Marina Abramovic - Imponderabilla

During a discussion with the client, a group of classmates and Jen we discussed my working model with displays the ideas/thoughts drawing from a central core and then expanding out to the boundaries of the 2 boxes.

We discussed this idea of 2 things that generate an idea between them. Activating a spark between 2 thoughts.
Transition, moment, provocation, tension 

Marina Abramovic Presents:  Architectural Experience as Critical, Self-reflective Practice

Snippets of information and image from: artandeducation.net

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist and her work in particular 'Imponderabilla' explores interesting concepts which relate to my explorations. 

Standing naked in main entrance of museum. Public entering the museum has to pass through, and each one has to make a choice on which way they will face. Performance was intended to be 6 hours but only lasted 3 hours before the police came. 

The piece gains a public response and reaction. The people are forced to be involved in the piece and make a choice which way they face as the entrance is to small to go through frontly. This piece is really interesting and has some strong relationships to my concept I am now exploring looking at 2 things that generate an idea between them, in particular 2 things that physically generate a space between them.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgeF7tOks4s

Marina Abramovic and Ulay Imponderabilia, performance, Bologna 1977

Her work is a performative response to space and architecture. An important aspect of her work is a consistent concern with establishing a direct engagement with audiences.

Quote from her essay Body Art, “What’s very important about performance is the direct relationship with the public, the direct energy transmission between public and the performer” (Abramovic, 2002: 27).  

"First of all: what is performance? Performance is some kind of mental and physical construction in which an artist steps in, in front of the public. Performance is not a theatre piece, is not something that you learn and then act, playing somebody else. It’s more like a direct transmission of energy…The more the public, the better the performance gets, the more energy is passing through the space". (Abramovic, 2002: 27)

Rather the artist’s intention is to create live work, which encourages—or even requires—the audience’s direct engagement with the performance through developing non-hierarchal relationships between artist, audience, and space.

Spatial experience has played an important role in creating such a performative interrelationship between artist and audience. According to Abramovic, “Many things are happening and the space becomes different when it is charged with a lot of energy, and the public is confronted with it when they come in.” (2002: 33) 

Early in her career Abramovic was preoccupied with the idea of space and its role in bringing people to a particular state of mind. The context for this approach was set in the early 1970’s, when Abramovic produced installations exploring the idea of “empty space”. For Project – Empty Space (1971) she set up a circular projection of a panoramic sequence of large black and white images of Belgrade around the walls of a small room. As the sequence progressed, the photographs showed less and less of the city, until the final image revealed only people in an open space. 

In a subsequent artwork called Spaces (1973), Abramovic explored further this transformative relationship between “space” and “self” through a performance, during which she herself encountered seven empty rooms in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and translated what she felt into metronomes placed on the floor of each room.