This should be the first post of three or four inspired by a visit to
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.
Marina & Me
In May of 1978 the Brooklyn Museum and Sharon Avery of Redbird Gallery organized a European Performance Series. This
notice in the Village Voice is very likely the way I heard about it.
I met Sharon Avery there, who was lovely to me and very carefully matched me up with her assistant for the summer - hi, Laurie. I also met
Barbara Heinisch, whom I came to think of as a friend and was happy to see when she came to NY in years after to perform her process paintings, incorporating the picture plane with improvisatory movement.
And it was there that I first learned about the endurance artwork of Marina Abramovic. She and her partner Ulay performed Charged Particles. They faced each other holding hands and spun around their common center for as long as they could. When they broke apart they continued spinning separately until they couldn’t spin (or walk, or stand) any more. I think this took just under an hour.
From childhood play, I knew what spinning for a short time felt like. I didn’t mind the vertigo at first, but time or age or experience changed things and I came to hate the feeling of the world seemingly spinning after you had stopped. (Or perhaps I had tried it again when Laura Dean’s spinning was a topic in my circle.)
Knowing that these people were experiencing a particular familiar disruption, even if self-inflicted, was distressing. Simultaneously I admired their dedication. They had set a task and determined to finish it - if performing a task until you are no longer capable of performing it can be called a finishing. I felt protective of them when they broke apart and stumbled around - they were ready to come to harm but emotionally and intellectually there was no reason not to hope to prevent that.
It was the opposite of a stock-car race - my secret hope was for them to be safe, not to be in peril.
After that performance, I took note when I came across stories about Marina or the two of them. I became a little invested in their lives. To travel constantly, without assurances, to live physically and spiritually by art, to be unselfconscious and beautiful and alert - this seemed like the most wonderful possible life that you - or I - could have.
(I see now, later) I wanted to be Martina Abramovic and to fuck her. The fucking was no surprise, she was my ideal type - dark and Slavic, slim, fearless, intense, seemingly outside convention. The being-her was something I don’t think I’ve experienced with any other crush, personal or distant. It certainly makes sense - I wanted to be dark and Slavic, slim, fearless, intense, outside convention. To be so as either Marina Abramovic or the partner of Marina Abramovic seemed equally attractive.
I had no particular feelings about Ulay - I think for me it was always about being Marina or her consort. When I read about the performance they were planning to mark their separation, I remember I actually gasped - it was my own Performance Art
People magazine moment.
I think I only saw Laurie once after she graduated from law school, an occasion which ended up in one of my stories. Barbara Heinisch I haven’t seen for many years. I Google her from time to time and I’m happy to see that she’s continued her work with a degree of public and critical appreciation - and she looks astonishingly much like she did thirty years ago. I was afraid to look up Sharon Avery because I had a baseless presentiment she was dead, but she is very much not, and continues to run a foundation dedicated to the art and memory of her husband,
Oyvind Fahlstrom.
Hello Laurie, Barbara and Sharon. Hello Oyvind. Hello Marina.
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