Miranda Whall

The Artist is Present

Donated by Trevor Sewell

Reference – https://vimeo.com/72711715

Serbian/American performance artist Marina Abramovic sat in a chair opposite another chair, sometimes separated by a table, wearing a white, red or black dress for 736-hours and 30-minutes, static, silent and immobile in MOMA, New York during May 2010. Thousands of people queued and slept outside the gallery to have the opportunity to sit in the chair opposite her; to be with her, to be stared at by her, to be part of the art work, to have human contact, to be photographed and filmed, to sit, to engage, to take a piece of her etc. this piece of work became what it was and is largely due to her reputation as the ‘Godmother of performance art’, but it was a mind blowing endeavour, a great feat of physical stamina and now a seminal piece of endurance performance art. She said ‘there was nowhere to go but into yourself…and people are afraid to go into themselves’..”I wanted to give them that opportunity..but that is why they cried”. This is such a true, sad and strange condition of contemporary society, as a meditator and regular yoga practitioner I have become pretty comfortable with myself, its taken time and practice, there was a time when I felt my “life was for rent” and “I needed to move in” in the words of Dido! I only sat with my plants for an hour or so for this project and my body began to struggle so I am in awe of Abramovic, in this photograph she is sitting with Tehching Hseih in my opinion, and hers, the ‘God Father of performance art’.

Through making this response I have started to think about, and get interested in, the idea of ‘staring’ as an art practice, as a parallel to my ‘crawling’ practice. By staring at things, things are recognised, things are given status, value, significance, their story can be told..I am interested in an ecological, environmental form of staring, staring as protest and as awareness raising..

It was very special ‘being present’ with my plants and seedlings, I think we bonded, I know them better now, they have characters, I didn’t know that, I do now, I think they liked it too, I think they recognised me!?

Filmed and photographed by Ashley Calvert

I’m Looking at You – film – 4 minutes 17 seconds