Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87

http://www.lacan.com/abramovic.htm

http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/movement_work_md_Performance_1A_2.html

http://ejw.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/3/295.pdf

http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/moving_pictures/highlights_3a.html

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a performing artist born in Serbia but resides in New York. Abramovic in her work explores the relationship between the performer and the audience. She tests the limits of the body and the possibilities of the human mind. Mariana Abramovic started with her career as a performing artist in the seventies and is still active in the Avant Garde.
Abramovic’s work usually explores the extreme state of a human mind. Both mental and physical activity. The Human Body has always been her medium and subject. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her body. The particular mixture of struggling and self inflicted violence has been the contradiction of her childhood. Though very personal, Abramovic’s art spoke to a generation which was undergoing the tightening control of the communist party in Yugoslavia.
The earlier Artwork which inspired many women and was a revealing moment about the truth of the society were the Rhythm. The most famous acts of the Rhythm series were the Rhythm 10, Rhythm 5 and Rhythm 0.
Mariana re-evokes the energy of extreme body pain. Burning the communist star represents a physical and mental purification from the communism which was in Yugoslavia while she was growing up. She wants to set herself free from the torture, the misery she had while growing up as a kid because of her parents who both were at a high post in the communist party.

Rhythm 0

In what would become her most famous performance till date, Marina Abramovic offers her body completely to the audience. She uses her own body as in the other works as well as a medium, a canvas for art. She stands in the room with a table which has around seventy two objects varying from needles, grapes, knives, chains and even a loaded gun. A sign on the wall gives permission to the audience to use the object in any way they want.

Although the whole event starts peacefully by the end of the six hour performance it gets violent, people tear down her clothes, slice her with razors poke her with thorns. The violence increases to an extent where someone points a loaded gun at her head which was then wrestled down by another audience member.

The issue here that Marina Abramovic is trying to talk about is that of feminism. She is trying to show the pain women go through everyday without any reason of their own and just because they are of a different gender. She shows how vulnerable people are when they are left to do what ever they want to do. Abramovic believes that what happened at the performance would have been different if the artist would have been a man instead of a woman. (demaria).

Rhythm 5

In the performance of Rhythm 5. Marina Abramovic shows a more ritualistic traditional act. She construct a five star pointed star made of wood and wood chips and soaked them in petroleum. She then set it on fire. She then walks around the star, cuts her hair and throws the lumps into the fire at each edge of the star. She then cuts her toe nails and does the same, throws the clippings at all the edges of the star. Abramovic then walks into the star and lies down in the middle on the empty surface.

Lying down in the star after a while Abramovic runs out of oxygen which is all used up by the burning flames which results in her loosing consciousness. The viewers did not notice this until one of the flames touches her feet and she shows no reaction to it. This makes the viewers come and get her out of the star. Abramovic says that she is confronted with her physical limitations and the performance is cut short because of the reason.

Mariana re-evokes the energy of extreme body pain. Burning the communist star represents a physical and mental purification from the communism which was in Yugoslavia while she was growing up. She wants to set herself free from the torture, the misery she had while growing up as a kid because of her parents who both were at a high post in the communist party.

Rhythm 10

The first Rhythm performance was done in nineteen seventy three. In this the Artist lays a sheet of white paper on the floor. She lays a set of twenty knives all of different shapes and sizes on the sheet. She has a set of cassette recorders with microphones on the floor. Abramovic switches on the cassette recorders then she takes the knives and plunges them as fast as she can into the gap between her outstretched fingers.

After each cut by a knife she changes the knife and does the same thing over again until all the knives have been used. After rewinding the tape and listening to the recording of the first performance she plays the second tape and does the same procedure over again in the same sequence. Abramovic rewinds both the tapes and then plays the tapes together and listens to the dual Rhythms of the knives. Confronting Pain, blood the physical limits of the body are constant elements of Abramovic’s performances during the years. The artist becomes her own object of work

Abramovic explores the ritualistic and gesture in the element. Playing the Russian game of Rhythmic knives she cuts her self on the same spots in the second set attempting to replicate the mistakes merging the past to the present. The state of consciousness of the artist is being considered. “Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” (wikipedia.org). The purpose of the performance being connecting the past with the present. It shows how the past has affected her. The way she reacts to about thinking of the past and the way it has affected her present. It shows how the mistakes made in the past affects and are as similar to the mistakes made in the present.