A line snakes down the Southbank flooding the concrete from the Hayward Gallery all the way to the side entrance of the Royal Festival Hall by the bridge. It’s the film festival here this week, so I wonder if it could be for a BFI event, but when I ask someone what they're waiting for, they tell me it's 'Marina Abramović baby' (I'm paraphrasing). On second glance I spot about 17 pairs of Salomons and as you can imagine the vibes are perfection if perfection has a performance art degree from Goldsmiths.
Joining the end of the line, I hear two superfans behind me slagging off their dumb bitch selfish slut friend who had been earlier in the week and let slip some unforgivable spoilers. ‘He said there’s a guy that walks around’ - uh ohhhhh… they also drop the stunning phrase ‘I can’t believe it was just 60 quid to get in that’s so cheap’ - which is a completely normal thing to think about an exhibition for sure. I do the quick maths and figure Marina's a big deal, don't mind me ! (I'm being cheeky here but I'm having a wonderful time irl and the art is lovely).
The installations spread through the whole building, and the title ‘Institute Takeover’ comes into its own and it's glorious. There is a big lightbox in the entrance with plaster compartments and a performance artist cuts his way through the sections. He's aiming for the end of the box. I imagine he’s been cutting his way through since the exhibition started on Wednesday (it is Sunday now), which seems physically demanding as hell. Does he go home at night ???
There are thick crowds around each installation, particularly at first as we (I am now one with the Salomons and I also suddenly have an honorary doctorate from Goldsmiths) only spot one or two performance artists as they come in. At times it is just a sea of phones - I think the fact that the art is live and moving compels people to film (me too, hands in the air guilty!) - and it feels like we're in the throws of Paris Fashion Week TM. I go full digital and download the programme from a QR code to see where to head to, and instantly return to my analogue roots of following my nose.
I see a piece called ‘Are You Hungry’ in the foyer of the Purcell Room. An opera singer from Serbia sings round a table of people peeling potatoes. His voice pierces through the crowd clear as day. It takes me a hot sec to realise that they are rotating members of the public and most of their peeling techniques leave a lot to be desired actually. Perhaps it's because the potatoes are muddy.
In the Purcell Room I sit on the stage and look out into the audience at a piece called ‘Goodnight Daisies’ where a chorus of performers tell verbatim short stories in unison, I listen to a few of the stories - one about having an alcoholic parent and another about a mother who fears something awful will happen to her children. It's manic and unnerving and watching each performer have a slightly different take on the words is cool. I move on by going backstage (novel and fun!!!), winding through green rooms and corridors of dressing rooms til I reach a bottleneck in the basement.
I feel like an extra in ‘The Square’. From the end of the corridor I hear banging and rage. Between me and the anger is a trickling queue of (sweaty) people. We (me and the Salomons, don't you forget it) slowly filter through - some people get claustrophobic, bored or impatient and turn back. In a deer in the headlights moment at the end of the corridor I see a man all in black, balaclava and all, whacking the walls of the adjoining corridor with a rubber police baton. Aggressive! Not scary though, as I never truly believe he's anything but an artist - is the Marina school of thought compatible with 2023 style health and safety ?
The white walls and floor are battered with a week's worth of baton lashings and dark strike marks. The piece is called ‘Because The Knees Bend’. At certain points, we can cross through the corridor to the other side, but the opportunity doesn’t arise often. I see the superfans across the way, hi! Picking a moment to cross feels like timing when to jump in to the moving skipping rope at school and I think about how everyones' sporty little gorpcore shoes must be coming in so clutch at this moment.
I pass through the corridor rather than turning back which is such a triumph, and I follow my nose again. I'm in the backstage area of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where pairs of topless black dancers stand on platforms made of mirrors and move slowly together. It's beautiful to see the dancers on the platforms and the audience all reflected in the mirrors. The piece is called ‘Water In a Heatwave’. The lighting is dark, silvery and dramatic, it really shimmers that way. The atmosphere is still and the dancers are sweaty.
I sit there on the floor for a while and then slip through the curtains to the Queen Elizabeth Hall where a man is naked and tied up with rope to a tall post. A Union Jack flies from the top, in the middle of the empty(ish) auditorium. I immediately hate it, but only because of the Union Jack imagery. It is called ‘Nobody’.
I make my way back up to the foyer from a different direction than before and pass a man sat with a bag over his head. What’s stopping us all doing something coucouloulou then and saying we're one of the installations… I go back one more time to the man cutting his way through the plaster sections of the light box - I have a much better view now that the throngs have dispersed, and he has made progress even in the short time I have been gone.
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