A Minute’s Silence - The Artist is Now Present

In 2010, from 14th March to 30th May 2010, Marina Abramović, a Serbian artist from Belgrade, sat in a chair, for 6 days a week in ‘The Artist is Now Present’, a performance installation at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. A short video highlighting Abramović’s opening day’s performance, available on You Tube, includes a segment when a former partner, in both love and performance, unexpectedly arrives to take part in the interactive installation. Abramović, wearing a long red dress and hair in a braided plait, sat patiently whilst waiting for each participating spectator to arrive and then, intently, gazing into their eyes whilst she gave them a minute of her time. Each visitor, to the guest chair, contributing to the performance with a variation of facial responses. Two chairs, equidistant on either side of a table, allowed for movement and performers to come and go without disrupting the layout or silence of the performance. The atrium, brightly lit, the audience continually moving, with the mood and tone coming from the gaze between the performing duo of the moment. Ulay, real name Frank Uwe Laysiepen, arrived in casual dark attire, a flash of red on the collar of his jacket, glasses perched on top of his grey hair and baseball boots on his feet. When Abramović opened her eyes there was instant recognition. The joy swelled in both performers’ eyes before the former union, between them, seemed to unfold in their eyes and facial expressions. Tears of joy, tears of sadness, either or both, as the two engaged in a conversation beyond words. When Abramović broke the protocol of the performance and reached out her hands to Ulay, it caused a flurry of excitement amongst the photographers, but a fair-haired spectator had already taken a picture, and shed a tear, the moment Abramović opened her eyes. The words Abramović and Ulay shared as they clasped each other’s hands were not heard. The music accompanying the You Tube video “How I became the Bomb - Ulay, Oh", was not part of the performance, but increased the intensity of the ebb and flow of mixed and intense emotions captured, on film, in the participants’ eyes. A minute’s silence, no need for words, just a moment to get lost in yourself, with another, or in the memories of the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEcqoqvlxPY