Two weeks ago my girlfriend and I traveled down to New York for the first time in a few months and ventured over to the MOMA for the performance show that is going on now. A few artists that are included in this exhibition are William Kentridge, Yin Xiuzhen, and Marina Abramović. The exhibition was great, but I am going to focus specifically on what excited me the most, Marina Abramović’s: The Artist is Present.

I will begin by attempting to explain what is going on in this exhibition with a bad cell phone picture I took as shown below.

On the second floor of the MOMA there is always something large and new media-esque going on. Abramović took that space and put a large square of white tape on the floor (which I will now refer to as the stage), with a plain table and two chairs, one on each side of the table, on the stage. On one side of the table, Abramović sits still wearing heavy make-up and a plain blue dress resembling a sort of living sculpture, much like a street performer pretending to be the Statue of Liberty. A line of people await entering through a two foot break in the tape on the side she is facing. One at a time, a person is allowed to enter the space and sit on the opposite side of the table for as long as they would like. There are video cameras on three sides of the stage at all times as well as two photographers documenting each person. Abramović does not move the entire day to eat or go to the bathroom and is there everyday from open to close for the next three months. There are also a bunch of lines on the wall with the month written over each group of lines where she scratches a new line indicating being present everyday.

I know this is strange to follow so the scene plays out as such. Someone walks into the stage and sits at the table with Abramović. They stare at each other until the person sitting across from Abramović stands up and steps out of the box, at which time another person enters and the whole sequence repeats. While this is going on there are a constant flow of hundreds of people standing around, trying to figure out the rules of the piece. Directly outside of the stage area there are 4 giant HMIs (movie lights) that keep a constant stream of diffused daylight on the stage.

There are so many reasons why I love this piece that it is hard for me to figure out where to start. At it’s most basic level, it is entertaining several ideas within art’s history. There is the question of what is the definition a sculpture actually is? Can it move, fluctuate, change? It also plays with the idea of the gaze on many levels. The artist watching us, the artist watching the person across the table, the person at the table watching the artist, everyone outside the stage looking in on the stage, and finally the video and still cameras watching everything. All of these layers have a specific role in this piece and are aimed to make the viewer feel both intrigued and off put at the same time. The act of figuring out what is going on and exploring the space is also an extremely immersive. Finally, the role of theater (especially using the terminology “stage”) and time comes into play. Much like artist David Claerbout or Yin Xiuzhen, you never get to see the whole piece start to finish, but yet we can move on from the piece knowing (or believing) that it continues to be in operation everyday.

The amount of things that are interesting about The Artist is Present to me is staggering. It is hits the head on almost every aspect of art that I am interested in at this moment. It plays with time, art, kitch, history, new media, and interaction in the same instant. I highly recommend going to see this show if only for this one piece.