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Some visual inspiration for Divine Light.
From Somone Who Was Present: A Performer’s Response to Certain Allegations Made against Marina Abramović and Her Work - by Macklin Kowal
I have not updated my Tumblr in months at this point. I’ll get on that soon. Before that, though, I need to share a recent piece of writing that I was compelled to pen:
From Somone Who Was Present: A Performer’s Response to Certain Allegations Made against Marina Abramović and Her Work
By: Macklin Kowal
A veritable fervor has surrounded Marina Abramović’s recent performance piece for the annual gala of Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on November 12, 2011, due to the righteous indignation of choreographer Yvonne Rainer. In a now infamous letter, Rainer addressed MOCA’s director, Jeffrey Deitch, with judgments of Abramović’s then forthcoming work as exploitative to its performers by the very form of its concept. As a participating performer in the event, I would like to provide some internal context on the work and scrutinize Rainer’s claims.
MOCA’s annual gala, as one might expect, has tended to placate to the tastes of elite philanthropists, art patrons, and glitterati of Los Angeles; whether individuals patronize the event as an arts fundraiser or as an essential event of the Los Angeles social season, adulation is thrust upon them for gracing the evening with their presences through generous servings of spectacular performance. 2009’s gala, artistically directed by Francesco Vezzoli, paired Lady Gaga with the dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet in a work that pandered to notions of performance as an offering of virtuosity to the elite.
Abramović was interested in subverting popular expectations of this event. She set out to create an environment founded on the prioritized presences of the performers, and insisted that audience take an active stance vis-à-vis their level of comfort with this work. The event became one of active engagement; its design disallowed passive audience consumption.
To start, the audience was required to wear white lab coats over their clothes and finery. Their bragging rights through fashion were deliberately dismissed. They would find that all staff and performers donned these same coats; the elaborate tent constructed on LA’s Grand Avenue to house the event became a laboratory, all individuals implicated in an experiment on the limits and potentials of expectation’s rupture. In the early part of the evening, I was charged with the performative task of instructing audience to fully button their coats. Reactions ranged from the pleasantly curious to the outwardly offended, from “Ooh, I wonder what’s going to happen!” to “What the fuck does Marina Abramović know about Tom Ford?!” (verbatim.)
Inside, audiences encountered the performative element of the work that had elicited Rainer’s fervent response – the presence of over eighty performers, their heads protruding from the center of the banquet tables, engaged in a durational score of circular rotation. Making direct eye contact with all those guests seated in their circumference, the performers disrupted the contrived culture of each table as a constellation of Los Angeles society’s personalities, their alignments curated by MOCA in a deliberate seating chart. Here, in the center of social interaction, was the presence of an individual who was given license to comment on or disrupt the quality of the space’s energy through the quality of presence that they directed outwardly, through an unwavering gaze. These performers were active; they were present. It was a disruption of institutional formalism, and the vernacular culture of the elite that it appeals to.
At the initial audition, Abramović described the physical score of the performance and clearly spelled out its physical demands. She said, “It is not easy. It is in fact very difficult. This is what I do.” She guided us through the score with much empathy and humor. Some people clearly enjoyed the challenge while others did not. Some people left the audition. At its conclusion, we were asked three times if we had any reservations and welcomed to withdraw from the process.
Casting was based on the ability of the performer to sustain a direct gaze, to engender the emergence of vital energy through confrontational presence, and on a clear interest in the work itself. Once the work was cast, rehearsals were held to give performers a deepened sense of the demands on the body. Performers were invited to respond to any conflict in any manner that felt appropriate. A system of gestures was devised in order to alert the management to any physical or emotional distress in the performance. Performers had the option of wearing adult diapers in cases of extreme need. The score was understood and all individuals committed to it willingly.
Taking to the podium at the gala, Abramović could not have been more clearly uninterested in placating to the popular demands of her position vis-à-vis the event’s guests. She offered no thanks to the audience for allowing themselves to being subjected to the vision of her work. She offered no congratulations to them for supporting the arts. She spoke in brief sentences describing the literal situation of the evening; her body slightly hunched over, she said (my paraphrasing), “I am Marina Abramović. This is the experiment that we are all sharing,” and a few other factual details. One of these was that the recreations of her 2002 “Nude with Skeleton” (another art piece featured at the gala where a naked performer lays under a skeleton, its form rising and falling with the performer’s breath) were originally intended to include male and female performers; MOCA had denied the possibility of male nudity at the event. The artist called out the censure and directly pointed her finger at its perpetrator.
Then, in a swift about-face, she began to march up and down the runway stage, adopting a tone of voice that was bold and authoritative as she read out the rules of conduct concerning the performers at the center of each table. With all vehemence she declared the following:
“The centerpiece will observe you. You may observe the centerpiece.
No touching, feeding, offering drink, or disrespecting the centerpiece.
Be very careful with crossing of legs, etc., under the table.
All communication and connection with the centerpiece must be non-verbal.
Please respect the rules. Thank you.”
And with that, she left the stage. Her priorities were clear. The safety and well being of the performers were her chief concerns. This was not a piece of work she had made for the masses; it was an opportunity for these performers to confront the masses.
Abramović’s work has largely been founded on a disavowal of representation; she has continually asserted her interest in presenting the body in its authentic state. These bodies were not representing centerpieces. They were authentic bodies in the positioning of a centerpiece. And again, the artist’s vision and instruction meant to position these bodies as powerful agents of disruptive confrontation - not as decorative objects.
Rainer found this positioning of the body to be inherently disempowering. Her stance is a highly moralistic one. Empowerment and its antithesis emerge depending on how, why, or in what context one assumes a given position. Abramović’s score was such that the charging energy of the scenario was to emanate from the performer, and as such the performer would wield power.
As for “Ms Abramović’s obliviousness to differences in context and some of the implications of transposing her own powerful performances to the bodies of others,” does Rainer realize that in this statement she is effectively rendering Abramović’s body into an idolized object? that she is inferring that the vitality of those performances could reverberate no further than in the interiority of the artist’s anatomy? that she is insulting the numerous people who have experienced her work to the point of their own embodied transcendence? While it is difficult to define performance art vis-à-vis corporeality, I will go so far as to say that it generally entails an artist’s interrogative approach to their own body; as practiced by Abramović, the body is simultaneously a subject and point of departure for a larger dialectic between artist and audience. Per the artist, performance is authenticated by the presence of an audience, occurring on the holy ground that they occupy*, breathing and taking shape inside, in between, and beyond all bodies present. Abramović’s interest in this piece was the transmission of this practice to others, providing an opportunity to performers to engage with her practice to the point of creating their own “charismatic space,” their own experiences of dialectical tension and confrontation.
Rainer had the audacity to imply an inevitable exploitation of all performers involved in this event. She writes, “Ms Abramović is so wedded to her original vision that she—and by extension, the Museum director and curators—doesn’t see the egregious associations for the performers, who, though willing, will be exploited nonetheless. Their cheerful voluntarism says something about the pervasive desperation and cynicism of the art world such that young people must become abject table ornaments and clichéd living symbols of mortality in order to assume a novitiate role in the temple of art.” Rainer’s rhetoric bears an indignant moralism and paternalism concerning the actions of individuals acting on their own free will. I must again emphasize that performers engaged in this work through observances of personal agency. It is abhorrent that one should make such righteous judgments; the cast of performers counted numerous individuals thrilled by the opportunity to engage with this particular style of performance in this particular context. I personally found the particular concept of disrupting the comfort of the elite through these performative means to be brilliant, and could hardly wait to engage with the work. While inevitably some may have chosen to engage for reasons of Abramović’s celebrity, they nevertheless entered into the work willingly. I’m certain that countless dancers would enter into professional relationships with Yvonne Rainer for the reason of her status; whether Rainer chooses to sniff out and reject those ambitions is her own affair.
I know that I am not alone among my colleagues in my feelings of being exploited by Rainer for the purposes of circulating her own righteous rhetoric. Like Abramović, I have long respected her work. Following this scandal, instigated by her own hand, I now lack respect for Rainer’s conduct.
Furthermore, I am incensed by the response by those of the art community who were willing to validate Rainer’s staunch paternalism. Her tone and rhetoric indicate a species of artistic fascism (i.e., certain practices are degenerative and should not be tolerated) and I am frankly disturbed by the willingness of so many individuals to endorse this over a tolerance of free will.
I cannot emphasize enough how much Abramović emphasized this as an opportunity for our own empowerment. I cannot emphasize enough how abundantly she demonstrated her care for us. I cannot emphasize enough that this was the most cared for I have ever felt in my career as a performer.
To summarize: Marina Abramović set out to make a piece that subverted audience expectation of comfort and facility. With more than half of the audience markedly shaken and disturbed by the evening’s proceedings, she succeeded beautifully. Furthermore, she set out to empower each performer with the opportunity to adopt and transform a task-driven performance that nourished a distinct artistic vision. Based on my experience and those of my colleagues, I will boldly say that she succeeded on this front as well. Beyond this, we performers exercised our own personal agency and in doing so forged our own empowerment.
To conclude: While we must be held accountable for our actions, we will not be held accountable for our visions.
* In rehearsal, Abramović cited Martha Graham’s claim that holy ground is that space where the dancer dances; she then countered this citation by asserting the presence of audience as the force that sanctifies space.
Further reading:
- Another response from another participating performer, my new friend, the talented Dorian Wood:
- Yvonne Rainer’s letter:
- LA Times Blog Post featuring responses of some fellow performers:
- LA Times Article featuring Marina’s response to Rainer’s allegations:
Performance still, Royal Purple. Performed @ MOVE(MEN)T 4 at the Garage, SF. Extracted from footage by Mark McBeth. (pictured, Honey McMoney). This piece is in development, slated to premiere in its full length form in February 2012.
