"Could they ever get close enough to touch, or would they fall on their way to one another?" She ached to know.
Sometimes art isn't just art. And love isn't just love. And pain isn't just pain. These experiences and pieces of who we are all merge and form cemented layers. They build and thus create who we become over the years of our lives.
Everyday we walk away from things. Sometimes these are big things. Sometimes people. Sometimes we just make a choice to not eat that piece of cake or walk away from that cigarette we're craving. Everytime we walk away from something we are choosing to walk towards something else. Most of the time, we really have no idea what that means.
For Marina Abramović, sometime in the 1970's, she walked away from her boyfriend. But this was no average break-up scene. In one of the achiest tales I have ever read,
“They decided to go to the opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and walked towards each other in the middle. When they met, they gave each other one last embrace and parted ways. After that moment, they never saw each other again.”
Abramović is a famous (and incredibly brilliant) performance artist. This relationship, and break-up, almost 30 years ago, was a layer that became a part of Abramović. Everyone we meet becomes a part of us. The people we love don't ever disappear, even when we walk away. They just become another layer of us.
She recently presented The Artist is Present, a piece in which she asked participants to sit across from her in silence for 30 seconds.
If you watch the video below, you will see how 30 years of life can be shattered in 30 seconds of art.