Marin Abramović is a very dedicated performance artist whose work consists of The Artist is present and Nightsea Crossing. However, it was her performance of The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk, which caught my attention the most. She collaborated on this piece with F. Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay), who she was in a relationship with, in 1988. It was an endurance piece that lasted 90 days. It consisted of her starting at one end of The Great Wall of China and Ulay starting at the other end. They walked the length of the wall towards each other and then met in the middle. In the book Marina Abramović, Mary Richards states that “Ulay began his walk to the west (dry, heat) at Jao Yu Guan, which is on the south-western edge of the Gobi Desert, while Abramović started at Shanhaiguan by the Yellow Sea in the east (damp, cold) an area known as the dragon’s head’’ (2010, p. 99). It was a very symbolic piece as the walk was originally supposed to end with their marriage after their reunion in the middle of the wall. However, by the time they got permission to do this performance they decided to end their relationship. The reason that I like this piece so much is that I think it is tragically poetic. Throughout the process, of creating and performing this piece, different intimacy levels would have been experienced between Marina and Ulay. At the beginning (when the performance was supposed to end in their marriage) they had the kind of intimacy that lovers share. However, by the end of it they parted. This was still done with an affectionate hug but the intimacy that they had originally experienced with one another had changed to something less substantial. When reviewing this piece, Holland Cotter stated that:
The stage for their final performance, in 1988, was the Great Wall of China. Starting from opposite ends of the wall, they walked toward each other for three months. Originally the meeting was to have been the occasion for their marriage; in the event it marked their break-up. (2010).
Works Cited
Cotter, Holland (2010) Performance Art Preserved, in the Flesh. Online: www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/arts/design/12abromovic.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 21 October 2012).
Richards, Mary (2010) Marina Abramović, Abingdon: Routledge.
I like how you describe this performance as ‘tragically poetic’… I couldn’t agree more! The fact that the performance would have been quite emotionally challenging for them both because of their history, as well as physically, makes this piece much more meaningful. A lot of Marina’s performances, to me, seem quite physically demanding, such as Rhythms 2,5 and 10, however it is also interesting to think about these performances in terms of how mentally and emotionally challenging they were to perform; knowing that what she was about to do was going to hurt.