Practices of The Abramovic Method
1. Writing my name as slow as possible.
I planned to take 30 minutes to write my name but ended up I only took 10 minutes to finish it. It was hard to take care of the speed where sometimes I wrote slower sometimes faster. It was inconsistent.
I think of 3 things while practising this exercise:
1. Body oppression and disciplinary
My way of thinking the word oppress in this exercise might be different or wrong.
I can feel the oppression in the body while trying to break our natural way of doing something, changing the speed into extremely slow. Feeling the tension and the painfulness of the muscle. Forcing my body to do something unusual. At the same time, forcing myself to concentrate doing the exercise within certain time period. This is exhausting both mentally and physically. Discipline myself in time management while writing my name, and the discipline of following the rules of the tasks.
2. Time & Slowness.
A quote about slowness:
“Slowness is something universal. We have only become unaccustomed to it. Slowness, constancy, and harmony of movement… and our consciousness arises. The body begins to find joy in each small thing. We are attentive and wide-awake. We sense the complete and absolute freshness of the world. We communicate. We open our senses to the abundance of being.”
Time is fundamental to experiencing the world. Time is a very important element for many things including live art performance. For example in Enduring Ecstasy, the author mentioned about Marina Abramovic’s performance of The Lips of Thomas. Abramovic performed the show for 7 hours, and it is amazing that she able to maintain herself in the performance with naked body and with those cuts on her belly.
This practice able to train our willpower in body, mind and time control.
There are some similar practices in butoh training which I think it is good for artist:
Time and Slowness
Walk slowly for 20 minutes at an even pace from one wall to another. This can be done in a studio, in your room, in a hallway, or in a gallery.
Walk slowly for 20 minutes at an even pace in nature. Walk through a field, a meadow, or through a forest.
Take 20 minutes to bite into an apple or some other piece of fruit. Here, an even pace is again important. Sit down holding the fruit in the palm of your hand. Lead it to your mouth with constant slow-motion movement. Bite into it, chew it, swallow it, and watch how the fruit moves and connects within the body.
Alternate positions of lying down, sitting, standing and walking every ten minutes. Remain constant in your movements. This can be a meditation on experiencing the evolutionary process of coming to stand, or re-experiencing what we learned as a baby or small child.
3. Self-observation.
I always observe the muscles and the movement of my fingers, my arm, my shoulder and my back almost all the time while I was writing my name. I kept concentrate on my writing and sometimes this concentration made me feel dizzy. I tried to observe the time and speed of my writing. Kept asking myself, am I slow enough?
My thought:
As a human, we always repeat and practice certain movement or exercise in order to reach certain goal. The process contain certain discipline and usually it is tiring, painful and suffering. For example athletes, in order to be good they need a significant amount of time of training. Same goes to artists, good practices and studies are important. When the artist understand his/her own body, able to control it and discipline it, then his/her body can create works that normal people cannot. Therefore, all this methods are very helpful for an artist body and mind training. As what Michel Foucault mentioned in The Control of Activity, there are 3 great methods which are:
1. establish rhythms √
2. impose particular occupations
3. regulate the cycles of repetition. √
Second Exercise: Counting rice
This is the result.
I spent about 25 minutes to finished calculate this much of rice which the total of 964 if I was not mistaken.
This was a trial for me so I did not put too much rice on the paper.
I did not struggle or feel torturing while doing this exercise, compare to the writing my own name as slow as possible. Maybe because I do not need to take care of the speed of doing this exercise and my goal was to finish calculate the rice. It was simple for me.
My Daily Practice (a suggestion)
With what I have practiced for Somatic Investigation, I have developed a simple daily practice for myself. The aim is to create a process or journey of concentration.
Step 1. Start with breathing exercise/breathing meditation.
To slowly get into altered state, gather the chi and energy in the body. Feel the separation from myself with the busy city.
I spent a 10 minutes doing the breathing exercise. As usual, I feel painfulness on my back. At the last 2 minutes I drop my body forward in order to reduce the pain but continue breathing.
Step 2. Walking Exercise
Choose a space to walk back and forth for about 10 minutes together with an even breathing. This is to warming up the body and move the concentration on whole body for Step 3.
I inhaled when I walk forward and exhaled when I walk back to another side of my room. The way I breath changed from time to time. After about 1 minutes, my body got the pattern of walking. The movements of legs and body become more smooth, constant speed and more organised. I kept telling myself to stay focus and do not think of other things but to maintain that constancy was hard.
Step 3. Trance Dance (climax).
Choose a music with clear and constant beat. Start a trance dance exercise without anyone disturbing for 15 minutes. Put the focus on whole body and feel release.
After the walking exercise, I builded up my energy into more powerful and aggressive one. My focus changed and my movements got bigger and faster which I need to follow the beat of the music and try to release my body. My breathing became harder and my heartbeat got faster. To maintain the energy and the continuity were not easy.
Step 4. Drink half glass of water as slow as possible.
This is to cool down the body and mind. A total contrast with the trance dance practice.
After the tiring exercises, I was thirsty and my mouth was dry. A glass of water will be best for me, but the task is to drink the water as slow as possible which I have to control my mouth and throat not to swallow the water fast. I never think of controlling my throat movement, I felt a bit awkward doing this. I stood straight while drinking that half glass of water because I imagined that the water could flow all the way down from my mouth to my toes and nourish every single cell in my body. I felt relax and comfortable. The energy that I project out during trance dance slowly gathered back into my body. Everything slow down just like what happened during Step 1.
Step 5. Write my name as slow as possible.
After cool down the body and mind, I have to gather back the concentration on my fingers and pen. Focusing on something very small which contrast with all the previous exercises.
In this exercise, I had to shift my concentration on the tips of the pencil and the small movements of my fingers, controlling the speed, time and my breathing. Discipline my mind to stay focus and control.
For me, to do such a small task it needs much more energy to stay focus. This is the hardness of this exercise.
My aim of the whole practice is to create a flow of energy and having my body in control in different ways. From a very minimum movement and slow breathing to a medium speed walking then a very energetic trance dance. Cooling down myself with drinking a half glass of water slowly then shift to a very small point of concentration. I observed the changes of different concentration and discipline of my body. It was very interesting.
Some interesting points from the articles:
- female body in pain is ‘dialogical’.
- Abramovic used body to manifest sources of conflict and suffering.
- ‘a woman must imagine herself to be male or imagine herself as men imagine her.’
- use of pain to enter a trance state.