Traces - Marina Abramovic. The Truman Brewery, London, 10-12 September 2021
Nested in the (not easy to find) Truman Brewery just off Brick Lane, London E1, once home to London's largest brewery and now East London's primary destination for the public and creative businesses, Traces is the closest encounter Londoners could have hoped to have with the incredible performer Abramovic. And as a matter of fact, her presence permeates the spaces with her traces.
For a brief moment, the day before going there I naively kind of hoped she would personally be there since a video of her being interviewed in the brewery made me imagine she meant to stay over the course of the 3-day timeframe. But nope.
It's pointless to recommend you to check out the event since by the time you'll read this its doors will shut, but why not remind you what you've missed? (Not funny).
The very positive side of this all is, being this event a collaboration between the artist and WePresent, all the material and content can be read and watch online in a dedicated interactive area.
However, whatever a performance artist can come up with, nothing beats the value of experiencing it in person (which, in a way, you may think makes this post somewhat pointless, but I'm still working on fixing my self-sabotaging tendencies so don't rush me).
In the five rooms that compose the experience, Marina shows five objects or elements that have (had) a significant impact on her life and practice.
Full video:
1. The Rose of Jericho
The plant's stages of evolution
The Rose of Jericho, also called Resurrection Plant, is intriguing for more than one reason, and it's not hard to understand why the artist has selected it as a metaphor for her incredibly resilient approach to her fairly nomadic existence.
I've never heard of this species before and had to google it to know more. I've done the work for you, here's what FarmerGracy says about it:
The Resurrection Plant grows in dry deserts where it is perfectly adapted to survive, even when there is no water available for years at a stretch. It curls in on itself, forming a little tumbleweed-like ball of vegetation in which it protects itself until the rains come.
It blows around the desert freely, opening its fronds when the conditions are moist enough.
As soon as there is free moisture, the seemingly dead bundle of vegetation unfurls, becoming a soft, fern-like plant with soft, green fronds. Just to make matters even stranger, it isn’t a fern at all, but a moss. It’s actually a primitive plant – much like a living fossil, so some call Rose of Jericho the “Dinosaur Plant”.
"The Rose of Jericho demonstrates vitality. Wherever you take it, it survives.
I have created a strong emotional relationship to the plant, this wonder of nature, which comes so close to immortality."
2. Van Gogh's Starry Night
"The Starry Night is particularly important to me because of its cosmic view of the world.
It’s as though Van Gogh’s sensitivity allowed him to see the air’s atomic structure. He painted what looks like an out-of-body experience – a version of reality, in which particles and electricity move around in different patterns.
Maybe it’s Van Gogh’s version of the “big picture.”
3. Quartz Stones
Abramovic says she began to understand the earth as a human body:
Quartz crystals are the eyes of the planet, tourmaline the liver, hematite – the iron – is the blood running through the planet, copper is the nervous system, and amethyst the mind.
For me, quartz has remained the most powerful material of all. The entire memory of the planet is stored in a quartz crystal.
4. Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag published Regarding the Pain of Others in 2003, around the time Marina met the author for the first time and then became close friends with.
The book (about different ways individuals and societies regard war photography and gruesome imagery) is particularly important given the suffering of the world today.
"I also connect it to her own pain – Susan was a big survivor, having survived cancer three times before her death."
5. A Stone from Mars
The stone is not actually there, but in the installation's room you can listen to a recording of the artist's 2015 work reciting the names of 10,000 stars.
This little stone from Mars reminded me that we don’t truly understand the mechanics of our universe. We are always busy with the small picture rather than the big picture.
Our thoughts are almost always centered around ourselves. But we have to get out of that. We have to have a big picture about the world. If we envision our personal lives as a little dot on a small blue planet, we will live differently.
Those who missed the event have still time to head over to the Lisson Gallery for The 7 Deaths of Maria Callas.
Meet you there!
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