Honors Thesis Proposal

The Intersectionality of Mindfulness and the Art of Marina Abramović

Alex Chace

Bryant University

Dr. Julie Volkman, Faculty Advisor

Dr. Marie Saddlemire, Editorial Reviewer

May 2020
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Marina Abramović is a Yugoslavian born artist who uses different art forms to express

her art. Abramović’s main artform is performance, also making transitory objects, photographs,

video instillations, and film. The purpose of this creative project is to conduct a cross-content

analysis on the intersectionality of mindfulness and the art of Marina Abramović. The scope of

this study will also focus on but is not limited to Abramović’s life experience, journey through

transcending consciousness in connection to performance and spiritual understanding, rapport

with death, and relationship with the Communist Party specifically in the Balkan region. In her

memoir Walk Through Walls, the artist details her encounters with Tibetan Buddhism,

Aboriginals in the Great Victoria Desert, and other schools of thought. It is critical to outline the

life of Abramović in relation to her artwork, particularly performance, as she describes,

“Performance is an immaterial form of art and is time-based. I always work from my experience.

This experience [performance] is about me experiencing them. And then I try to translate the

ideas into the work. And then I try to find the key that this experience becomes transcendental so

that everybody can find themselves in the work and become universal” (SHOWstudio).

Viewing Abramović’s work with an awareness of its intersectionality of mindfulness is

what makes it universal to the artist’s audience. This topic is relevant and important to

researchers in the discipline of health communication because of what studies have shown in

cognitive neuroscience. According to Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the

UCLA School of Medicine and executive director of the Mindsight Institute, “The brain

continues to grow throughout the Lifespan. When one has a certain kind of focus and attention

that mindfulness provides, it changes the brain in permanent ways. This allows one to have a

mind, in part related to the brain, capable of spaciousness, presence, and awareness. The idea is

that a person is feeling from the inside. The changes this gives are calmness, maturity, and
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flexibility. In turn, the body reacts through reduction in stress, improvement in cardiovascular

function, reduction in inflammation, and improvement in the immune system.” Dr. Siegel

compares our enzymes to the cap of a shoelace, saying, “Telomerase, the enzyme responsible for

repairing chromosomes, is like a shoelace cap in that it can get whittled down as the body

endures stress and aging. When this happens, DNA is not able to help the cells function or

reproduce. As a result, the cells get sick and die, and so does the person. Through mental

presence, one can optimize the enzyme Telomerase and repair the ends of their chromones.

Mindfulness slows the aging process” (Handler). Through this creative project, I will be

exploring Abramović’s relationship between the intrapersonal and interpersonal.

At the beginning of October, Abramović returned to ho her birthplace Belgrade, Serbia

for the last stop of her retrospective tour “The Cleaner.” The importance of this exhibit being in

the then capital of Yugoslavia speaks on the intersectionality of Communism and her artwork.

Since it has been 50 years since she has done so, Andrew Dickson of the New York Times

interviewed the artist about the significance of her holding the exhibition. Dickson writes

Abramović has titled it as such “for a variety of reasons. Partly it underscored the obsessive

cleansing rituals that often surface in her work; it was also a way of tying up loose ends.” The

exhibition includes more than 120 pieces dating from the mid-1960’s. Abramović said, “I really

love the idea of cleaning the past, cleaning the memory. It’s a physical and mental metaphor, but

also a spiritual one.” Abramović was born in Belgrade in 1946. Dickson details “though she

described her childhood as ‘desolate,’ growing up in the shadow of parents who were decorated

war heroes and high up in the country’s communist government, Abramović found art a way to

rebel. After studying painting in Zagreb, she joined the punky, provocative group of artists who

congregated at Belgrade’s Student Art Center.” The artist’s early efforts with experimental
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performance art in Eastern Europe preempted her future direction. “The scene in Yugoslavia was

so dynamic and international,” he said. “Her upbringing, her education here, sets the track for her

entire life.” In 1975 Abramović decamped to Amsterdam, setting her sights on broader horizons.

Since then, her career has taken her to Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, and an array of other

countries. Today the artist resides in New York, the site of her most notable performance “The

Artist is Present” at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (Dickson).

In an interview with Chris Thompson and Katarina Weslien of PAJ: A Journal of

Performance Art, Abramović delved into her perception on the intersectionality of Buddhism

and Communism:

ABRAMOVIĆ: “I come from communist country, so communism is something that was

very close to me. I know the idealism of communism in the beginning, and I know the

failure of communism in the end, and I know all the problems, and why it could not succeed.

It was a very interesting concept in Burma; at one point, it was a communist government and

a very strong Buddhist country, so in the government there were Buddhist monks. Again it

didn't work. So all these concepts don't work because the mentality and the consciousness of

people are not raised to the level that could make it work. The solution is really that we have

to have a completely different relation to the materialistic world, and not to be attached to

money.”

THOMPSON: What becomes interesting is the idea that this is also a history of making a

collective – individuals who are committed to an endeavor that do have a definite form. It's

not like a movement, but maybe a collaboration to try change consciousness in some way.

How do you imagine using the tools afforded art to actually build such a collective?
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ABRAMOVIĆ: It's such an enormous process, and I think, in a way, right now everybody is

so disconnected with their own fields. We have to try our best in our own fields. And then at

one point, consciousness rises in art, it rises in science, it rises in technology; in a way, the

connection will be a completely natural thing. I think that the process can't be forced.

Everything needs a certain time. And bad time is very important, to have bad time, and right

now, really, things are going bad. I think they have to go not only bad, they have to go

worse, because they have to go all the way down in order to find the thing that is radiating

from that bottom. It's always the same, like after the rain comes the sun – this kind of thing.

It's very much Buddhist thinking but it really proves to be completely true. So that there are

certain causes and effects that have a bigger picture than we can perceive. We have to find

the tools which will bring us to this bigger picture, and find the art in it, which actually is

our function. That's the world most people really don't know: what is the function, why they

are there in the first place – mean here, on the earth. Finding your own function, and then

fulfilling that purpose, is very important. That connection will come. So I really don't

believe in a kind of revolution with a man – genius-coming and changing everything. It's a

tyrannical concept. Because one person can't do anything. Everything is an interactive

process, and everybody has his own role so that the machine can run.

THOMPSON: How has your encounter with the Buddhist community impacted your

thinking in these matters?

ABRAMOVIĆ: The idea of our society that we have to fix things and things have to be a

certain way, then you don't see the flow, you don't see how the whole energy goes, and how

things are actually unpredictable. The same is true with life and death. I mean, this moment

we are talking and this is the present moment, but the next second this whole roof could fall
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and you're dead. So, it's uncertainty that we have to learn. That the only thing there is is the

present. Working with the Tibetans is like the best school I could have for my own work”

(Thompson and Weslie).

In 2010, Abramović involved her audience directly in the intersectionality of mindfulness

and her artwork during her three-month long performance titled “The Artist is Present” at

MoMA. According to the New York Museum of Modern Art, “The work was inspired by her

belief that stretching the length of a performance beyond expectations serves to alter our

perception of time and foster a deeper engagement in the experience. Seated silently at a wooden

table across from an empty chair, she waited as people took turns sitting in the chair and locking

eyes with her. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day, she met the gaze of

1,000 strangers, many of whom were moved to tears.” In total, 850,000 people came and sat

across from the artist. One visitor described sitting with Abramović as “a transforming

experience—it’s luminous, it’s uplifting, it has many layers, but it always comes back to being

present, breathing, maintaining eye contact” (MoMA).

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A monk asked Mazu, “Why do you teach mind is Buddha?” Mazu said, “To stop a baby from

crying.” The monk said, “When the crying has stopped, what then?” Mazu said, “Then I teach

not mind, not Buddha.” The monk said, “How about someone who isn’t attached to either.”

Mazu said, “I would tell him not beings.” The monk said, “And what if you meant a man

unattached to all things, what would you tell him?” Mazu said, “I would just let him experience

the great Tao” (Mitchell).

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My next step in this creative project of “The Intersectionality of Mindfulness and the

Artwork of Marina Abramović” is to conduct a cross-content analysis on Abramović’s primary

sources: the film “The Artist is Present,” the novel Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, the novel

Psychoanalyst Meets Marina Abramović: Jeannette Fischer Meets Artist. Furthermore, I plan to

analyze a compilation of her of artworks, including but not limited to performance, transitory

objects, photographs, video instillations, and film. I will also be furthering my access to

secondary sources databases through interlibrary connections. A goal of mine is to contact the

Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) for further resources. Additionally, I plan to put on an

exhibition of the film “The Artist is Present” in the Spring of 2020 for the student population at

Bryant in the Interfaith Center in the form of a film night. I will be seeking to put on this

production under the Bryant Honors Program to cover expensive of film rights and other event

related needs. My ultimate goal is to have my creative project published. As I am not conducting

research, there are no ethical concerns.

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Works Cited

Abramović, Marina. “In Your Face: Interview: Marina Abramović.” SHOWstudio, 7 Dec. 2014,

Accessed 19 Oct. 2019.

Dickson, Andrew. “Marina Abramović Comes Home, and Comes Clean.” The New York Times,

2 Oct. 2019.

“Meet My Psychiatrist.” Life Will Be the Death of Me, performance by Chelsea Handler, season

1, episode 3, 6 June 2019.

“The Artist Is Present.” MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, 2010.

Thompson, Chris, and Katarina Weslien. “Pure Raw: Performance, Pedagogy, and

(Re)Presentation.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 28, no. 1 [82], Jan. 2006,

pp. 29–50.

Tzu, Lao. “Foreword 2 - Describing the Indescribable.” Tao Te Ching: A New English Version,

translated by Stephen Mitchell, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006, pp. 4. Perennial

Classics.