict pain on her was only defined in the instruments that she chose to lay on the table . What happened then was wide open and rightfully scary.
Communication. I have always felt that communication should be a positive experience of sharing or learning- a space in time where there is room left to grow from new information and insight and to reshape values or thoughts based on such. Positive growth. What Marina speaks to me, again, is not reflective of my own thoughts and fears, as she so states, but instead, what I am HEARING is something so sick and disgusting about humanity- that a large group of random people- not criminals, not convicted felons- EVERYDAY people would so eagerly jump on this opportunity to do so....Perhaps what she really is saying to me exactly that, although it belies her statement of it being a reflection of the viewer getting over and facing their worst fears. Perhaps our worst fear is that WE have it within ourselves to be violent and inflict pain on others and just WHAT will it take to make us feel comfortable enough to do so? THERE, perhaps, THAT may be the important message that Marina wants to communicate so badly that she allows herself to be mutilated publicly.
Production and the performance of this piece, again, breaches boundaries of preceding installations where, at one time, nudity and artistic sexual acts where controversial. This willingness for the gallery and the artist to go this far in making an artistic point and dialoguing in such morbid manner was a huge risk. What IF Marina really got hurt? Maimed beyond recognition? Shot and killed? How far are we willing to go, as artists, to say what it is we are trying to say? It is a question that I am unable to answer.
The pedestrians finish crossing the street at the light and the car is finally allowed to turn but only after the light has changed twice now. People everywhere around the world are crossing streets and trying to make right hand turns and the humanity continues to exist, day-in and day-out. And underneath it all, the sick feeling that perhaps Marina really did tell me something in that conversation that maybe I really didn’t want to know.....So, if "Rythm 0" was not design, although the situation was conceived and planned out, and it wasn't art as we- the typical public- know and enjoy it....what WAS Marina doing? She was talking to us, revealing to us what she already knew about humanity and their capacity to hurt when there are no limitations. And the public talked to her, angry and violent and mean words that YES, she was right all along.
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