Category: Consumption

(You can read about my first visit to this event here. Once more, this is part of my 750words process.)

I returned today to Marina Abramović: In Residence, at Wharf 2/3 in Sydney. I visited earlier in the week and wanted to see whether my experience there – something I’d written about, also – was going to be different this time. Could it be repeated, or was it a one-time-only deal? Part of me wanted to feel more than I did the first time, and part of me was greedy to have another go, because I wondered how long it might be before I could do something similar.

(This, of course, is a silly thought: it appears Abramović’s goal with her Method is to enable the exercises to be done without her. This is something with a life of its own, now.)

The lines were longer this time. I arrived the same time as my previous visit, but it seemed to take longer to get inside. (I was through the door at roughly the same time as the first visit, though, so I suppose it all evens out.) The usual conversations of arty bent continued behind me, as before, though I wasn’t the only solo visitor this time; in front of me, a girl peered at the world through defensive Prada shades, her face occluded.

I spotted Abramović herself, leading an older lady into the experience. The chatterers missed it. She smiled and seemed to float, more than walk, though that could be the influence of her enormous, gazing portrait at the head of the line: when presented with the real person after so much image, there’s bound to be a little feeling of unreality. Continue reading “Marina Abramović: In Residence – again” →

I stared at people today.

I sat on a plywood chair, opposite people and I stared at them. Looked. Gazed. Examined.

Stared.

It was part of Marina Abramović: In Residence, a Kaldor Project. The idea was that the artist would create a space where her Method could be shown to the public. (There’s also a mentoring program running at the same time with a bunch of performance artists who are developing their work upstairs from the main event.)

Lining up to get into the area had been strange – I was the only solo person I could see. Almost everyone else had come in groups of at least three, and the line featured much yucking it up about performance art and degrees. I took pictures of the Harbour Bridge and pretended I couldn’t hear them talk overly loudly about their time in Berlin. Continue reading “Marina Abramović: In Residence” →