Marina Abramovic - The Artist is Present

picture acquired from here


New Zealand's International Film Festival has come again, and finally, I was able to see Marina Abramovic - The Artist is Present. A close insight to the professional and surprisingly personal life of the Godmother of Performance Art; the Serbian beauty, Marina Abramovic.
(It's true, she's bangin' for 63)


The film was based around her work at the MoMa in 2010, The Artist is Present. From beginning to end the film moved through scenes of the performance itself - and the entire retrospective show which too was on during the 3 months Marina was performing - back into the planning stages of The Artist is Present, and back again into her historical work from the 60's and the 70's as a young Performance Artist in Belgrade and Berlin, through to the present day. 


I've watched all of the trailers, i've watched snip-its of the film itself and of the performance, I even found a blog of a ton of individuals who cried as they sat with Marina.
Marina Abramovic Made Me Cry < Check this out!
But last night when I watched the entire film, I got an insight to Marina and her work that no amount of reading or watching interviews or performances ever gave before. 
People always call her a diva, and sure it's a little true... she's a performer! It's obvious she loves the audience, she loves becoming perhaps the person she wouldn't normally be in the quiet of her apartment or the solidarity of the shower. In private she may be Marina, but in public she knows she is Marina Abramovic, the Artist. And yet even as she continues on her path to success, climbing the ladder of fame and recognition, the film as it portrays her, finds her humble still. 

A poignant moment for me was when the film showed the museum vistiors walking through her retrospective work. Marina had trained and used individuals from all over the world to re-do works such as Imponderabilia (1977) and the room was filled with projectors showing all of her performances, with items like her knives from Rhythm 10 (1974) and the car Ulay and herself drove in Relation in Movement (1976).

This part of the film simply showed people spending time, with her work. This, in relation to a conversation that I had with my theory class about how even we as artists have short attention spans when visiting galleries and viewing work. 


How can I get people to stay longer? How can I get them engaged? 

Marina did it. So, I looked at the arrangement of the installation in the MoMa, how they set everything up. The room was full of things to see and watch and listen to. Her performances were somewhat 'spectacles', for lack of  a better word perhaps, (I'll come back to that as I don't fully know how to explain what I mean.) which attracts immediate and lasting attention. 

The shock factor of her work has people hanging on. 

To keep this from ranting on, I'll end with this. 

See. This. Movie. 

I had lost a little hope in my own practice, and my faith in trying to make it as an artist, but after seeing this film, regardless of the fact that she's been an inspiration of mine for a long time, it gave me the hope feelings back.

Now watch this

alex <3 marina