Marina Abramovic is a “performance artist”.   Mostly she sits onstage in front of an audience and does next to nothing … for hours.  And the people stay to watch.

In The Artist Is Present (2012), for three months she sits across a table from a person, looking directly into their eyes, for eight hours every day, without ever moving or taking a single sip of water.

“Gaps appear in the thinking, the gaps get bigger, and at one point you enter into a nonthinking state.  For the first time you really see the person – and the person becomes highly emotional, because they see that I can see them, and they start seeing me too.  It’s vibrational.  The connection is incredible – that opening is very special, and then the heart opens.  The effect ripples out to the audience – they see what I am seeing and are deeply affected.  People wait for hours to come and sit with me.  Even the guards who’ve been watching every day change into ordinary clothes on the weekend and wait in line to sit.  We have seventy-six people who came more than twelve times, who have created a club just to talk about their experience.

Such astounding connection

Such longevity of contact

Such mystery