Imponderabilia, 1977

    In the performance titled Imponderabilia from 1977, Marina and her collaberator Ulay stand at the entrance of a performance festival. With one of them naked on each side of the doorway the visitors must walk sideways to get through them. Each visitor must decide which one of them to face as they enter the museum. There is no way to get around them thus proclaiming that physical contact is necessary to get into the gallery. Most of the visitors tried to make as little contact as possible and looked either forward or anywhere away from the faces of Ulay and Marina.
    In this performance, Marina tests the limits of space and how far people will go to get where they want to be. She introduces them to an unfamiliar situation to produce feelings of embarrassment in an uncommon setting. It challenges sexuality by making the audience choose who they would rather face as they pass thourgh the doorway. Marina creates new feelings for the viewer that they were not expecting they would have from going to an art gallery.
    I think this performance would have been very surprising to have to encounter without being forwarned. Also I think that some people may have felt discouraged or may have left because it made them feel uncomfortable. This performance reminds me of Valie Export's performance Tap and Touch Cinema. As Exports challenges the audience to go beyond their limits and touch her breasts in the box which may cause them to feel embarrassed or uncomfortable, Imponderabilia may cause these same feelings to occur in the participants or even the bystanders of the performance. It is a very rare performance which may have created an ackward feeling in the environment surrounding it.
   
Image: "Imponderabilia." Who's In Charge?. Web. 23 Nov 2009. .

Bowie, Chas. "Marina Abramovic; Thanks, Just Looking." Portland Mercury 02 March 2006: Web.

Haberer, Lilian. "Imponderabilia, 1977." New Media Encyclopedia. 1st edition. Web. .

Rhythm 0, 1974

     Rhythm 0 from 1974 is one of the many performances that Marina or "the grandmother of performance art" has done during her almost 40 year long career. In this performace Marina challenges the audiences' limits and sets 72 objects in front of her. During the 6 hour performance any member of the audience was allowed to come up and use any object however they wanted on Marina. Some examples of the objects were grapes, lipstick, knives, a loaded pistol, needles, and chains. (Bowie, 1) This became one her most famous performances. "Although they start off timidly, by the end of the performance her clothes have been cut off, and she has been sliced with razors" (Bowie) One member of the audience even held the gun to her head and another had to pull it away to avoid it being used on Marina. At the end she walks toward the audience and they all run away. It was a very dangerous performance and showed people will go to extremes if they are allowed.

     In this work, I think Marina is seeing how far people will actually go when they are given the chance to be in control of another persons body. It gives them a sense of power over another individual and many people took that to their own advantage during this performance. She puts her own life at risk in this work. She also makes a reference to womens freedom in this work by letting go of the control she has on her own body during the 6 hour performance.

     Abramovic's works remind me of those of Paul McCarthy. I think this similarity comes to me because like Marina, Paul also tests the emotional limits of the audience. Also it reminds me of the provacativeness of Tracy Emin's because Marina allows the audience to do as they please including removing her clothing and alot of Tracy's works include nudity. I think that Marina had a lot of courage to take this risk especially since the gun had a bullet in it and she could have been killed.

Image:  "Rhythm 0." Marina Abromovic. Web. 23 Nov 2009. www.duke.edu/web/spring99/images/mabram1.gif.

Bowie, Chas. "Marina Abramovic; Thanks, Just Looking." Portland Mercury 02 March 2006: Web.

The Family III, 2008

       This work is called The Family III, and was made in 2008. In this work 7 young Laosian girls are dressed in camoflauge army gear and holding large war looking guns. They are sleeping with bright blankets that are different shades of pink and also have pink pillows. "They are actually sleeping" (Ebony, 3) because it would have been too hard to get children this young to act as if they were asleep. This work was a part of The Quiet In The Land series in which all the photos were shot in the same setting in or around a house. This particular photo was shot through a whole in the roof of the house. (Ebony, 3)

      Marina is discussing children of warfare in this picture and how it is real and not a joke at all. Several thousand children are forced into army warfare each year and they have no choice. Marina shows real situations in this series and how it is no game for them but instead a reality. She responds to this in ways that other artists have not. By using the pink blanket she creates a sense of innocence, but the guns contrast with that in the fact that they are dangerous and should not be used by children. This could compare to the fact the foreign armies use these children to seem innocent although with weapons they are indeed dangerous.

      This work reminds me of the pictures you see on the news and in the media of soldiers holding small children in the Middle East while they cry and comforting them. It reminds me of how real this situation happens to be and how you could never really understand the heart break it causes unless you yourself were in that situation. Some of these children are too young to understand and others only do it in fear of what would happen if they did not. It truly is a devastating situation and I think Marina represents that well.

Image: "The Family III." ArtNet. Web. 23 Nov 2009. .

Ebony, David. "Marina Abramovic: An Interview." Art In America Magazine 5 May 2009: 1-4. Web. 18 Nov 2009. .