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BECOME PRESENT

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,—act in the living present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

he decision in 2010 to title Marina Abramović’s four-decade
retrospective at MoMA in New York City The Artist Is Present all
but preordained the monumental performance that would come out
of it. Naturally, Marina would have to be present in one way or
another.
But no one would have dared think that she would literally be
there... for all of it.
Who could conceive that a human could sit silently in a chair,
completely still, for a total of 750 hours over 79 days directly across
from 1,545 strangers, without aid, without distraction, without so
much as a way to go to the bathroom? That she would want to do
this? That she would pull it off?
As her former lover and collaborator Ulay said when he was
asked what he thought of the possibility, “I have no thoughts. Only
respect.”
The performance was as simple as it was straightforward. Marina,
aged sixty-three, her long hair braided and over her shoulder, walked
into the cavernous room, sat down in a hard wooden chair, and
simply stared at the person across from her. One after another they