Mercy- Final

For my final project I decided to recreate a performance by Marina Abramovic, Light/Dark 1977; in this performance Abramovic and Ulay are kneeling face to face from each other while also slapping each other hard across the face for 20 minutes until one of them stop. This piece explores the themes of tension and violence. It was performed in front of a live audience in October 1977 at the International Art Fair in Cologne, Germany. For my recreation to Abramovic’s piece instead of using a significant other, I decided to use my sister. My intentions were to use my sister as a lookalike to show that I was kneeling face to face with myself and giving off the sense that I am being too hard on myself by slapping myself back and forth. Out of all of Abramovic’s works and other artists, Light/Dark 1977, stood out to me the most because it was different from all of the other work she had done with Ulay and different from what other artist were doing; it was something I have never seen before. Setting the scene was difficult from finding the right angle to the way the light had hit us to hoping everyone in the house was quiet. Since it was sunny out, we had to close the curtains and add extra fabric so the sun wouldn’t shine through. I had the computer set up on a table and used the flash from her phone and my phone, that were taped on laps, so it would hit us on each side of where we were kneeling. The process to recreate this was a bit challenging because before we got to slapping each other one of us would laugh or if one hit too hard the other would laugh. In order to avoid any laughter, we would smack each other harder if we saw the other about to chuckle. After the 10th try, it came together. Looking at the finish video I felt like it also gave off another meaning; tension between two sisters, sisters but not feeling like sisters. I took it a little personal on how she is my half-sister, but we were both raised to call each other “full sisters”. As we got older, we drifted apart from each other where she is more attached to my cousin; who is also a half-sister, and so it feels like I do not have anyone anymore. I would categorize this as performance art although in was not in front of an audience. My final is completely different from my midterm because for my midterm I created a collage that expressed three different emotions through three different heads: anger/scared, happiness, and sad. I focused more on myself and inner emotions whereas for my final I created a video that focused on myself and the relationship between myself and my sister. I didn’t want both my midterm and final to be the same thing, so I went out of my comfort zone and got a little physical and spoke about the relationship between me and my sister. I feel like this video can give the audience multiple meanings. Something that we have learned about in class is “the spectacle”. At first, I didn’t know what it meant but after the discussions in class I learned that the spectacle refers to a society that critics describe as dominated by electronic media, consumption, and surveillance, reducing citizens to spectators by political neutralization. The way my video fits into the spectacle is by showing this self-hate caused by the certain labels that society throws at us that we are needed to fit in all the time.