Today, it is not uncommon to turn on your television and witness some type of grotesque or death-defying stunt being performed. The stuntman has become the front man, and a whole new generation of Evel Knievels and game show contestants are the vaudeville and medicine shows of the 21st century: functioning as popular entertainment, but also capitalizing on shock value and the inherently human humor in bodily functions and inane challenges. But, in a gallery, if Patty Chang inhales and gorges on a mouthful of hot-dog-like substance, what makes that ?performance art?, and what makes a no-name soap-star inhaling ostrich-genitalia popular network television? Box Opera 3, in which the self-described ?Impact Addict? David Leslie matched up against retired professional boxer Gerry Cooney was recommended in arts listings in many New York City publications; but is it more artistic than the rapper formerly known as Vanilla Ice fighting Todd Bridges in the inaugural installment of Fox?s ?Celebrity Boxing?? In the same year that Jackass: The Movie can premiere as the #1 movie in America, NBC?s ?Fear Factor? is a top-rated television show and the magician David Blaine can stand atop a lethally high pole for more than 24 hours (the last hour being nationally televised live from New York City?s Bryant Park), to think that an artist fasting for twelve days in the confines of a gallery space can be an emotional experience or spiritual exchange for the audience is sadly much more than surprising.

The utterly theatricality of the popular culture of the West in the past couple of years has been a rather marketable display. Thirty, even twenty years ago, publicized displays of bodily performance and death defiance were relegated to the arenas of circus and performance art; however, the question lingers: how does one really affect a viewer by testing their own bodily limits?

The late 60?s and early 7o?s were an inventive and experimental period in the history of performance art. Drawing from a long and storied history of performance as artistic expression in the avant-garde as well as and stemming from a larger conceptual trend and sensibility in the art world at the time, there was a rawness, an earnestness, spirituality and humor in performance as art then than is rarely seen today. To name just a few examples: Southern California artist Chris Burden had a friend shoot him in the arm (although the bullet was intended to only merely graze his skin); the poet and video artist Vito Acconci masturbated underneath a wooden ramp on the floor in the Sonnabend Gallery; in France, the artist Gina Pane climbed a ladder that had butcher?s knives as rungs, and Stuart Brisley remained in a bathtub full of water for ten days with only his mouth and nostril above the water. Through performance, an artist could comment on what being an artist is; comment on the notion of the ?suffering artist?, test the limits of acceptability and accessibility, as well as the limits of their own bodies. Within the conceptual realm of performance art there was a sense of honesty and a lack of clich? that is hard to find in the art world of the new 21st century.

Of the performance artists who came to notoriety in the seventies, the only one still consistently working in the same vein of durational and ?body? performance is Marina Abramovic, whose most recent work, ?The House with the Ocean View? was recently featured at the Sean Kelly gallery in New York City. The centerpiece of the exhibition was deemed a ?public living installation?, also titled ?The House with the Ocean View?, in which the artist fasted for twelve days, silent, without speaking. Designed as an experiment in self-discipline and the exchange of energies between bodies of people, the artist lived for the twelve-day period of the fast on three connected, elevated platforms on a wall on the far end of the gallery, six feet above street level. She had access to running water, a toilet and a rather uncomfortable bed. There was also no food, no juice, and no speaking; three showers per day were permitted and required, as was seven hours of sleep. A metronome recorded each passing second, audibly recognizing the pulse of the passing time. The viewers were asked to remain silent and behind a marked point, turn off all cell phones and be prepared to witness possibly uncomfortable actions (i.e. the artist showering, using the toilet, making eye contact, etc.); yet they were also invited to share their individual energy with the artist, and a telescope was provided to peer through, bringing the eye of the viewer close enough to see the pores of Ms. Abramovic?s skin.

Testing her spiritual and bodily strengths and limitations is nothing new to Marina Abramovic, who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1946, to a family of strongly artistic, political and spiritual inclinations. In her early performance works, on the university level, she seemed determined to challenge the levels of comfort that her audience had as being an audience. Throughout a number of performances that were deemed highly political by her peers and critics at the time, she cut a communist scar on her stomach, sat in a star full of flames and laid herself down with her back on a block of ice with heat fans blaring from above. In 1973, in Milan, she stood naked in a gallery where she had provided a table full of objects, their uses being designed primarily for the functions of pleasure and pain: razors, feathers, even a gun. The guests were invited to use them towards the artist however they wished.

At the age of 29 she left Yugoslavia for good and went to Amsterdam, where she remained a resident for many years. She began working artistically, as well as having a relationship, with a German artist who referred to himself simply as Ulay. The challenges and ideas of duration, testing limits of their bodies and exploring their exchanges of energies was an ongoing experiment. In a breathing piece, they recorded how long they could exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen to one another through connected mouths without suffocating or simply passing out. In another piece, entitled ?Nightsea Crossing?, they sat across a table from each other, motionless, unfed and silent for seven-hour periods. In 1989, they walked the course of the Great Wall of China, one beginning from the east, and the other from the west, where they met in the middle and parted ways permanently.

Since splitting with Ulay, her works seemingly became more personal, but the exchange of energies was actually now between Ms. Abramovic and her audience and materials, rather than with herself and her longtime collaborator. In 1997, Ms. Abramovic won the prestigious and revered Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale for a piece entitled ?Balkan Baroque?, where she co-habituated a space with large heaps and piles of meaty, bloody cow bones that she had scrubbed in not only a ritual action, but also in a terribly and passionately determined fashion. To the rotating audience, the smell and the gore were inescapable, and it was difficult to not make a connection between the content of the performance and the state of current affairs in Ms Abramovic?s native country. In interviews leading up to her most recent performance in New York, she was reported as envisioning ?The House With the Ocean View? as a ?gift to the city? ? reflecting peace and anguish, difficulty and contemplation, hunger and routine, human suffering and the possibility of death. However, she insists this ?gift? is not about politics ? it is about ritual, discipline, and purification. Although she acknowledges how a political context can be seen in a great deal of her work, she considers her performance more about the transference of energy between the viewer and herself than anything purely political. After having lived with the Aborigines for a year in Australia, and spending one month annually living in a Tibetan monastery over the course of a number of years, Ms. Abramovic sees herself as a ?bridge between the East and West?, and critics have commented frequently on the fact that the power of her work lies in her combining of the spiritual discipline of Eastern traditions with a sense of truly Western theatricality.


By the time the performance aspect of ?The House With the Ocean View? ended twelve days after the exhibition opened, Ms. Abramovic had reportedly lost twenty-one pounds.
The performance had attracted a large number of viewers, some estimates exceeding two thousand visitors. They had left notes, cards, gifts, remnants of the world outside and even their own works of art. They also brought life into the space, with nourished thoughts and energy, and vulnerable emotion and witness.

While cautiously avoiding the definition of art, what makes this performance important are its demands: demands on the artist, and demands on the audience. What makes this piece successful as an artistic expression is the requirement of audience participation. The participation required of the audience in this particular piece of Ms. Abramovic?s work is seemingly passive. However, after the performance, she remarked on what exactly the audience had contributed to the duration of the piece: ?I was like a mirror. If they were spiritual, they looked up and prayed. If they were aggressive, I could feel it sharp, like a knife. Their sadness, their energy, their emotions came in waves?New Yorkers are used to keeping closed up when they?re in public, not making eye contact. But I think when they saw me so vulnerable, so open, the response was like an avalanche of emotion or an ocean. That was the title of the piece, ?The House With the Ocean View,? and the ocean was their minds. They helped me through.?

Death-defying? Yes. A spectacle? Perhaps. But in keeping with the ideals and aspirations of her artistic peers decades ago, Ms. Abramovic?s pushing of her own natural limits for the sake of an artistic exchange was not meant to be merely viewed and consumed; rather, it was about instigitating an interaction between the artist and the viewer that is rarely seen today, and consequently sparking discussions of morality, humanity, physicality, social behavior, perhaps politics ? and, most importantly, art itself.




Photographic documented courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery.

Post-performance quotes by the artist appeared in the November 28, 2002, edition of The New York Times, in ?Reflecting on an Ordeal That Was Also Art? by Steven Henry Madoff.