Extract:
The left corner of her mouth is stuck in a moment of limbo between a macabre smile and absolute disgust. Both emotions suspended in formaldehyde creating an unknown stillness and tranquillity that even she can’t decipher. The remnants of a sharp intake of breath that calmly escaped with not even her neighbour noticing. A shadow builds underneath her lower lip as it slowly protrudes to begin to form a word. The round letters filling her mouth but yet to transpire. Focused yet blurring. A flurry of formaldehyde creating unformed thoughts, half sharp intake spent reactions, brand new neighbour noticing emotions yet a shadow builds stuck stationary. A flurry of unformed thoughts, half spent reactions, brand new emotions yet stuck. Stationary. Focused yet blurring. Transfixed in this state of something but nothing. An intangible moment. An intangible moment. An intangible moment fired by an excess of human emotion that even she can’t decipher. Transfixed in this state of something but nothing. An intangible moment fired by an excess of human emotion. ‘And so I fell in love with a colour— in this case, the colour blue— as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.’ – Maggie Nelson And so I fell in love with an energy transfer – in this case, a work of art – as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under. All in the space of just a two second inbreath. 0.00 seconds – The Punctum- ‘As Barthes says, it is that which pricks me, but also bruises me and is poignant for me.’ 0.05 seconds – In that moment the obsession is born, the fixation begins. It is as if I am hurt, stuck in the headlights, awaiting my fate. I have chosen to remain but I don’t quite know why. But yet still I remain. They remain. We remain. 0.10 seconds - The punctum is the tiny detail that I zoom in on. Disrupting. The smooth surface of the performance. The soft aura that hangs in the air that feels so live for me in that moment. Felt so differently by others around me, but acknowledged by all in the room. In whichever way they see fit. My punctum is my impending obsession with the space in-between, the cause and effect and the way that the temperature of the entire room can feel as if it has changed. An ephemeral feeling that will always be mine to house within my body. My own Archive. An energy, that I have gained. 0.15 seconds – ‘Marina Abramović’s work is characterised by her unflinching ability to face and encounter elemental dynamics of human existence.’ 3 She is unashamedly human during her performances and tests the limits of our face to face connections. What are the limits and in that the extent of a relationship that can be made in a gallery space…even between strangers? What emotions can be surfaced? What sensations do we remember? 0.20 seconds – ‘The punctum also works retrospectively. It is not something that can be staged or placed in the photograph, but rather is the detail we recall’ 4 once we are no longer within or with the artwork and we then think back upon it. Deciphering the ephemerality. 0.25 seconds – When thinking about desire and a need to keep watching it is academically desirable to think about Lancan’s objet petit a. For it is the space. The moment. The unavoidable. The unexplained. The lack. The void that is momentarily filled. ‘It is not the object itself but the function of masking the lack.’5 0.30 seconds – ‘But what goes on in you when you talk about colour as if it were a cure, when you have not yet stated your disease.’ Maggie Nelson 0.35 seconds – When entering the gallery space are we waiting to be cured of something that we do not yet understand? Is the action of looking and experiencing art to fill the lack that we desire? To tempt and satisfy? Is the disease we hold just the innate emotions of being human? Yearning for experience, gratification, energy and attention. 0.40 seconds – One of my favourite places in London is the Rothko room at the Tate Modern. I stand in front of the vast expanse of colour - looming over me. Transcending the space with depth and darkness. Yet there is something romantic about the red based tones and I feel comforted. In retrospect I ponder on whether I am going there to be cured of something? If I feel comforted when shrouded in Rothko then there must have been something missing before. I had to be uncomfortable in some way to then find a comfort. I choose to go to a space that doesn’t change. A permanent fixture that I can predict but nonetheless be taken on a different live excursion each time. The void is momentarily filled and Objet petit a is found. My desire. 0.45 seconds – An abstract romanticism. 0.50 seconds – ‘But to me the future of performance is really when the object is removed between the viewer and the performer, so there’s just a direct transmission of energy.’ 6– Marina Abramović 0.55 seconds - ‘Look, what I’m trying to do with my works of art is… you’ve got sadness in you, I’ve got sadness in me, and my works of art are places where the two sadnesses can meet and therefore both of us need to feel less sad.’7 Mark Rothko speaking to Time magazine. 0.60 seconds – Abramović’s removal of the object is arguably the finding of Lancan’s objet petit a. In her ability to remove the excess and create an energy transfer between performer and viewer she has formed a lack. A lack in what we traditionally physically believe as art. And in this lack she has illuminated the objet petit a that the audience didn’t even know they were looking to feel. 0.65 seconds – Abramović’s performance The House with the Ocean View 2002, does not exist without a public. The premise of the performance is that she is watching the public and they are watching her. It is as simple as watching. Performed in New York for twelve days, the stairs that allowed her to leave were made of knives, meaning that she was confined to that space. The public could freely move yet they chose to not leave, emulating Abramović’s situation. ‘Suddenly they wouldn’t go away. People started coming in, spending one hour, three hours, coming in over and over again; there were people who looked in every single day, or before work, almost addicted to the gaze.’8 (Abramović p.146) Could they be addicted to the isolation that Abramović is experiencing, as they embody that feeling too? Like Rothko describes his work above, could this meeting of two isolated people create a lesser isolation for both? There is now a connection and a gaze formed within the space that was previously unconnected. A new relationship that counters isolation. 0.70 seconds – An addiction to gaze 0.75 seconds – An addiction to gaze 0.80 seconds – No longer Isolated 0.85 seconds – But what is it about live performance that creates this energy field of desire that results in an innate need to keep watching, to find out what happens next, to remain engaged, dedicated, submerged, consumed, obsessed, immersed, devoted, betrothed, engrossed, captivated, absorbed, addicted, 0.90 seconds – Walter Benjamin referred to an artworks presence in time and space as its aura.9 Questioning whether reproductions can hold this existence in its new manifestation. Could the aura of the art work, the punctum, objet petit a and energy transfer all be the factors that build a magnetic force of obsession; forming a constellation and framework of attention. Benjamin argues the weakened possibilities of this within reproduction and that therefore the liveness of experience provides us with a need to not look away. Our physical presence being the breaks that do not let us turn the page of the book, continue to scroll, open another webpage and give in to a distraction or tangent thought. 0.95 seconds – Must we be there to be obsessed?