On Marina Abramović And The Radical Notion Of The Third Act

For astir of my childhood, I felt a ticking timepiece wrong me—counting down nan extremity of my creation profession earlier it had moreover begun. My parents, adamant that I spell to assemblage alternatively of pursuing ballet professionally, asked maine what I would do if I sewage injured, aliases burned out, aliases erstwhile I inevitably aged out, pinch nary grade to autumn backmost on. At seventeen, I rolled my eyes. Injury and burnout were big problems, acold from my teen horizon.

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But by my freshman twelvemonth of college, wherever I declared a creation awesome and spent each waking hr successful rehearsal aliases class, I recovered myself some injured and burned out. By twenty, I had switched majors, transferred schools, and discontinue dancing. I’d spent my puerility rehearsing for a profession that ended conscionable arsenic I crested a caller decade.

I still miss performing almost 2 decades later, not for nan applause aliases nan costumes, but for nan measurement it demanded each compartment of my assemblage salary attention. I couldn’t deliberation astir nan past aliases fret complete nan early erstwhile adrenaline was flooding my strategy and a 100 eyes were fixed connected me. It was 1 of nan only times successful my life erstwhile I felt afloat live wrong nan infinitesimal I was in.

In 2010, not agelong aft I had stopped dancing, I saw The Artist is Present astatine nan Museum of Modern Art. Marina Abramović, past 63, sat silently successful nan museum’s atrium for 8 hours a time complete 3 months. Visitors took turns sitting crossed from her, locking eyes. I was successful postgraduate schoolhouse by then, having thrown myself into penning pinch nan aforesaid strength I’d erstwhile reserved for ballet. And yet I walked into MoMA already emotion washed up, already wondering if nan infinitesimal to make creation had passed maine by.

Then I saw Abramović. Young artists performed 5 of her erstwhile pieces successful nan depository too, but her presence, and her caller performance, were acold and distant nan astir breathtaking parts of her retrospective. She wasn’t location reflecting connected a past era aliases celebrating her legacy—she was successful nan heavy of it, performing caller activity pinch a beingness and belief stamina that eclipsed thing I’d felt astatine twenty. I went backmost again and again, dragging friends, my parents, sometimes going alone. I squeezed done nan 2 naked performers forming a quality passageway and sat connected nan crushed until I went numb, conscionable to witnesser her performance. Abramović showed maine that an creation profession doesn’t person to diminish pinch age—in fact, it tin deepen.

In nan 2012 documentary astir nan performance, she says she is successful nan “third act” of her life, which, she believes, is erstwhile things get astir interesting. It was nan first clip I considered that a life successful creation could beryllium thing much than a sprint to a young peak. That maybe, pinch capable discipline, it could beryllium a long, unusual pilgrimage.

Of course, Abramović has spent overmuch of her life testing nan outer limits of discipline. Her notorious 1974 capacity Rhythm 0 invited assemblage members to usage 72 objects connected her body—ranging from a feather to a loaded gun. In that portion and galore others, she sacrificed comfort, control, and information successful work of transformation. And yet she is still here, still performing. That was nan revelation. She hadn’t conscionable survived these extremes—she had continued evolving done them. When I saw her speak recently, she said arsenic a young creator she was death-obsessed, and now she’s life-obsessed.

Now, astatine 78, Abramović is reimagining creator longevity erstwhile more. Her newest endeavor is nan Marina Abramović Longevity Method, a hybrid of capacity art, ritual, and wellness she launched past year. It’s portion discipline, portion belief detox, and portion conceptual score. Participants are encouraged to locomotion backwards pinch a reflector aliases walk hours—literally—opening and closing a door. There are prescribed baths pinch kosher brackish aliases vinegar, and a wide withdrawal from technology. It’s a benignant of monastic retreat successful performance-art drag.

Her website is clunky, peppered pinch typos, yet oddly AI-like successful tone. The newsletter sign-up fastener throws an error, and her £99 “wellness drops” for energy and immunity are a hodgepodge of herbs and, arsenic 1 of my arts penning students pointed retired erstwhile we examined nan ingredients successful class, “basically mostly Everclear.” The tract ever seems to beryllium offering a sale. And yet, despite—or possibly because of—its eccentric presentation, I find myself drawn in.

In a promotional video, Abramović says, successful her heavily-accented English, “The nationalist is only witnessing what I’m going through. They ne'er acquisition really themselves.” With nan Longevity Method, she wants to alteration that. Her exercises, lifted from decades of performance scores, are designed to move mean acts into meditative rituals. Walking backwards pinch a reflector is meant to foster reflection—both literal and metaphorical. Slowly opening and closing a doorway for 3 to 5 hours is meant to toggle shape nan mundane into nan sacred.

The thought is seductive: life, slowed down. Art arsenic process, not product. Presence arsenic a discipline, not an accident.

Unlike accepted wellness regimens, hers isn’t designed to optimize productivity aliases stoke desire; location are nary infrared saunas aliases metabolic hacks. Instead, it draws from monastic practices, martial arts, shamanic tradition. The constituent is not self-improvement, but self-erasure. Time slows, sensory input fades. You get quiet capable to perceive thing else.

For nan liking of penning this, I tried it. I attempted nan doorway workout 1 morning, successful nan little model betwixt school 2 classes and picking up my youngest kid astatine daycare. It’s usually 1 of my only windows to work, uninterrupted. I resolved to unfastened and adjacent a doorway meditatively for an hour. I made it 15 minutes. I meant to agelong it to thirty, but boredom and distraction crept in, arsenic they ever do. I’m a mother of 2 young children pinch a full-time occupation and very small quiet successful my day. The imagination of disappearing into a monastery, aliases into nan woods to locomotion backwards pinch a mirror, remains a fantasy.

I’ve ne'er been bully astatine stillness. Even arsenic a kid successful Catholic school, I’d squirm done nan rosary, hopeless to move. As an adult, I sneak distant to yoga classes, only to find myself crawling retired of my tegument during nan last Shavasana. My assemblage and mind want guardant momentum.

And yet, I respect Abramović’s method. Even erstwhile nan believe feels inaccessible aliases absurd, moreover erstwhile her online storefront sounds for illustration a parody of Goop by measurement of Fluxus, I can’t thief but beryllium moved by her vision. She’s inviting america into thing ancient, not flashy: discipline, silence, attention. These are nan aforesaid devices that gave maine dance, and past writing. The devices that made creation imaginable for maine successful nan first place.

Decades later, I’m still trying to study really to execute differently—how to create without hurting, really to activity pinch clip alternatively of against it. Abramović, successful her ain way, is asking nan aforesaid thing. The Longevity Method is some a situation and an invitation: really do we support going, not by pushing harder, but by staying softer longer?

That blur is what I find myself circling. As personification who trained successful ballet, I cognize what it intends to unrecorded wrong discipline. I understand nan thrill of rules, nan alleviation of limits. I’ve fasted for performances. I’ve existed wrong symptom thresholds. I’ve thought a bully creator was 1 who could disappear. And I’ve been profoundly disoriented erstwhile each that building fell away.

It doesn’t scratch nan aged capacity itch. Nothing does. But possibly that’s not nan point. When I look astatine Abramović’s longevity practice, I realize: nan full point is performance. The website, nan rituals, nan atom and vinegar, are each portion of a larger gesture, a provocation, a question. Can you unrecorded your life for illustration it’s a performance? Can you unrecorded it for illustration it matters?

I couldn’t beryllium for 3 months and look astatine strangers crossed a table. I couldn’t locomotion backwards for hours done a wood aliases accelerated for twenty-one days. But that’s nan domiciled of nan artist, isn’t it? To spell wherever astir of america can’t. To withstand what is excessively difficult, excessively strange, excessively uncomfortable, and successful doing so, to show america thing new.

Still, I support reasoning of her sitting successful nan MoMA atrium, eyes open, still arsenic a mountain. And I deliberation astir really she’s still doing it—not nan aforesaid performance, but nan aforesaid benignant of inquiry. Still asking what beingness costs, inviting america to announcement what’s been present nan full time.

We are, galore of us, surviving longer now. But are we surviving much meaningfully? More creatively? More attentively? Abramović’s work, and her newest evolution, asks america to see what it mightiness mean to property into our art, alternatively than retired of it. Just past month, Abramovic announced a caller performance, her largest show to date, featuring much than 70 performers, entitled Balkan Erotic Epic. The creator head of Factory International, wherever nan show will premiere, described “the adjacent section of [Abramović’s] imaginative life [as] bold, immersive, and connected a standard that’s genuinely unprecedented” successful a property statement.

Longevity is simply a slippery conception successful nan arts. We talk astir “having a agelong career,” but what we usually mean is “staying visible.” What Abramović reminds maine is that existent longevity comes from endurance and transformation, of knowing erstwhile to disappear, and erstwhile to reemerge differently.

There is thing extremist successful nan thought that nan astir absorbing enactment comes last.