"Seven minutes of collective silence"

Marina Abramovich performed at the Musical Festival in Glastonbury - and held the largest action in her entire career

On June 28, Serbian artist Marina Abramovich held her largest action at the Glastonbury music festival in England, which is visited annually to 200 thousand people. On the main stage, Pyramid Stage Abramovich held the action “Seven minutes of collective silence” (Seven Minutes of Collective Silence).

During her action, Abramovich turned to the main topic of the festival in 2024 - “Peace”. From the stage, she made a speech :

During my 55-year career, I always worked with energy. And there is no better place than here and now to make an energy invasion . <...> The world is at a very shitty point. War, hunger, protests, murders, violence. But what if you look at it wider? Violence gives rise to violence, kills murders, anger gives rise to anger, demonstrations lead to demonstrations. Here [on "Glastonbury"] we will try to do something else: to be in the present, here and now. Together we can give each other unconditional love. Only by changing ourselves, we can change the world.

After a short speech, the artist invited the festival to put their hands on the shoulders of the neighbors, it is convenient to get up and close their eyes. Emily Aivis, a musical producer, the organizer of Glastonbury and the daughter of Michael Aivis, who invented the festival - hit the gong, after which the audience should not pronounce a word for seven minutes. When the audience was silent, Abramovich spread her hands - it turned out that she was on her dress, tailored in the form of a pacifist sign “The Symbol of the World” .

In an interview with Vogue , before the performance, Abramovich said that this action was a serious challenge for her. According to her, not a single performer has yet appeared in front of the audience of 175-200 thousand people. The largest hall in front of which she found herself was six thousand. The action at the festival could well fail, the artist reasoned: “People come [to the festival] to have fun. They drink, use drugs. The weather is good. But I ask them to be in silence and think about the condition of the planet, which is now in hell. <...> Much may go wrong, but I will stand there with open hands. "

In the same interview of Vogue, she clarified what she means by “hell”: wars, global warming, poverty, events in Ukraine and Palestine. From the stage, she did not make political statements. Some spectators in the crowd held Palestinian flags.

The Guardian correspondent clarifies that the visitors to Glastonbury, who went for several days, found out about the Aramovich action only on the eve of the performance. “There were clear fears that the audience would not participate, they could begin to talk or even scream during the alleged silence. But in the end, with the exception of a few screams, the only sound that spilled past the “pyramid” was the wind blowing through the valley, and a distant hum of performances on other scenes, ”the newspaper writes. The BBC correspondent notes that during the “seven minutes of collective silence” performances from neighboring scenes were heard, in addition, not all spectators turned off the sound on the phones. “And next to me there was a characteristic sound of an opened beer can,” the author of the publication said. Nevertheless, in the video from the performance is a really unusual silence for a festival. The Guardian quotes one of the spectators named Lucinda:

I learned about this [performance] 30 seconds before the start. I was delighted with him. This was done by my "Glastonbury". It was very powerful. Seven minutes passed very quickly.

Before arriving in Glastonbury, at six in the morning of the same day, Marina Abramovich visited Stonehenge to “absorb all the energy that could” inside the circle of stones. According to the artist, the artist had only five minutes on stage, but Pi Jay Harvey, whose performance followed the Aramovich’s action, abandoned one of her songs so that the Serbian artist had enough time to prepare and conduct an “energy invasion”.

The Pacific dress was created by the former creative director of Burberry Riccardo Silence. This is not his first joint project with Abramovich - in particular, he created costumes for her opera “Seven Deaths of Maria Callas”. “This is such a beautiful dress. Riccardo created an incredible concept. It will go to the museum, ”said Abramovich Vogue about the outfit on Glastonbury. Silence commented on his work by e -mail:

We thought about the fact that silence actually means: it is always a consequence of a strong emotion. This was what the dress was supposed to be embodied. Inspiration came from the great art of the Japanese kimono. We liked the idea to turn this as a sign of peace. In our fashionable journey (this means the whole career of silence - approx. Medusa) we often played with gloom, so it was nice to create a bright, air creation for this special moment.

The elements from which the performance was created “seven minutes of collective silence” is not new. Abramovich herself also worked with silence, one of the most striking examples - her action “in the presence of an artist”. During the performance, which first took place in 2010 at the MOMA Museum in New York, Abramovich sat silently in an armchair, and everyone could take turns sitting opposite and looking into her eyes. The action lasted 716 and a half hours, the artist looked into the eyes of 1,500 visitors to the museum. Stadium musicians often use pauses during their performances - for example, during last year's round Beyoncé stopped a crowd of fans for a few seconds. But seven minutes - a really unusually long period of time for such events that Abramovich makes this action exceptional - both in her own career and in many years of history of music festivals.

"Jellyfish"