I want to tell you the story of the life and art of a very interesting woman—Marina Abramović.
I did not know about her until one day my daughter sent me a link to a series of photographs arranged one beneath the other, telling me to read what was written below them. Here are the photographs:
The text beneath them explained what it was about:
*“Marina Abramović and Ulay begin a passionate love affair in the early 1970s, creating their art—performance—outside the van in which they live. When they realize that their relationship is approaching its end, they decide to walk the Great Wall of China, each starting from opposite ends, in order to meet in the middle for one final embrace, after which they will never see each other again.
In 2010, Marina Abramović presents her performance* The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of a silent, minute-long encounter in which each visitor may sit across from her. Ulay arrives at the performance without her knowing. The photographs above show the exact moment of their meeting.”
Almost hypnotized, I looked at these photographs several times. After that, I continued searching online for more information about the woman in the red dress—about her life and her art.
That is how I learned that Marina Abramović has been working in the field of performance for more than four decades, exploring themes such as the interaction between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the capacities of the mind.
I personally felt what this was about when I watched video recordings of her performances. I was deeply moved and provoked by what I saw—not only by the way she managed to draw the audience into the performance, but also because she made me a witness to so much pain, using the primary instrument of her art—her own body.
You can see her playing with a knife, stabbing it between her fingers…
…or eating a huge onion, drenched in tears…
…or cutting into her abdomen with a razor blade, drawing a five-pointed star with her own blood…
…or lying on a bench with burning candles beneath her…
…or, for six hours, allowing visitors to do whatever they wished with her body, provided with seventy-two different objects—some for pleasure and some for harm: a rose, honey, a gun, a single bullet, a whip…
At the end of those six hours, during which she remained entirely passive, the aggression of the audience escalated to a degree that Abramović later said made her feel genuinely threatened, as it could have gone as far as murder…
This is art saturated with so much pain!
Art in which pain signifies a boundary, and presence within it—the crossing beyond that boundary.
Art that explores not only the limits of the body, but also the boundaries between people—in love and in intimate relationships.
As always, here too Abramović understands where these boundaries lie by stepping beyond what is perceived as “normal,” and by transforming the experiences of her own body into art. During the period of her passionate relationship with Ulay—lasting eleven years and ending with the ritual meeting-separation on the Great Wall of China—Marina creates a series of joint performances with him, exploring the concept of the “common body with two heads” (the hermaphroditic body).
The two of them embody this idea in their lives as well, dressing like twins, wearing identical clothes, and building a relationship of total trust. And on stage, you can see them in:
“Breathing In / Breathing Out”—breathing together (each inhaling the other’s exhaled breath) for seventeen minutes, until they eventually collapse unconscious…
.or remaining bound to one another for fifteen hours, with the sixteenth hour opened to visitors, alternating images of total union with opposing scenes of rage and screaming…
…or slapping…
The passage from one state to the other—from hermaphroditic fusion with the beloved to the painful tearing apart of this extreme closeness—contains the danger of mutual injury… When we are so close to one another and so deeply interconnected, we resemble Marina and Ulay holding the bow and the arrow in their hands…
… and none of this would be real if it did not unfold against the backdrop of an endless inner vulnerability, one that only the nakedness of the human body can portray…
Living images, pain, provocation, the transcending of boundaries and the crossing beyond them—these are the words that the art of Marina Abramović and Ulay evokes in me.
Among the visitors of The Artist Is Present is not only Ulay, but also Lady Gaga. In an interview on this occasion, she does not hide her admiration for Marina Abramović, repeating again and again: “Marina, you are limitless!”
If all your life you have done only this—to cross boundaries in order to see how far you can go—at some point you truly go so far that you experience the limitless: the soul.
That which does not die.
“The Artist Is Present” is not merely the essence of the “Abramović Method,” as her style of performance is called.
To be present is the fundamental condition that transforms ordinary human suffering into a spiritual experience.
Crossing boundaries and transcending them is, at its core, the capacity to experience human pain without fleeing from it—by being present. Where most people stop, Marina continues—even if this sometimes appears as madness to others.
From intense pain during one of her performances, she loses consciousness, collapsing at the center of a burning five-pointed star; and when doctors bring her back to consciousness, she is furious that the endurance of her body has limits, and that therefore she cannot remain present at all times.
If others call her mad, then for Abramović the truth is exactly the opposite—that people are capable of far more than they believe. Crossing boundaries is expansion. And this kind of expansion is love.
This publication belongs to the category “Lessons of Love.”
If it comes to you, check whether the time has come to expand your boundaries—by being present.
If there is pain in your life—know that you can bear it!
This brings expansion.
For this, there is nothing else you need to do except
to be present!
If there is a longing for fusion with the beloved, know that sooner or later drama will come. Intense closeness gives rise to equally intense pain, rage, and anger.
(Psychologists know this very well—they know that in families where there are many conflicts, it is because there is too much closeness and almost no distance between the members. That is why these people quarrel often—and fiercely. Such storms, at least temporarily, push them apart, so that there is a little more “air” between them—to breathe freely!)
Therefore—wherever you may find yourself on the “pendulum”—
be present!
In its essence, love is connectedness; it is a bond. It is a feeling of unity with the beloved. Physical union with another human being, however, is impossible—it leads to “loss of consciousness, because the air we breathe together runs out.”
The challenge for love embodied on Earth is how to remain connected to the other and at the same time be free. We do this through
presence!
The journey toward a love that breathes the air of freedom passes through the “valley of loneliness” and is sometimes long. Very, very long—it resembles the journey of Marina and Ulay toward one another along the Great Wall of China, when each of them walked 2,500 kilometers before meeting the other.
And yet—keep moving forward—
by being present!
And if your heart is heavy with the pain that you will never see your beloved again (and to live through the separation you need not just 2,500 kilometers, but an entire 2,500 years), know that there is no such thing as a “final goodbye” or a “last embrace.”
There is always a new meeting—if not in this life, then in another; if not in an earthly body, then in “another body.”
Therefore, if separation hurts, do nothing else but
be present!
Because it is precisely presence that is “the purpose of our life”; it is the means through which we expand our boundaries in order to experience that which does not die.
As Marina Abramović says, “In the end, you are always alone, regardless of what you do.”
And this is certainly true when we cross the threshold of our death. That is why it does not matter what happens in our lives (or in love); what matters is whether
we are present!
Through presence we enter
eternity,
resolving the seemingly irresolvable contradiction:
to experience the longing for union with the beloved, which is love,
and to be separate, independent, and free beings.
Knowing that the limitless
is love
that does not die.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
