last sitting

after spending a (wonderful) night in line
i sat (for the 12th time)
on the last day of The Artist Is Present,
i will be blogging about it on a flower every day soon

no photo allowed

so here's a question,
i am not "really" taking pictures in the atrium
but occasionally i do
i am not posting this on a flower every day because of the "no photo" rule
but here it feels ok...
this is how split i can become in the virtual world
and i am not sure to what extent this also occurs in the physical...

the discipline

the power of the discipline
(not of discipline, of what one has chosen as their discipline)
when one is exhausted
can be astonishing
it's the real hook for me
in abramovic's work

installation in progress

i knew that if i just let it happen
this piece would kind of pull itself together
and i guess if it didn't,
i was comfortable with that as well
seeing marina in white today, without the table
kind of pulled it together for me

installation

i've been pondering an installation component
for a flower every day
and i think you can see where i'm going here
not sure it will work
but it's a solution that presented itself
so ikea to the rescue

present 4 artist

i was planning on drawing something else today
but
i went to visit
and
5 hours later,
the next in line,
the museum closes

i didn't get to present my flowers
so
they came back home with me

skeleton

a quick sketch of the reenactment of nude with skeleton from today's visit
i think is one of the most successful of the live tableaux.
and
i bought some paper to experiment with
:)

the artist is present

after visiting marina's (long awaited) performance today
this is what i have decided will be my response
(and impact my next 2½ months)

and clearly i was wrong:


photo of marina's performance is allowed ,
but not
(of course)
in the exhibition itself

artist almost present

so...
clearly not my studio
but
a space which for me,
by virtue of what it will become over the next 2.5 months,
because of the energy that will resonate here
holds the same sort of intimacy & inspiration
that i associate with the studio
and today
(judging from the no photo signage)
may prove to have been
my only opportunity to have shot it

i do intend to make some sort of work connected to this show
(as i did with the house with the ocean view) 
i have had some ideas
some more extreme than others
but i won't really know
until i go tomorrow


at the opening this evening, not my pic:


Ulay, Marina Abramović’s partner from 1975-1988, sits with her during her performance. This was the first time they “performed” together since The Great Wall Walk (1988), when they each walked over 1,200 miles (2,000 km) along the Great Wall of China starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle to say their goodbye.

The Museum of Modern Art, March 9, 2010, Photo by Scott Rudd

marina abramović

red book dialogue with lee robbins
tonight's discussion focused more around marina's intent in making art
than it did on jungian principles in action

a lot was said about fear and confronting it,
a lot was said about duration and how extended periods of time make a space where things evolve that could not have occurred otherwise,
mindfulness was also mentioned

and these 3 things have particular relevance for me in this moment;
today i left my job
(it wasn't so many hours a week but it seemed to occupy a large space in my life)
so that i can commit fully to the studio
i have talked about having this kind of life for years, decades actually
and in certain moments, i have
but it has now become necessary to confront the fears that have often kept me from committing fully to myself

duration is something that i have always felt important to making the work...
having extended periods of time to enter the process and exhaust it
work to the edge to create the space for something new that can only come when everything else has been completely used up.
ironically, when thinking about planning my life/time going forward
i have been foreseeing structuring time in the studio into manageable chunks,
to allow myself to feel as if i have met a goal, completed something
so that i can say that my work is done for the moment
there is a balance here that needs to be considered

mindfulness to keep from wandering aimlessly and getting too lost in minutiae
mindfulness to constantly re evaluate
as the things i anticipate
manifest in ways i could not have foreseen
a certain fluidity is going to have to develop:
not my strong point

at one point marina talked about art and how she found music to be the highest form because of the purity and directness with which it addressed the human spirit
(my interpretation)
and then she felt performance art came next
because, after all doing what she did was much harder than
for example
going into one's studio with a cup of coffee, turning on the music and painting
i love that
because for me
that very activity
on many days
is the hardest thing
i can imagine doing
and the scariest
but more importantly
the only thing possible