Marina Abramovic
Marina Abramovic, she called herself as the “grandmother of
performance art”. Her work explores the limits of the body, and the
possibilities of the mind. “Once you enter into the performance state you can
push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” This is
what she tried to challenge in most of her performances. She also explores the
relationship between performer and audience. How audience react to her
performance which at last those audiences could become performers for others to
observe instead.
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| Different reaction from the audiences make them become the performer too |
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| Rhythm 10 |
Personally, most of her performances are cruel but those performance
does reach her intention which is to explores the limits of the body. Her
performances are mainly about pain. For examples, cutting herself with knives
and repeated those movement over and over again. Even some artwork which she
let the audience manipulate her body and actions for 6 hours. Audiences could
give pleasures or even harm her by using materials she prepared such as honey,
whip, scissors, or even a gun…
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| The Artist is Present |
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| Reaction to Abramovic's performance |
One of her performance I am interested in is “The artist is
Present” performance. This show changed her life completely. She sat immobile
on the chair starting before the Museum opens and continuing until the museum
closes and in total she sat still for 736 hour and 30 minute. All audiences
were invited to take turns sitting opposite her and they react differently by
just looking at her, some of them even cried.
El Anatsui
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| El Anatsui |
El anatsui’s works engage the cultural, social and economic
histories of West Aftica. He was concerning about the erosion of inheried
traditions by powerful external forces. Therefore, he was trying to provide a
commentary on globalization, consumerism, waste and transience of people’s life
in Africa. Materials used are mostly, discarded metal objects. For example, aluminum wrappings from the tops of bottles,
discarded tops of evaporated milk tins, rusty metals and others. All of those
materials he used are mostly have in them. Most of those materials also came
from Nsukka, Nigeria where the artist has lived and worked for so many years.
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| Some materials he used for his installation |
“Art grows out of
each particular situation, and I believe that artists are better off working
with whatever their environment throws up.” I think those things that
environment throws up made his work a lot more meaningful.
His idea is also
about the non-fixity and limit ability to stretch. Therefore, most of his work
looks very fluid from a distance. However, as you walk closer, materials he
used have no property of water or stretch, some of them are hundreds or
thousands of metal plates which is hard and solid joined together and created
remarkable artwork. If we know nothing about him or his idea, we wouldn’t
really know what his work is about because most of his works remain less in
context to lead you to anywhere and sometimes they are abstract by even using
series of symbol and sign.
These are what I like about these two artist's/ performances. I like the idea of non-fixity of El Anatsui. Nothing is fixed and idea if remaining "less". Texture is what really standout from his work. It is interesting to see his work differently from different distance. Marina Abramovic's performance is interesting when the audience could act anything to the performer, in this project might be the relationship between the installation and the audiences. It is also surprising if we found out how different people react to out work differently too.
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