When I was a work of art and didn't know it!

Starting March 14 until May 31 the world-famous Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic is going to start sitting behind a table, for 7 hours a day, for (nearly) 3 months, as long as her retrospective at MOMA lasts. Titled "the Artist is Present", it is an entirely new installation - pardon, "art performance" - she has specially designed for this show at MOMA. It is going to be the "pièce de résistence" of her retrospective while she has delegated to some 36 young artists she has specially trained the reproduction of some of her more famous pieces - sorry, I mean performances - from past exhibitions.

She will let visitors stream down to her table, they will be able to stop in front of her (will there be a chair for them?), but as far as I understand it, she doesn't plan to engage in any conversation whatsoever. Mum is the word. For 7 hours times 90 days, that's about 600 hours stitting behind a table without either moving or talking. That will be her longest performance ever. In a recent interview, artist Marina confessed she expected that the performance would test her to the very limit of her art.

In the same interview, by the way, she also said she liked the recession. These were good times for artists, she declared. Certainly good times for her, since she started back in the 1970s with such performances as "imponderabilia": it required her standing naked on a doorstep with Ulay (now her ex-husband) in front of her, leaving just enough space between the two of them to allow visitors through in such a way that they had to walk looking either in her face or in his. That was in Italy back in 1977 and since then, wow, our Marina has come a long way, baby! The MOMA is tops in the contemporary art world - there is no museum that is more important and no city like New York. No wonder she likes recession times!

Now, at several points in my working life, I've had to sit for hours on end on the podium at international conferences without being allowed to say one word. And this sort of thing could go on for 8 hours or more, for up to a week. I think the longest I got stuck this way was ten days.Just had to sit up there, next to the Conference chairman (or chairwoman as the case may be) without moving from my seat, looking down at the audience, as one delegate after another asked for the floor and made in a monotonous voice an incredibly dull and banal intervention. My only job was to make sure the Chairman had the names of speakers on his list in the right order and that he had in front of him the right documents for discussion - not much to do, but I was thankful I did have something that helped me from falling asleep.

If only I'd known that sitting like that, without moving, for hours on end was an art performance! That would have been an immense consolation. Yes,I was a work of art and didn't know it. I was in the same position as Molière's Jourdain who didn't know that when he spoke, it was prose. Ah, little did I know how artistic I was, stuck on the podium, motionless and bored to tears.

But now, from one artist to another, I have some words of advice for Marina - because she is right, it's going to be quite an ordeal, to sit at that table for 3 months! I know - because I've gone through it myself in my own small and modest way - there are actually three big dangers threatening her.

One, (you've guessed it already) is boredom. After a while, just looking at people is no fun. You get jaded. A face here, another there, who cares. So you need to prepare yourself with little stories you can tell yourself - things to meditate on, or amuse yourself with. That's very important - or else you're going to fall off that chair, fast asleep. And that would be very, very undecorous, now, to have a slumbering artist suddenly collapse on the floor.

Two, you have to decide whether you are going to allow yourself to repair to the toilet. Now I suspect that in your view the artist has to be "present" throughout the whole exhibition, right? then you need to plan for it: no tea or coffee in the morning, no milk with your cornflakes, no orange juice, nothing. Banish all liquids!

Three, come prepared to take good care of your...behind. Some people are endowed with vast, cushiony behinds, and they're the lucky ones. If you're not the type, dear Marina (and looking at you on your pictures, I suspect you're not), then you're in REAL trouble. Do take a thick, soft pillow with you to sit on. It'll save you from untold tortures: a chair, even a padded one, after a few hours makes you feel you're sitting on spikes. Yes, like knives pointing upwards and slowly going up and through the lower part of your body. And unless you're an Indian fakir, you're in deep trouble. And nobody is going to notice that pillow you're sitting on. And I sure won't tell your little secret!

It's going to be HARD, Marina, but then, what doesn't one do for Art with a capital A? There's not limit to Contemporary Art!

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