The Yin-Yang of Marina Abramovic

The yin yang symbol, two halves of a whole, exist so that one's end becomes the others beginning continuously moving in cycles. The symbol perfectly describes the combination that Marina Abramovic tries to create between meditation and performance space with her work. This union of these two kinds of spaces creates an exemplary piece of work; however, both cannot simultaneously exist. Like yin and yang, performance space and meditation space can only exist side by side. While the capacities of both can be inversely increased or decreased to make a whole, the two spaces are separate entities that work together in Marina Abramovic's work. Meditative space and performative space are two individual entities that have to exist separately in order to create something that is more complete and successful. Despite the fact that Abramovic tries to overlap these entities through works like Rhythm 0, The Artist Is Present and 512 Hours, factors such as duration, location, anticipation and commercialization ultimately necessitate the two spaces to be independent. Space can mean distances or areas around, between or within components of a piece that can be either negative or positive, shallow or deep, open or closed, 2D or 3D. While performance art space is the atmosphere the artist creates in trying to convey a greater idea, accompanied by visual space, meditative space is the space within the mind that has been created through focus and concentration. Marina Abramovic further discusses the idea of space that is present within the mind–an unseen space or a meditative space

Throughout her artistic and performance endeavours, Marina Abramovic creates works ranging from sound, sculptures, performance, photography and videos. She describes herself as an 'empty vessel', one that keeps nothing bottled up, an empty space. She believes in channelling all that is within her into her work as a means to create free blank space for herself. It is perhaps this space that she feels most comfortable in. Dealing with the constant question of the limitations of the human body, Abramovic involves herself as the medium, revolving the piece around her origins, society, politics, fear, spirituality and connection–of mind, body, soul, performer or audience. One of her famous paintings is called 'Three Secrets' where three objects have been covered by three different coloured cloth. The idea directly and subconsciously reflected the frustration trapped within her that no one knew or validated with. In fact, her own friends claimed that the struggles between her and her mother were only something they saw as one-sided and that her mother wasn't what Abramovic often described. Having been divided into many sections, Abramovic's work focused on control and self-harm. During Ulay, the concepts shifted to energy as self-harm was able to be channelled to the other person for the pure reason of their major similarities. Subsequently, most of Abramovic's work was directed towards the audience. Her work began to be more interactive as that energy could not be channelled towards herself anymore–she was hollow now; this is when her work began to diverge towards meditative performance space. But now perhaps a question arises as to why Abramovic's work gained popularity when both meditation and performance have existed for centuries, especially when methods such as transcendental meditation produce greater effects than observing Abramovic's performance. This kind of method essentially aims to reach complete enlightenment through an attempt at rising above all negativity and maintaining calm even during the stress. Analytically speaking, this is because Abramovic was one of the first artists to have introduced meditation as a part of performance art. Abramovic stirred a new outlook on art space as a whole, and kept a continuum to this upheaval by projecting her ideas on herself, her collaborator, and then eventually her audience. She rose to fame for the mere reason of attempting something different by informing the audience to slow down and look around in this fast-paced society.

Although mind space hadn't been a central concept for Abramovic in her earlier works, her Rhythm series did deal with this underlying concept that was accompanied by control and perception. In Rhythm 0, for example, Abramovic displayed 72 objects which the members of the audience were directed to use on her, whichever way they desired. Some of the objects included a rose, a pistol, a bullet, newspaper, grapes, and olive oil. The performance was a social experiment on how people would react if you gave them control. When Abramovic declared herself an object–motionless, emotionless–the mind space of the audience shifted from a conscious and aware to an unconscious and immoral. As the performance went on, the audience began treating Abramovic more and more like an object and less like a human. They began being rash with her. When the performance ended, Abramovic describes that as she shifted from an object space to a human space and began moving, the audience member's also switched back to their conscious mind space. Their morals had returned as they saw Abramovic move, causing them to flee the scene because they thought they did something wrong. It could be analyzed that the piece was, in fact, a greater reflection of her relationship with her mother. Even in her twenties, Abramovic's life was being controlled by her mother who set limitations in her personal and professional life. Abramovic explained how she once requested her mother to split their home into three sections in order to create some privacy; however, with the denial of this request, Abramovic eventually ran away to pursue her artistic endeavours with complete freedom. During Rhythm 0, Abramovic switched into meditative space when she declared herself an object. Through this method, she was able to keep her calm in all the chaos. On the contrary, her piece perhaps demonstrated the system of oligarchy where groups in the audience formed to gain total control. The groups in the audience instead took to a space of turmoil, an antonym for meditation.

Her piece called The Artist Is Present was part of her retrospective at MoMA. During the performance which lasted 716 hours, she sat across from constantly shuffling spectators. The piece dealt with many arrays of space. The very aesthetics of the performance suggested an idea of emptiness or blankness. The enormous room space contributed to the feeling of intimidation, an emotion that was later amplified by the line of spectators watching the performance that was happening in the centre of the room. The room space contained a proscenium that had been created by a white-lined box on the floor, successfully distinguishing the stage space from the audience space. Within the white-lined box lie a table and two chairs–one on which Abramovic was seated throughout her exhibition, and the other was for any member of the audience to approach. The inanimate objects were interrupting the concept of the performance and Marina later got rid of the table as it was an obstacle that served no purpose. Marina's own clothes echoed the idea of blankness in space. During the performance, she chose to wear a gown of either red, white or blue solid colour. The rich and vibrant colours of simple pattern and design also suggested the idea of hollowness, perhaps reflecting her approach towards each individual in her means to connect with them. Moving from visual space, her performance spoke a great deal about mind space. Every individual who sat across from Marina was introduced to a pressure of making decisions. Once they entered the white-lined square, they were trapped in a struggle between either playing a performer for other spectators or an observer trying to validate Abramovic's work. Without any connection with the audience as a group (being isolated from the audience), the mind space had difficulty choosing to be a spectator. With the idea of being judged by the audience, the mind space disregarded being a performer. Apart from this, Marina herself was a hollow space that stared at the individual. Her hollowness suggested that she didn't exist at all, except that her energy could be felt. It was ultimately that the space of the mind of the individual had no escape but the only option of seeking within themselves and reflecting who they were. The emotional outbursts that occurred during the 716 hours were simply because they saw a purer, version of themselves within Marina; a version with no fears and insecurities that were at complete peace–an empty vessel of themselves. With Marina's history, we can analyze that The Artist Is Present is a reflection of her last few years with Ulay and the time she spent in Ladakh. During this time, she had, in fact, become a spectator who had to see Ulay with another woman, yet performs with Ulay with insecurities rising in herself. She felt judged and physically mocked. Ulay, who had been an ideal and accurate reflection of her, had begun to disgust her. She now saw an empty nothingness of space in him, a space with no feeling or emotional connection but where the lines of reflection had also been blurred. The Dharamshala required no interaction between her and anyone for three months, it also required isolation. During this period, she entered the space deep within her, creating a space that was pure, that she could look up to and improve. It was perhaps this experience that she subconsciously gave back to her audience in The Artist Is Present; Marina Abramovic became a master of this technique as she switched from performative space to meditative space and back in quick seconds for each of her audience members. This became another reason for why she was able to have meditative experiences with them on an individual basis, clearly pursuing the analogy of the Yin Yang cycle.

She has come to a point in her life where she, in fact, has nothing to be afraid of; a greater reflection of this idea is projected in her work titled 512 hours. 512 hours deals with meditative emptiness. As the spectators enter the museum, they are to leave all their belongings at the entrance. The museum space that is completely empty, bare walls and no sound, only echo energies of the people there–including Abramovic and her team, all dressed in black. The spectators are directed to 'perform' activities like staring at a wall, back and forth from one point to another or stand face to face with another stranger, all executed with not even a murmur. With the entering and exiting of people throughout the day, the only variable shift is the energy space that occupies the museum gallery. Abramovic certainly brings about a space for pure reflection of one's inner self. She claims, "The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you"(Abramovic). While Abramovic remains in a state of consciousness, guiding and directing visitors, she is, in fact, a performer throughout her piece. However, the visitors are put into a meditative state through the single-focused activity. When the guidance of one ends, the execution of the other begins, eventually creating a cycle between the two spaces.

The durational space assists to create a distinction between Meditative and Performative space. Marina's work is clearly performance that does not overlap with meditation as she only gives her audience a taste of what it feels to be in a meditative space. The pieces mentioned above only existed till gallery or museum hours, lasting for perhaps minutes, hours, days or months. This meant that the direct impact was only on the individuals that experienced her work first hand, regardless of the fact that it had been captured in a photo and video space as archives. Her work is essentially a small demonstration of meditation. The performance, like other artworks, simply creates an impact of the experience that only resides in the memory. As for meditation, it is something that eventually becomes a lifestyle choice. Meditation occurs constantly yet periodically. The experience of meditation begins to involve its self in daily activities and decision making. It influences our well being. Abramovic says, " It taught me that the process was more important than the result... There was no duration or stability to it. It was a pure process"(Abramovic). She clearly explains despite having a process to her work there was alack stability, a stability that meditation perhaps requires. It is for that reason that meditation becomes much greater than performance.

Often times, location and activity are interconnected in that one creates an obvious expectation for the existence of the other. Performance space usually exists in galleries, museums, theatres and other chosen sites that strengthen the artist's concept, as evident in Abramovic's work. On the other hand, meditative space exists within the mind. This means that meditation can occur anywhere. However, if it occurs in a meditation centre then there are fewer distractions as opposed to it occurring in a daily environment where the focus can be lost. Abramovic, however, brings meditation into a museum space as she is able to reach a state where she can successfully block out all the distractions and switch between the two spaces in the split of a second. Regardless, performance and meditation have to exist separately in order for Abramovic to successfully achieve that. If the two overlapped, then meditation would not remain meditation; the mind wouldn't be single-focused as it would begin to deal with the act of performing, the audience, the publicity and other aspects.

Commercialization and expectation go hand in hand as both factors become a part of Abramovic's performance space yet do not occupy any meaning in meditative space. The three performance pieces mentioned above were promoted prior to the exhibition. This created a space of expectations from the piece. The visitors were required to purchase tickets that tied them into a kind of commitment. Apart from that, the entire process is commercialized in the media and public, a type of aspect that does not pertain to meditation eventually becoming limiting factors.

Marina Abramovic uses meditation space as a part of her performance space through techniques she has mastered over the years. Abramovic summarizes her theory of performance art by saying, “Human beings are afraid of very simple things: we fear suffering, we fear mortality. What I was doing in Rhythm 0—as in all my other performances—was staging these fears for the audience: using their energy to push my body as far as possible. In the process, I liberated myself from my fears. And as this happened, I became a mirror for the audience—if I could do it, they could do it, too". Not just Rhythm 0 but she applies the entirety of this concept in all her work including the ones we discussed above. She releases her fears, essentially becoming a mirror for her audience. However, meditation and performance do not overlap and only exist one next to one another in her work due to the many limiting factors. Duration classifies Abramovic's work as a mere demonstration of meditation. The task oftentimes is distinguished by the type of location that it occurs in; while performance happens in galleries, theatres and museums, meditation occurs in the mind, thus preventing the similarities. Similarly, commercialization and expectations completely become a part of the performance space, eliminating the whole concept of performance as meditation. This, then helps us get to the conclusion that performance and meditation spaces do exist in Abramovic's work in a similar way as to how yin yang exist; side by side, yet successful as a whole.

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Work Cited:

Akers, Matthew, Jeff Dupre, Maro Chermayeff, Marina Abramović, E D. Shepherd, and Nathan Halpern.

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

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Abramovic, Marina. Marina Abramović Institute

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ABRAMOVIC, MARINA. WALK THROUGH WALLS. 1st ed. [S.l.]: PENGUIN BOOKS, 2017. Print.

Baas, Jacquelynn. Buddha Mind In Contemporary Art. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Print.

Westcott, James, and Marina Abramović.

When Marina Abramović Dies

. 1st ed. Cambridge: Mit Press, 2014. Print.