[-empyre-] seeing yourself as a mountain - the limits of prototype performance

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all:

hmmm, the weekend has seen a continuing discussion of prototyping definitions .... (Julian arguing that : >>In our case, on this list, we're prototyping definitions of prototyping.>>

and I feel Gabriel made a valid point:

>>I believe that thinking through prototyping was a way of getting away
the regular open source ('vs free software') discussion, focusing less
on structure and ideologies than towards material practices (and their
localization to one another). It's interesting to see this
(repressed?) 'rise of open source discontentment' >>

I would just like to come back, for those interested in the relations of prototyping to performance and re-performance, to the current location of Marina Abramovic's retrospective "The Artist is Present" at MoMa (New York City), and her table  séance (where she sits still be to like a mountain) which is scheduled to be a durational act (lasting for 3 months, i.e. the entire duration of the exhibition which is on the 6th Floor).

The table is placed in the large Atrium, which  – Abramovic claims – is a noisy and bustling place, an unlikely spot for meditative performance practice. She will remain silent for the duration  "The atrium is such a restless place, full of people passing through. The acoustics are terrible – it's too big, too noisy. It's like a tornado. I try to play the stillness in the middle."  (from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/19/art-marina-abramovic-moma)

Wanting to be a "mountain" of silence and inviting the audiences to participate  – this is the fascinating concept of the piece, and it appears to be modeled after an earlier prototype, "Nightsea Crossing" (from the 1980s, with her then-partner Ulay), in which the artist performed sitting at opposite end of the table,  locked in eye contact with the partner and without moving/speaking, 

To some extent, this strains the notion of participation, and i also am intrigued now to see critics of live art use the phrase "prototype" for the first time, I believe, as such thinking (from design) was not generally associated with ephemeral live art and the "aura" of uniqueness (one time only) and contingency it appeared to strive for, inflected also by John Cage' Zen buddhism and affection for indeterminacy (4:33"). 

The re-performance under the spectatorship of MoMa crowds (seen in the photo chatting with each other and probably gasping – on opening night – at the celebrities sitting down across from the diva) is apparently now dealing with  - Adrian has suggested the phrase:  <<a paying model to serve [the] craving for the charismatica.>>

(The Guardian critic is also her biographer:  James Westcott, When Marina Abramovic Dies: A Biography (MIT Press, 2010), and he can't make up his mind whether to call her diva or performance art goddess).

The charismatics involved here are mindboggling,  as is the way the "art world" plays into this charade.  Westcott seems to think the Museum however created a flop with having young art students reperform Abramovic's/Ulay's early pieces, such as the 1977 "Imponderabilia": 
"But there's a bigger problem than Moma's institutional prudishness: these re-performances cannot invoke the conditions – the audacity, trauma and charisma – of the original pieces. Abramovic's work is inseparable from her and Ulay's history and magnetism. The pieces seen here seem to sap the originals of their unpredictability and strangeness."


This reference to original conditions ("aura"?) or the conditional origins of a performance act -- I wonder whether this would at all make sense in the context of interactive installations or bio-art prototype (for rapid prototyping and tissue printing?) or the purported participatoriness of participatory design  - and now i await to hear of fairy tales as open source.

regards
Johannes Birringer 


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