The solo-performance “One Person at a Time” (2016) was part of the acclaimed exhibition “As One” realized by the Marina Abramovic Institution and NEON in 10th of March – 24th April at Benaki Museum.
Our performance was selected to be among the 6 long-durational performances by Marina Abramovic, Serge Le Borgne and Paula Garcia.
“Two identical rooms offer a place to explore two sides of a “mirror” — what is real and what is a construct. Yota Argyropoulou enters into a fictional world of emotional experience and invites visitors to follow her into action and inaction, detachment and connection. For eight hours each day and for seven weeks, one room will be her own truth, where time is suspended, a place of privacy “shattered” by the arrival of the real: the visitor in the other room. The glass between them isolates but at the same time invites communication, intimacy, and moments of genuine connection”. http://www.mai-hudson.org/durational-performances/2016/3/1/yota-argyropoulou-one-person-at-a-time
Press – Critics (selected)
“One Person at a Time (2016) by Yota Agryropoulou, one of most popular works, comprises two identical rooms divided by a sheet of glass, one inhabited by the artist and the other by any person who decides to enter the space. The artist then mimicks or interacts with the person who comes into the space until they leave.
“It’s incredible how this piece develops, because sometimes it’s really not great because someone will come in and be tense and sometimes she gets this incredible unity,” Abramović explained. “There was a moment when she put the two tables next to each other this morning that was just beautiful.”
“… the continuous counting of time from Virginia Mastrigiannaki felt like a lullaby when I became the mirror of Yota Argyropoulou, the only interactive performance “One person at a time”. As I followed her into the confinement of a room identical to hers, I became the mirror of her more unreasonable/surreal activities that she encouraged me to engage to. I found myself from being always a total phobic taking part in interactive pieces, to have become an exhibit at the mercy of the visitors’ gaze at the museum”.
“The actress Yota Argyropoulou, who passes the hours in a room behind a glass wall separating it from an identical room in which visitors interact with her through the glass, said that an angry woman had recently entered, shredded a pillow, then refused to leave. “After that, the energy was very strange, very violent,” Ms. Argyropoulou said. “I started throwing things at her.” Ms. Abramovic advised that the best approach was to ignore such people, adding that it was too bad the pillow was synthetic. “If it had been feathers,” she said, “you could have them.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/arts/design/suffering-for-art-in-greece-and-matching-the-national-mood.html?ref=arts&_r=1
“…visitors were waiting in a queue for their turn to take part in the participatory performance of Yota Argyropoulou, walking in reflected room. An outstanding work that favored, on one hand, the more distant and gentle experience of a game, and on the other hand, it encouraged absolute emotional involvement, a deep observation of the two sides of the mirror”.
“I distinguished Yota Argyropoulou’ s performance as the most creative of As One exhibition at Benaki. It is energetic, imaginative, playful, resourceful, exhausting (it takes place 8 to 10 hours every day), communicative and it creates a need to the spectator to become part of it and not just watch -I speak also from my own personal experience/participation. The key, however, about this work is that it operates as a kind of an experiment. It is something like a performance at the psychologist bed”.
“The third week closes with a truly interesting incident experienced in one of As One’s long-durational performance’s spaces: in Yota Argyropoulou’s room (“One Person at a Time”) a visitor enters with whom Yota’s interaction is extremely intense – so intense, that in a few minutes many visitors gathered outside the room… Gradually, an enormous amount of energy is being generated – a kind of energy that seems to have engaged everyone on the second floor of the Benaki Museum, even some of the performance artists too. A unique moment of performance art, a moment that everyone who experienced it, felt the “here and now” energy Marina Abramovic is constantly talking about. A moment experienced by many, As One.”
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