It felt like an absurd moment: 11 AM, naked, in a museum, a few meters above the ground, in front of an audience and surrendering to physical pain. But despite the absurdity of those moments, there emerged a powerful lightness and courage that not only liberated myself, but sometimes the audience as well.
Back in 2024, I was part of the Marina Abramović exposition, in the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam. In the span of three months, I performed a few of her works, including the performance work Luminosity.
In this particular piece, the performer sits on a bike saddle which is connected to the wall a few meters above the ground, for the duration of 30 minutes. Arms and legs are spread like an X-shape, the crotch being the only point of contact to the saddle. Lastly, a powerful beam of light illuminates the performance, somewhat like the frame of a painting.
Even though that sounds quite stiff, it’s physically demanding, hurts like hell, and you’re constantly exposed to hundreds of eyeballs, carefully watching every drop of sweat hurtling down 3 meters to the floor.
On top of that, after the first few performances, my vagina went totally numb, which I only realised after going to the toilet afterwards. The first time it happened, I was confused and slightly worried, but nonetheless hopped onto my bicycle to drive home, which in turn became a totally weird sensation also. The feeling only came back after 3 days.
Even so, performing Luminosity wasn’t just about physical discomfort. Besides the pain that arose during each performance, there rose an even stronger sense of presence, of lightness, of being able to transcend the pain itself and exist in that space, together with all the other people that were present there.
Our Aversion To Discomfort
Being the elephant in the room, it amazed me seeing the wildly varying reactions play out right in front of me. Some people came to a standstill, gazing at the performance in full amazement, but not quite sure what to feel.
Others seemed shocked and questioned whether I was actually a real person on the wall or not. I remember how one of them got triggered to the point that they demanded me to come down, asking the facilitating person in the corner of the room whether there was anybody who could get me down – that if they could use the stairs, that they’d come and get me themselves.
But at other times, there was eye contact that felt so pure, so shameless, that it fostered an incredibly powerful connection between two human beings in a strange situation: the situation of transcending discomfort, together. Both in the same space, both experiencing, in completely different ways, but nonetheless as a shared experience.
What became clear during the performing, is that in such discomfort, there were two primary modes of being: One in which I somewhat escaped from myself, struggling with the physical tension, the mind fighting with internal murmuring, cancelling out any acknowledgement of what was currently going on, and thus, cancelling out the audience as well.
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The other state was one in which I felt like my only duty, was to stay present. I attempted to stay open, no matter what. Any time I felt my mind drifting off, I would bring it back to my one and only task. Staying open and staying present, not fighting the discomfort, but rather existing as fully inside that situation.
What arose in that second state was a feeling of invincible lightness, one which allowed the audience – total strangers with a museum ticket – to acknowledge and project the inner pain they carried themselves. The space transformed from just a gallery hall inside Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, into a space where discomfort was allowed to exist.
I think this was the sole reason for such wildly varying reactions: the ones that joined me in my duty to stay present, allowed the pain and discomfort to be liberated from suffering, just for a moment.
The ones that wanted to bring me down and stop the performance weren’t liberated, but rather activated, possibly even threatened. Caught off-guard by the space in which discomfort was given a place, whereas in modern culture, we move heaven and earth to avoid it.
Allowing The Uncomfortable To Exist
There is a curious relation between pain and fear. The former is tolerable to an extent, but paired with the latter, they form a powerful combination that can strike down even the strongest of spirits.
But when you find the state of mind in which you can truly allow discomfort to simply exist, you render the fear and its irrationality that comes with it, completely powerless.
Many of life’s most wonderful experiences are also heavily uncomfortable. To experience what life has to offer, we have to learn to stay light inside the discomfort and use that lightness as a way through.
While on the saddle of Luminosity, no amount of physical distress could take away my presence and connection with the audience. When that happened, the room filled with quiet, with wonder, and with a field of tension in which we connected with both each other, and our inner selves.
