Performance Art

 The performance art movement began to shake up the art world in the 1960’s. Marina Abramovic and Rirkrit Tiravanija works reflect different usages of performance and an interactive viewer experience. The explosion of performance and relational art is examined through different movements within the art world. Artists are always searching for new ways of interacting with their viewer. 

The Serbian born New York based artist, Marina Abramovic refers to herself as “the grandmother of performance art”. In 2010, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Abramovic sat in silence opposite the museum visitors for seven hundred and fifty hours, which is eight to ten hours a day for seventy seven days. Abramovic’s early work in the 1970’s was known for its physical daring. She abused herself through starvation, fire, drugs and self-cutting. Although more subtle than starvation and blood, The Artist is Present was extreme in its physical requirements. 

She says she endured enormous physical pain sitting motionless for hours under the bright klieg lights in the MoMa’s atrium. Abramovic is always pushes herself physically and mentally in pursuit of her art. Her goal in creating The Artist is Present was to create “an emotional connection with anyone who wants to look at me for however long”. 

While no words were exchanged and Abramovic sat with an intense stare she evoked different responses making many viewers question her performance as art.

 Rirkrit Tiravanija, a New York based artist born in Buenos Aires, has cooked Pad Thai in front of an audience. Unlike Marina Abramovic, this work is centered on engaging viewers in a comforting interactive experience. An Untitled (Still 1992) at 303 Gallery in New York City, housed his model kitchen where he would prepare Pad Thai [the go-to order in dish] for an audience. Whenever he was not at the gallery, the exhibit was “the detritus, utensils, and food packets became the art exhibit” (Bishop, 56).  

Tiravanija’s take on the visitors is that “this involvement of the audience is the main focus of his work: the food is but a means to allow a convivial relationship between audience and artist to develop” (Bishop, 56).

The act of cooking Pad Thai in front of people was essential to Tiravanija’s work and insisted that viewers be present to create his relational art. Performance art tries to elicit an emotional reaction by directly engaging the viewers in a physical way.

Sources

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/arts/design/31diva.html

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/03/08/walking-through-walls

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (Bishop)