Week 12 – Artist – Abramovic-Althamer

Marina Abramovic is a performance artist that often calls herself "the mother of performance art". Her performance styles bridges the gap between performer and audience as she often performs pieces that would include the audience in some way. She continually pushes her body to its limits by using both outside and internal forces (i.e. medications and fire) which continuously surprise the audience. Paweł Althamer is a contemporary performer/artist that involved sensory deprivation in his performances. One example of this was encasing himself in a plastic bag filled with cold water or using drugs. Both these artists are similar in the sense that they use substances and other objects in their performances, however, these substances were used for different reasons. Abramovic used substances because she continually wanted to see how far she can push her body to give spectacular performances while Althamer used substances in order to paint a picture. His concept wasn't pushing his body to its limits, instead he used substances and other objects to paint a picture of what he wanted to portray. An example of this would be him using drugs in a hypnosis session which ultimately inspired the sculpture, Abram and Burus. I think Abramovic's performances are something that would interest me more, however, her performances are something that is best seen in person rather than on video. I don't think I would be as wowed or interested unless I was able to see it in person which is a possible limit to her art. Althamer's is a lot easier to be able to actually see and experience in person because he turns his performances into physical artwork. However, I think pictures/sculptures don't fully encapsulate how good a performance is, so it's not as fun to look through. Even though we can see his art more easily, I think for me at least, looking at physical art work is kind of something I'd think is cool in a passing thought but not something I would put a lot of thought into. It isn't something that sticks to me as strongly as watching a performance would. Even just watching a video of Abramovic's performance online would probably stick to me more than seeing Althamer's work in person.