“Give each other unconditional love”: Artist Marina Abramović silences Glastonbury for seven minutes | Glastonbury 2024

Home to some of the UK’s loudest sing-alongs, most driving rap lyrics and most cacophonous guitar solos, on Friday the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury experienced something almost unprecedented in its history: absolute silence.

Serbian artist Marina Abramović, invited by festival organizers Michael and Emily Eavis, led the audience in what she called a “collaboration” entitled “Seven Minutes of Collective Silence” to “show how we can sense positive energy throughout the universe” and act as a bulwark against the horrors of war and violence.

Since the event was announced only a day before, there was an understandable fear that the audience would not come along in the spirit of cooperation and might chatter or even shout during the planned silence. But in the end, the only sound heard across the grass of the Pyramid stage, apart from a few very isolated screams and shouts, was the wind blowing through the valley and the distant roar of performances on other stages.

“I thought it was wonderful,” said Lucinda, who was at the festival with her friend Lizzy. “I found out about it 30 seconds before it started. I adored it. That was my Glastonbury. I thought it was really impressive. Seven minutes flew by.”

Abramović wore a garment in the shape of a CND peace symbol designed by former Burberry chief designer Riccardo Tisci. (CND has a long-standing presence at the festival.) She introduced the piece with a speech in which she admitted that she was “shocked and honoured” by the Eavises’ invitation: “Shocked because as an artist I have never seen an audience like this in my life. I don’t sing, I don’t dance.” She acknowledged that “this is a music festival and you all want to have a great time and listen to great music.”

However, she situates the collaboration in the context of her career in visual arts and performance, which dates back to the early 1970s, saying: “Throughout my 55-year career, I have always done something with energy – I have no better place at the moment to intervene with the energy itself.”

She added: “The world is really in a shitty situation. There are wars, hunger, protests, murders, violence. But what happens when we look at the bigger picture? Violence begets more violence, murder begets more murders, anger begets more anger, demonstrations beget more demonstrations. Here we are trying to do something different: how we can be in the here and now and how we can all give each other unconditional love together.”

She asked the audience to place their hands on their neighbor’s, close their eyes and make themselves comfortable, and then asked Emily Eavis to strike a gong to begin the performance.

It was oddly reminiscent of the work of another Pyramid stage veteran: Beyoncé, whose “Mute Challenge” on her recent Renaissance tour silenced entire stadiums full of fans for a brief moment—albeit for seven seconds rather than seven minutes.

In an interview with the Guardian before the performance, Abramović acknowledged that the performance carried a risk of failure. “It’s a big risk, that’s why I’m so scared,” she said. “I could fail completely, or people could just sit there. I don’t know, but I want to take the risk. Failure is important too, you learn from failure as well as success.” She said she would visit Stonehenge on the way to the site in Somerset to “boost as much energy as I can” before the performance, and she would also attend other, noisier events on the festival’s various stages. “I’ll be like a kid with my eyes open,” she said. “I’ll be looking at these amazing new groups that I know nothing about.”