The Artist is Indeed Present.
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The Artist is Indeed Present
I'm the first to say that I find some of Marina Abramovic's work to be ... well, not something I want to watch. However, her installation titled "The Artist is Present" is an exception for me. I've watched this video over and over: Ulay, Ulay-oh
Each time, cathartic tears fall because I had a soul level love too and we parted ways at the middle of our own wall of China. I found it interesting to read the broad range of reactions and the sarcasm in so many of the comments on youtube. It may be easier to joke or make rude remarks when faced with a deep soul moment than to be fully present and let it inside the heart. I don't care if she knew he was going to be at the show or not. I don't care if he cheated on her before. I don't care about anything but those moments on the video ... years of relationship washed over their faces and in the electrified air between them.
Each person sees something different, I suppose, but I saw a woman who sat, immobile and unflinching, as she let her past flame up into her heart. I saw a man who knew that if he looked too intently at those flames, she would burn him alive. She was a fire there; a fire of ... passion, devotion, conviction, strength, vulnerability. He was a gentle and constantly moving bundle of feeling, utterly unable to completely match her gaze ... who will step willingly into fire? I loved her immediately but I loved him then, at the moment his eyes dropped from hers and then back again. I understood why she loved him. I loved them both, for sharing this intimate moment. To those who say "why is this art?" I say "It moves people to feel."
I go back to this video every once in a while. Each time, I keep seeing something I didn't see the times before. One of those many times, watching once again, I saw what has appeared to be a fundamental difference in my own life between the masculine and feminine approach to endings. While she drags her hands slowly away from his and they linger still on the table, he rapidly, and with one smooth movement, removes his own hands and is almost simultaneously walking away. It strikes my senses like an actual blow, as if their scene at the Wall of China has repeated over a decade later.
In my own experience, it has often felt as if men did not feel very deeply. They often seemed able to move on quickly. However, it is not true that men are always callous or that endings are easier for them. In some cases, perhaps more than are obvious, the move away is quick because they simply cannot bear the linger.
The meeting in this video is an example of presence and being in the moment. Awareness ... of all levels of a soul-level relationship. I am witness and, in some small way, asked to bring my own presence to the moment. Maybe that, too, is a facet of what it means to create art ... invitation to share presence, one with another.?
