If you are talking about "Imponderabillia", that's not my favourite performance of her (I love her famous "Rhythm 0" and less famous but more deep "Balkan Baroque"). But I'll try to explain how do I, personally, understand this performance called Weightlessness.
First of all, let's look to Marina's explanation (in my bad translation to English
) : "The Idea of the performance was the artist as the door to the museum, and entering the museum between us, the audience had to choose which of us to look into the eyes, because the entrance was so narrow that you could only walk sideways ".
First of all, people usually pass turned back (or with they being back- not sure how to say it correctly in English) to those they trust more. And here we can see an interesting result from her first performance: all the women were passing looking to the eyes of a man - that means they trusted more to another woman and had to control a man with their eyes. Second thing, why being naked, right? I think the idea was in the fact that the entrance was very narrow and all the guests didn't have any choice except watching directly to the eyes of one of the performance artists when they were passing, and it's pretty awkward to look into the eyes of a naked person, I think with this awkwardness/discomfort people are more "open" with their real feelings and,at the same time they also can become more "open" to the artist himself/herself.
Well, that's only my vision, maybe it's wrong or doesn't have a lot of sense (and it's still very complicated for me to express my thoughts in English).
What about a sexual assault claim...yes, you're right to some extent. But it's a very complicated topic when we are talking about art. How to determine this line where an art/concept can stop being an art and become an assault...I don't know the answer to this question. I also ask myself about it from time to time. One example when I was baffled was Gustave Courbet "L'Origine du monde". I liked this artist very much, but when I saw this...ghm..piece of art in the museum, I was shocked and found it rather a pornography while some people around me were talking how brilliant it was and didn't have any shock on their faces...
Another similar example for me is Irina Ionesco photographs... it's aesthetically beautiful and absolutely unacceptable at the same time. I don't even know how to describe my feelings when I look at it. But the time she was taking them, it was much more "acceptable" than nowadays. I love her daughter's drama film called "My little princess" (can recommend it to you), it shows very well how it is difficult sometimes to find this thin line between Art and pornography/sexual assaults etc etc
en.m.wikipedia.org
Uff, I wrote it all in English...hate writing and reading long posts in a foreign language but wanted to express some of my thoughts.
