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Opening and Closing the Door
A summer memory. Listening to a cacophony of doors screeching and slamming as the wind whistled and the sun set on a remote Greek island.
Marina Abramovic created the Cleaning the House workshop for performance artists to cultivate their physical and emotional endurance. In late summer MAI opened the workshop to the public for the first time. The 4-day experience involved fasting, no electronics, no reading, no clocks, minimal creature comforts — and lots of strenuous physical and mental exercises — in addition to separating piles of lentils and rice and counting them — for six hours, we stared a wall for a couple hours without moving while the wind whipped dust into our eyes.
An exercise called Opening and Closing the Door was exactly that. The only instructions were to open and close a door repeatedly without ever entering the space. Logistics involved situating each of the 14 participants in front of a door. Entryway doors, bathroom doors, shed doors, kitchen doors, patio doors all within our quintessentially Greek compound.
I was placed in front of a screen door, an entryway to one of the lodgings. Though I had a splendid vista of the ocean and blue Mediterranean sky, and exposure to a good deal of wind, I could not see any of the other participants or their doors.
As the hung midway in the late afternoon sky, I contemplated my door while waiting to begin.
The old screen was frayed around the battered wood frame painted sage green. The gaps between the screen and the frame were secured with a fishing wire baste stitch. Insects could easily navigate through it.
The whistle blew and the creaking and slamming commenced.
I grabbed the thin metal handle and begin opening and closing the screen door. The cement threshold was warped — so the door stuck and scraped in resistance– it required much more effort than I had imagined. The hinge groaned like an old man saying, “oh” each time the door swung.
In the background I can hear doors screeching and clapping — and the wind whistling as the sun dipped low. Like some crazy Dada film. Doorways to Madness. I looked up expecting to see crows circling. Or Marina on…
