Marina Abramovic in Sex and the City

The presentation about Marina Abramovic reminded me of a different television moment about her. In Season 6 of Sex and the City, episode “One,” Charlotte and Carrie go to an art exhibit. There, they see a woman sitting on a wooden chair, staring into the void. This is a direct nod to Abramovic’s 2002 piece, “The House with the Ocean View.” She sat in full view of everyone for 12 twelve days living only on water. When Carrie sees this piece, she says to Charlotte, “There are depressed women all over the city doing the exact same thing as her and not calling it art. Put a phone up on that platform and it’s just a typical Friday night waiting for some guy to call.”

I am wondering about the connection between Abramovic’s existence in the non-space and its representation on television – also considered a non-space. Carrie directly calls to attention the idea that people (in this case she genders it to talk about women regarding men) behave like this all the time. This week I have been contemplating the notions of non-space as it refers to TV, art, boredom, and mental illness.

Side note: speaking about Sex and the City, which at the time was considered feminist and empowering, I found a bunch of memes that point of they myriad of ways Sex and the City was actually extremely problematic. It called Woke Charlotte – and it is about Charlotte “woke” responses to a lot of the problematic rhetoric on the show.