I traveled from Minneapolis to sit in the chair opposite Marina. My daughter lives in Brooklyn and attends Hunter College. I visited her in early May and together we went to the Marina retrospective, where I encountered her work really for the very first time. I was profoundly moved by this work. We did wait in line that day, but had no context for what we were doing, and the last sitter was a 3-hour sitter.
I could not stop thinking about the retrospective after I returned to Minneapolis. I was viscerally shifted, and felt called, as if on pilgrimage, to participate in The Artist is Present, to honor the shamanic gift of deep intimacy she was so generously offering.
I went back, two weeks later, for the singular purpose of sitting with Marina. I arrived the first day at approximately 9 AM, very cavalier and naive about the reality of the line. I made it to about #6 that day (Wed.), the last sitter sat for 2+ hours. The next day (Thursday) I arrived at 8 AM, and was savvier about positioning myself and navigating the line. I waited all day with many of the same people I had waited with the day before (including my daughter, who did not sit.) I entered the square at about 5 PM.
The line seems integral to the experience of sitting; I pity the VIPs who missed it. The line became a de facto community, it accommodated and invited intimacy and solidarity among strangers. On my first day, a man on his 5th time in line, knowing he’d not have the opportunity to return before the show’s close, and recognizing the endurance of the last sitter, asked a young woman in our midst if she’d “do it with him;” that is, sit and gaze. He said, “I just want to know what it feels like.” She agreed, and they sat for 20 minutes, on the floor just past the last pillar in line. Really, it was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen. (She did come back the next day and a was able to sit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/themuseumofmodernart/4639351570/in/set-72157623741486824/). Marina’s performance—despite its inherently intense duality/privacy—spawned layers of community that found their primal roots in the line. If the piece reflects an economy, its legal tender is intimacy. She risked probable public chaos, she almost willed upon the total field of participation an underlying generosity and democracy that did, in fact, prevail.
A woman who had been in line with us on Wednesday, but who was unable to wait on Thursday (Diane) nevertheless came to visit us Thursday afternoon.
Sitting with Marina was empowering. I lost touch completely with time and with the spectatorship, the live performative aspect as it existed (physically) outside the square and (virtually, archivally) online. I became thoroughly engaged with and fascinated by my encounter with Marina in the space and moment of our creative/live/temporary merger. The first reaction I had after we’d established our gaze was one of shock at the extent of her physical suffering. I felt almost assaulted—energetically, in my body—by her discomfort. I then began to notice that she had trained herself to endure this discomfort by housing all of her suffering in one eye (her right) and sustaining all of her light and fierce attention—it felt almost like a spotlight—in her other eye. (Did others notice this?) We shared an indeterminate sadness with each other.
I felt as though I had sat for 5, maybe 8 minutes (turned out to be 27 minutes, which shocked me), and was mildly uncertain—after I’d felt a certain cue, or break in connection—about removing myself. I bowed, and as I was walking out of the square Marina folded forward out of her chair in an anguished stretch, the first time she had made such a dramatic gesture, which I am uncertain how to interpret, except to assume that I had nothing to do with it, or if I did that I somehow gave her permission to be vulnerable by recognizing and validating her sacrifice.
I felt and continue to feel indescribably grateful.
Since the performance—now almost 3 months ago—I’ve lost the obsessive, or burning, identification with the community of sitters and with the performance itself. I’ve lost touch with the more physical, prelingual aspect of the performance’s impact. But I retain, though have not necessarily evolved from, the power—a decidedly feminist power shamanically granted—Marina’s gaze revealed and conveyed to me. My transformation as invoked by this healing continues to unfold and progress
-Sarah Fox
