I’ve never been fond of gatekeepers. Airport immigration officers. Bank loan managers. The great artist Marina Abramovic is certainly a gatekeeper of the performance art world. But, like everyone else attending the media launch on Tuesday of the iconic performance artist’s new residency event at Sydney’s Walsh Bay, I could not resist her charisma.
The artist is present
She is tall and regal and speaks with a strong accent.
Her dark hair is parted down the middle and plaited to one side. She floats across the uneven pier boards, in a long flowing coat. She clutches the hand of novelist David Malouf, who is a regular attendee of art patron John Kaldor’s exclusive art events.
Just as easily, Abramovic clutches the hand of an art writer or an “experience facilitator” (I promise I will explain).
In other words, she seems to enjoy engaging with the general public. The question remains as to whether this kind of re-performance artwork is a sincere act or an act of guileful opportunism or even an illegitimate encounter.
First, what is Kaldor Project 30’s Marina Abramovic: In Residence? Well, if you don’t like holding hands with strangers and if you are embarrassed by audience participation and if you find cult figures a bit creepy, you might not enjoy the event.
![](https://images.theconversation.com/files/86190/original/image-20150624-20075-nlypws.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip)
Abramovic has chosen 12 highly talented Australian artists to live in the upstairs space of Pier 2/3 Walsh Bay to participate in intensive workshops with the great artist. Meanwhile, more than 40 facilitators (black-clad artists and students) lead the general public, all wearing mandatory headphones to muffle out sounds, around a series of participatory performances on the ground floor.
The media delegates were denied possession of phones and bags, and led by the hand of a calm facilitator to conduct their new buzzword: “live experience performativity”.
This comprised slow motion walking. Here the participants were encouraged to walk from one end of the pier to the other, astronaut-style. What seemed like an interminable distance was soon altered. The muted squawks of the seagulls, the shafts of sunlight cast through the old sea-hardy wooden walls and the gentle rhythm of others moving at snail speed became a calming experience.
There was the sorting room where the art-writing humans sat at desks and sorted rice from lentils and kept a score sheet. Repetitive tasks can be relaxing; I get the same bliss-bomb cheek-flush from colouring-in with my daughter.
![](https://images.theconversation.com/files/86192/original/image-20150624-20053-1cerfpt.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip)
Then there was the main stage, a low-rise platform in the shape of a cross, where audience members were encouraged to climb up and stand with eyes shut. Abramovic said, “The platform is energetic”.
There were the colour charts: chairs facing swatches in red, yellow and blue. The effect of colour on mood might have a transforming effect but I was much too busy performing the best experience of all: the staring contest, aka The Artist is Present, which was her exhibition at MOMA in 2010.
The progress of an artist
On Tuesday Abramovic made the following unexpectedly humorous observation:
People keep saying, “Oh Marina, what happened to the good old days when you used to cut yourself?” Well, I say it’s easy to cut yourself. You cut, you heal. This endurance work, sitting opposite people for three months, now this really is hell.
![](https://images.theconversation.com/files/86193/original/image-20150624-20067-6hfyus.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip)
Abramovic is right. The durational, seated eye-contact engagement really is hell. But it’s also revealing and emotional.
I was led to a seat opposite another art writer where we sat together for more than 30 minutes, eyes locked.
My thoughts ranged from her excellent cheekbones, to her habit of widening her eyes. I thought of her mother and then my mother and my mothering and the ancestry of eyes. I thought of stories and tattoos, of writing tales inscribed in the earth and on the skin. I thought of the rumble of trains and the heat in bellies, of love and sensuality, of strange lives to witness, of pain and sorrow and madness, of energetic atmospheres.
I was entranced by the experience of a slowed heartbeat and fewer breaths. I barely needed any breath. Abramovic is right.
Abramovic explained these exercises or methods are intended as tools. They are meant to transform participant experience. She said:
Long durational work is the key to experience. Our lives are so fast. Art must slow us down. These exercises are based on repetition. Something small, a ritual, eventually becomes a universe.
A sceptic by nature, but with a secret penchant for superstition and a love for stories, I came away from the event as a convert. The facilitators looked like cult-members in their black garb and slow steps. But, hallelujah, I believe.
What do I believe? I believe there are great community experiences to be shared with others in contemporary art. Art is alive and energetic and performative in Sydney. We all need to be reminded – especially Monsieur Brandis – of the value of live experience performativity and the worth of experimental social-wellbeing events that teach us there are other stories to tell and new aesthetic experiences to be had.
Before the media conference ended, Abramovic said, “Art is a service to society”.
Marina Abramovic’s residency with Kaldor Public Art Projects runs until July 5. Details here.