Performance Art as Ritual: Marina Abramović's Shamanic Endurance

BY NICOLE LAU

In 2010, Marina Abramović sat motionless in a chair at MoMA for 736 hours and 30 minutes. Over 1,500 people sat across from her, one at a time, in silence. Some cried. Some laughed. Some had spiritual awakenings. One person—her former lover and collaborator Ulay—appeared unexpectedly, and they wept together without speaking.

This wasn't a performance. It was a mass initiation. And Marina wasn't an artist—she was a shaman using her body as portal, her endurance as offering, her presence as transmission.

Performance art, at its highest expression, is ancient ritual reborn in contemporary form. And Marina Abramović is its high priestess.

What Is Performance Art?

Performance art emerged in the 1960s-70s as a radical break from traditional art:

• The body is the medium – Not paint or marble, but flesh, breath, and presence
• Time is the canvas – Duration, endurance, and the unrepeatable moment
• No object remains – Only memory, documentation, and transformation
• The audience participates – Witnesses become co-creators, complicit in the ritual
• Risk is essential – Physical, emotional, or psychological danger creates authentic presence
• Boundaries dissolve – Between art and life, artist and audience, self and other

But this isn't new—it's shamanism. Every element of performance art mirrors shamanic practice: ordeal, trance, transformation, and the body as vehicle for transcendence.

Marina Abramović: Biography of a Warrior-Mystic

Marina Abramović (born 1946, Belgrade) was forged in fire:

• Communist Yugoslavia – Grew up under authoritarian regime, learned to navigate power and control
• Partisan parents – Mother and father were war heroes; discipline, endurance, and sacrifice were family values
• Strict Orthodox grandmother – Raised with religious ritual, icons, and mystical Christianity
• Early artistic rebellion – Rejected painting for the body, rejected objects for presence
• Shamanic calling – Studied indigenous rituals, Tibetan Buddhism, and energy healing

She said: "I come from a warrior culture. My work is about testing limits—of the body, of the mind, of the relationship between artist and audience."

The Early Works: Initiatory Ordeals

Rhythm 0 (1974): Surrendering Control

Marina placed 72 objects on a table—a rose, honey, a whip, scissors, a loaded gun—and stood passively for six hours. The audience could do anything to her.

What happened:

• At first, gentle interactions—flowers, kisses
• Then escalation—clothes cut off, thorns pressed into skin
• Finally, violence—one person held the gun to her head
• When the six hours ended and she moved, the audience fled in shame

This is shamanic ordeal: the initiate surrenders control, faces death, and is reborn. The audience became the ordeal—revealing humanity's capacity for both tenderness and cruelty.

Rhythm 5 (1974): Fire Initiation

Marina lay inside a burning five-pointed star (communist symbol), losing consciousness from lack of oxygen. The audience didn't realize she was dying until someone pulled her out.

This is literal fire initiation—the shaman passing through flames, dying to the old self, emerging transformed. She said: "I was interested in losing consciousness, in the moment when you cross the line between being in control and not being in control."

Rhythm 2 (1974): Pharmacological Trance

Marina took a drug used to treat catatonia (making her body convulse violently), then took a drug used to treat schizophrenia (making her body freeze). She surrendered control to chemistry, becoming a vessel for forces beyond her will.

This mirrors shamanic plant medicine journeys—using substances to break the ego's grip and access altered states.

The Ulay Years: Alchemical Partnership (1976-1988)

Marina met German artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen), and they became lovers and collaborators. Their work together was alchemical marriage made visible:

Relation in Space (1976): The Collision of Souls

Marina and Ulay ran toward each other naked, colliding with full force, over and over for 58 minutes. Their bodies became bruised, exhausted, desperate.

This is the alchemical coniunctio—the violent union of opposites. Love isn't gentle—it's collision, impact, the shattering of boundaries.

Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977): Shared Life Force

They connected their mouths and breathed each other's exhaled breath until they nearly suffocated (17 minutes). No fresh air—only the other's carbon dioxide.

This is tantric practice: merging breath, merging life force, becoming one organism. It's also the danger of codependency—losing yourself in the other until you can't breathe.

Rest Energy (1980): Trust and Death

Ulay held a bow. Marina held the string with an arrow pointed at her heart. Their body weight kept the arrow from releasing. One mistake, one loss of balance, and she dies.

This is the ultimate trust exercise—and the ultimate metaphor for relationship. Love is holding the arrow aimed at your beloved's heart, and trusting them to hold the tension.

The Great Wall Walk (1988): The Ritual Divorce

After 12 years together, Marina and Ulay walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China (2,500 km each), meeting in the middle to say goodbye. It took three months.

This is ritual separation—not a breakup, but a sacred ending. They walked toward each other to walk away. The relationship became art, and the art became closure.

Marina said: "We needed a monument to our relationship. The Great Wall was that monument."

The Solo Years: The Artist as Shaman

The Artist Is Present (2010): The Transmission

Marina sat in silence at MoMA for three months, eight hours a day, making eye contact with whoever sat across from her. No words. No touch. Just presence.

What happened:

• People waited in line for hours to sit with her
• Many experienced spontaneous emotional release—crying, laughing, shaking
• Some reported spiritual experiences, visions, or insights
• The room became a temple, the chair became an altar
• Marina became a mirror, reflecting each person's soul back to them

This is darshan in Hindu tradition—receiving the gaze of the guru, being seen by the divine. Marina wasn't performing—she was transmitting. Her presence was the art.

When Ulay appeared unexpectedly (they hadn't spoken in 22 years), they held hands across the table and wept. The entire museum wept with them. This is the power of ritual—it creates a container where the personal becomes universal.

The House with the Ocean View (2002): Ascetic Retreat

Marina lived on three platforms in a gallery for 12 days with no food, no talking, no privacy. The audience watched her sleep, shower, and meditate.

This is monastic retreat made public—the hermit in the cave, but the cave has glass walls. She was testing whether spiritual practice can happen under observation, whether the sacred can survive in the profane.

She said: "I wanted to see if I could create a kind of energy dialogue with the public. Not speaking, not eating—just being present."

The Abramović Method: Training the Artist-Shaman

Marina developed a systematic method for training performance artists:

1. Slow walking – Walking as slowly as possible, becoming aware of every micro-movement
2. Counting rice – Separating grains by color for hours, training attention and patience
3. Staring exercises – Maintaining eye contact without blinking, breaking social conditioning
4. Silence – Extended periods without speaking, listening to inner noise
5. Fasting – Purifying the body, sharpening awareness
6. Endurance – Holding uncomfortable positions until the ego surrenders
7. Presence training – Being fully here, now, without distraction or performance

This isn't art school—it's monastery training. Marina is teaching what shamans and mystics have always taught: the body is the instrument, presence is the practice, and transformation is the goal.

The Shamanic Elements in Marina's Work

Every aspect of Marina's practice mirrors shamanic tradition:

• Ordeal and initiation – Physical suffering as spiritual gateway (fire, exhaustion, pain)
• Trance states – Altered consciousness through repetition, exhaustion, or danger
• The body as portal – Flesh as doorway between worlds, between self and other
• Witnessing as participation – The audience isn't passive; they complete the ritual
• Healing through presence – Her work creates space for others' transformation
• Death and rebirth – Symbolic (and sometimes literal) near-death experiences
• Energy transmission – She believes in and works with subtle energy, prana, chi

Marina has studied with shamans in Brazil, Aboriginal healers in Australia, and Tibetan monks. She's not appropriating—she's recognizing that what she does is what they do, just in a gallery instead of a jungle.

The Constant Beneath the Performance

Here's the deeper truth: Marina's performances, a shaman's healing ceremony, and a monk's meditation retreat are all doing the same thing—using the body and presence to access non-ordinary states of consciousness.

This is Constant Unification: The shaman's fire walk, the yogi's tapas (austerity), the Christian mystic's mortification of the flesh, and Marina's endurance performances are all calculating the same invariant truth—that consciousness can be transformed through disciplined ordeal.

Different methods, same mathematics. Different rituals, same result.

The Controversy: Is It Art or Exploitation?

Marina's work has been criticized:

• "It's not art, it's therapy" – But why can't art be therapeutic? Why separate healing from aesthetics?
• "She's exploiting the audience's emotions" – Or she's creating space for emotions that have nowhere else to go?
• "It's narcissistic" – Or it's ego death through radical vulnerability?
• "She appropriates indigenous practices" – Or she's recognizing universal human practices that transcend culture?
• "It's dangerous" – Yes. That's the point. Transformation requires risk.

The criticism reveals discomfort with art that actually does something, that changes people, that refuses to be merely aesthetic.

The Legacy: Performance as Spiritual Practice

Marina's influence is vast:

• Performance art as mainstream – She brought it from underground to MoMA
• The body as valid medium – Legitimized somatic and endurance practices
• Presence as art form – Proved that being is as valid as making
• Ritual in contemporary context – Showed that modern people still need ceremony
• The artist as healer – Reclaimed art's shamanic function

Every artist who uses their body as medium, every performance that risks something real, every work that creates space for transformation—that's Marina's lineage.

Practicing Performance Art as Ritual

You can work with performance principles:

1. Choose an ordeal – What physical or psychological challenge will break your habitual self?
2. Set a duration – Time creates container; endurance creates transformation
3. Invite witnesses – The audience completes the ritual; their presence matters
4. Remove escape routes – Commit fully; no backing out when it gets hard
5. Document but don't perform – Be present, not performative; authenticity over aesthetics
6. Create a frame – Clear beginning and end; this is ritual time, not ordinary time
7. Integrate afterward – What changed? What died? What was born?

Performance art isn't about talent—it's about courage, commitment, and willingness to be transformed in public.

The Abramović Paradox: Fame and Ego Death

Marina's work is about ego dissolution, yet she's become a celebrity. She practices humility through ordeal, yet she's built a brand. She seeks presence, yet she's constantly documented.

This is the paradox of the contemporary mystic: to transmit the teaching, you must be visible. To be visible, you risk the ego inflation you're trying to transcend.

Marina navigates this by continuing to practice—still doing the work, still risking, still surrendering. The fame doesn't exempt her from the ordeal. If anything, it makes the ordeal harder.

Conclusion: The Artist as Sacrifice

Marina Abramović's greatest teaching is this: art isn't about making objects—it's about making yourself available. Available to pain, to presence, to transformation, to the audience's projections and needs.

The artist isn't the creator—the artist is the offering. The body isn't the tool—the body is the altar. The performance isn't the art—the transformation is the art.

Marina has spent 50+ years offering her body, her time, her presence, her pain as gift to strangers. That's not performance—that's priesthood.

She said: "An artist's life is a continuous journey, the path long and never-ending. My intention is to keep walking, to keep creating, to keep offering myself."

The shaman walks between worlds. The artist walks between self and other. Marina walks both paths at once.

The body is the temple. Presence is the prayer. Endurance is the offering. And transformation is the only art that matters.

Just as Abramović transforms endurance into a sacred act, you too can weave intentional rituals into your daily life, bridging the seen and unseen. To deepen this practice, consider the 40 manifestation rituals intention to reality for a structured journey of creation, or explore the 13 new moon rituals lunar beginnings to honor cycles of renewal. For a personal touch, the sacred space cleanse printable energy clearing ritual kit offers a simple yet powerful way to cleanse your environment, inviting stillness and presence just as the performance artist does on stage.