{"id":812,"date":"2019-01-29T23:20:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T23:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.wordpress.com\/2019\/01\/29\/spilling-the-milk\/"},"modified":"2019-01-29T23:20:22","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T23:20:22","slug":"spilling-the-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/2019\/01\/29\/spilling-the-milk\/","title":{"rendered":"Spilling The Milk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Spilling
\n<\/span><\/span>In June I was out in Detroit to give a presentation about how to resolve any conflict using the Karpman triangle. (You may think you don\u2019t know what I am referring to, but you probably do. It\u2019s when we recognize we are either playing the villain, rescuer, or victim in a conflict and with that awareness we free ourselves from being stuck in these roles.) Once I finished the power point, I had 3 hours before my flight home, so I secreted myself away to the Detroit Institute of Arts. I started with the Diego Rivera murals of the auto industry, caught some contemporary sculptures of the city skyline made from baseball bats, and made my way through the impressionists. While in the contemporary section I turned a corner and spied a Marina Abramovic video entitled \u201cSpilling the Milk.\u201d Here\u2019s what a cool art publication had to say about it:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Abramovic video, included in her widely acclaimed 2010 MoMA, New York, retrospective, the artist continues her earlier themes but places them within the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. A luminous window lights a glowing kitchen as Abramovic attempts to hold a brim-filled bowl of shimmering milk without spilling it. The video\u2019s scene recalls the visual impression of works such as Vermeer\u2019s The Milkmaid (1657) with its use of everyday subject matter to portray the intersection of sensuality and spirituality at the root of human experience. Yet the concentration and strength necessary to translate this moving image into the ideal, suspended stillness of a Vermeer painting tests the limits of the artist\u2019s fortitude and the audience\u2019s expectations.\u201d \u2014 From Artweek.LA<\/p>\n

As I studied her, people gathered on the bench opposite, and to either side of the screen. More kept pooling around the piece, illumined by the projection. It was literally a crowd favorite, the growing audience gathering to witness this milk carrying\/spilling event. A mother and three children peered on. \u201cIs she actually moving? Or is it freeze framed?\u201d the girl asked.\u201d I think she\u2019s going to drop it!\u201d one of the boys predicted. \u201cIt\u2019s just like that, isn\u2019t it?\u201d the mother confided to me. \u201cMothering. It takes everything not to drop it all.\u201d Abramovic, the artist, peered into the milk in her bowl, willing herself to hold still, despite the demands of gravity. \u201cFunny you should bring up mothering,\u201d I leaned over and whispered to the woman. \u201cShe actually had a very difficult relationship with her mother. She wanted her mother\u2019s attention, and rarely got it.\u201d<\/p>\n

We turned back to the video. What made it so compelling? We hoped she wouldn\u2019t drop the bowl. We also wanted to see her drop the bowl! We hoped she would shatter the quietly oppressive domestic scene. This tiny drama pulled us all in for almost 13 minutes. It ended with extra sloshing from the bowl and then faded out to black. No clear climax or finality. \u201cIs that it?\u201d someone said walking away.<\/p>\n

I stayed, watched the piece again, and took this picture. The crowd dispersed and a new cycle of questioning eyes gazed at the screen. Marina Abramovic never won her mother\u2019s approval and attention the way she wanted it as a girl, but she had won the world\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In June I was out in Detroit to give a presentation about how to resolve any conflict using the Karpman triangle. (You may think you don\u2019t know what I am referring to, but you probably do. It\u2019s when we recognize we are either playing the villain, rescuer, or victim in a conflict and with that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,17,10,11,28,14,5,9,30],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5000-women","category-acting","category-artist","category-creativity","category-energized","category-gender-issues","category-inspiration","category-jennifer-blaine-advice","category-transformation","category-womens-empowerment","tag-artistic-perspective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferblaine.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}