Summative Statement

The most difficult thing about researching and digging into Marina Abramović was that it felt like she was the only one saying the things she was saying. She opened up so many questions in me, but it seemed like no one else asked these same questions or felt the urge to come up with answers. How exactly do you phrase a question around the idea that “perhaps curiosity can trigger aggression through the desperation of the need for validation” without having to delve into a long explanation of how the question came to be and what the value of the answers might be? How do I describe the connection I felt between John Cage’s 4’33” and her The Artist is Present? On my blog, I labeled both pieces with #the power/beauty/value of silence, but even the word, “silence,” can have too many depths and colors. When John Cage talked about there not being such a thing as silence, was he asking us to evaluate the same thing that Abramović evaluated as she sat across from so many strangers without speaking?
The things that strike me as most impressive, or effective, about Abramović is her ability to speak to me without using what I have thus far considered the most effective channels of communication. The most powerful part of AAA-AAA was not Abramović or Ulay, it was the presence of two humans, it was the two humans so close together, it was the space between them, the force between them, the noises they were independently making, and the noises they made when their individual noises mingled. I’ve never seen anything like that before that video—something that really made me forget what I was looking at and listening to and contemplate solely what I was perceiving of these things.  I have seen paintings that I think are achingly beautiful (Vrubel’s The Demon), paintings that represent everything I detest but are immeasurably beautiful (Vasnetsov’s Threshold of Paradise), but until I looked at Abramović’s works, I have never seen things that I thought were truly ugly looking but internalized them thoroughly anyway.
Now, the most interesting thing about Abramović is that she’s not so cruel as to only cause questions. She shows evidence. Evidence is not answers, and it is the very thing that causes questions in her art, but evidence is how we, as human beings, learn, discover, and cast off previous notions that weren’t supported by evidence but rather our own perceptions and assumptions. Her art is in the hypotheses she forms. The ability of her art to go horribly wrong or surprise her proves that she makes hypotheses rather than statements or expressions. The results of her performance are the same as the results of a scientific experiment, as it matters little whether or not the script was followed on not or if the hypothesis proved or disproved. What matters is that the result was observed and recorded, so that it could teach us something and pave the way for future exploration.
The lateral part of my research barely felt like an assignment, but was rather felt more like just a focused attempt to pay attention to behaviors and influences we do see in our daily lives, or see evidence of, and really take some time out to explore them. I made connections through the organization of my blog to suddenly start pondering what could be considered an altered state of consciousness. I am now certain that Abramović enters one in her performances, the only thing I’ll never get a chance to find out is whether it’s on purpose to shield herself, on purpose to be more accepting of change, subconsciously to protect herself, before the performance, during the performance, or any combination of multiple causes at multiple times. What states are most beneficial to us or perhaps most educational probably differs on a case by case basis, and I find it incredible to have explored this idea looking at performances instead of reading it in a textbook.
It’s interesting to see what I think is proof that we are not just brains being carried around by our bodies from one mental stimulus to another. Here is an artist, with an incredible amount of control over her mind and body, who can sit through pain, sit through emotion, can enter so many states of consciousness, but even she is governed by her world and environment. Abramović has a reason for doing her experiences in the real world rather than in just her mind and privately reflecting, aside from being an artist and therefore having a need to show others her transformations. The blazing petrol, the rose thorns, the act of yelling, the act of whipping herself, the situation of being yelled at, even the state of performing itself is what triggers her mind to flip an internal switch. Without these physical stimuli of interacting with her environment, she would not be stating today that her performances have changed her and continue to do so. It gives me pause and inspires me to consider the stimuli that change me, both for the long haul because they have touched me in a way that will never be forgotten, and in the briefest of moments when my entire mind starts to work differently because of a ritual I may have picked up, a natural defense of my brain, or a curiosity that might make me an entirely different person until it subsides.