Getting a cup of coffee from a young woman in a café near the Presidential Garden. She has a tattoo under the hollow of her throat — Alma Pura — visible in her open shirt. It would take a turtleneck to conceal it. Zillions of ways in which we support ourselves on this planet’s journey.
I take my cappuccino, open my laptop, and from a frosty, misty mid-morning in Bratislava transport myself back to a Sunday visit to the retrospective of Marina Abramović at Albertina Modern in Vienna.
Moving through the rooms, the visitor encounters a young version of the artist and gradually arrives at her mature self. Young Marina explored physical and mental limits — her own and those of her lifetime partner. Togetherness. The possibility and impossibility of intimacy.
Are these performances an invitation to explore my own limits? Has she walked this path for others as well? Observing other visitors gives me some clues. Catharsis may occur through art. Marina blurs the boundary between object and subject. On a deep level, we are intertwined; she might as well have done it for all of us.
Faces reveal emotions. Or perhaps they don’t. The nudity does not aim to stir libidos. Is the self-inflicted pain meant to shock, to shake, to awaken? Interpretation lies with each of us. Because, though intertwined, every one of us is an original cocktail of qualia — a unique subjective experience of Life. Love. Pain. Pleasure.
How does a particular video or photograph affect you? I will never know for sure. But here is my invitation: watch and feel, suggest the artist’s deep eyes.
We came to Albertina with a friend; nevertheless, we did not move through the exhibition together. We met again only in the final section. Here I sense a mature Marina, focused on subtler realms — energy, spirituality, natural elements.
Prop your head against the smooth surface of a stone and feel its energy. You do it; you are not watching me do it.
In one image, Marina levitates in the role of St. Theresa in a cloister kitchen. In another, she sleeps beneath a tree. In yet another, she lies on a pyre raised above the ground, mineral stones scattered around her.
A living body lies naked on a bunker, a skeleton stretched over it. The bones were carefully washed by the artist, as a video projection documents. The skeleton rises and falls with the performer’s steady breath.
The exit room is devoted to perpetual energy — Tesla’s idea — to the power of nature, the power of facial expression, the power of transformation. Perhaps here lies the secret to ending suffering.
Accepting change, which is inevitable.
Accepting pain, which is inseparable from the human condition.
Marina Abramović turns 80 this year. She lives in New York. She has stirred many individuals — from apathy to empathy.
Written with https://triplefivecoffee.com/en/welcome/
