Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present <em, 2010. Image courtesy of MoMa.

I’m going to transition from talking about crafting the past into discussing an artist whose work relies completely on the present moment. Last week, for the second week in a row, I found myself at a talk at SCAD Atlanta, this time given by one of the most influential artists of our time, Marina Abramović. Born in Yugoslavia, she was instrumental in helping raise the prominence of performance art, an often ill-understood medium of artistic expression. Her work tends to focus on body endurance and harnessing extreme self-awareness, all the while engaging the viewers in her presence during her performances. Her philosophy holds that art must “lift the human spirit,” but it also “has to be disturbing” in a way to actually resonate with an audience. Performance art depends heavily on how the artist interacts with live, physical space—it is most definitely ephemeral work.

Rest Energy, 1980.

Abramović devoted her lecture to discussing the work of numerous other performance artists, which was definitely a learning experience for me; however, I had hoped to hear more about her own work. Among the many videos and images she shared of other artists, she did include a few of her own pieces. In the mid 1970s, Abramović began working with a German artist singularly name Ulay. She shared a few of their performances at the talk, one of which was Rest Energy (1980), in which the two artists balanced themselves by holding a loaded bow and arrow. She described it as being the most tense four minutes of her life as she had no choice but to rely on absolute trust and innate mutual awareness with her partner.

Great Wall Walk, 1988.

While Rest Energy was a short performance, much of Abramović’s work involves extremely long durations of time. Another performance she shared was Great Wall Walk (1988). In this piece, she and Ulay marked the end of their relationship by starting at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and each walking more than 1,200 miles to meet in the middle.

The Artist Is Present, 2010. Image courtesy of Life

Abramović’s most recent notable performance was held over the course of several months at MoMa in New York as part of a major retrospective of her work. In The Artist Is Present, she spent every day, all day, quietly sitting in a chair. Across from her sat another chair, an open invitation to anybody visiting the museum to join her. This play on the “staring game” we’ve all played at some time or another created powerful experiences for the individuals joining her, as they became the viewed in a setting in which they are normally the viewer.

What really struck me was what Abramović said at the beginning of her talk. She asserted that there really isn’t a past or a future, that is always the present. We might remember the past and look forward to the future, but all we can do is experience the present.

For more about Marina Abramović, go to her feature page on the MoMA site, and visit Artsy’s comprehensive page on her work.