The Concept of Audience in Marina Abramovic’s Works Based on Maurice Merleuponti’s Votes

Marina Abramovic, a Yugoslav artist in the field of conceptual art, has been creating works of “art” since the early 1970s. By focusing on her body as the subject and mainstream of her art, she has taken a different approach to the audience in her performances. In his phenomenology of perception, Maurice Merleau Ponty also discusses the “other” in the context of a “body” experience. He has been a philosopher of phenomenology and existentialism of the twentieth century and considers modern art to be the emerging world that has created a different perspective for the artist and audience. The purpose of this research is to explain the concept of the audience with the phenomenological approach of Maurice Merleoponti, based on the concepts of “ Embodyment “ and “Other” in Marina Abramovic’s performances, titled “Zero Rhythm” and “Artist Present”. Data collection was done through library resources, videos, and reputable internet sites. This research answers the question of what does the audience mean in Marina Abramovic’s performances? The importance of this research is to create a different understanding of the concept of audiences by artists who try to position themselves in the audience instead of preparing content for the audience to change their “level of awareness”. This further enriches the meaning and deepens the viewer-performer relationship. One of the most important findings of this study is that according to Maurice Merleoponti’s definitions of the “other” of the audience becomes a tool for audience action through the interplay of art and artist, and this is a factor of meaning and awareness for the artist himself.