Marina Abramović, Li Binyuan and Paula Garcia… When artistic performances shed light on how organisations operate
In this article, originally published in french in The Conversation, Yanina Rashkova, Assistant Professor at EDHEC, explores how the work of performance artist Marina Abramović, along with artists associated with her Institute, can inspire managers and leaders to rethink how they observe, relate to, and reshape their organisations...
Contemporary art, especially performance art, is often perceived as ambiguous and inaccessible. A woman sits silently at a table in a museum, saying nothing, doing nothing, inviting strangers to sit across from her. What are we supposed to make of that? And more importantly for managers: what could such an act possibly teach someone responsible for navigating a complex organisation?
Quite a lot.
Because performance art is not only about the expression per se, but also about the perception. It makes the invisible visible. And in that sense, it may offer managers something profoundly practical: new ways of seeing.
In my research, I explore how the work of internationally acclaimed performance artist Marina Abramović, along with artists associated with her Institute, can inspire managers to rethink how they observe, relate to, and reshape their organisations.
Offer Presence to See Invisible: Lessons from The Artist Is Present
In 2010, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Marina Abramović sat silently in the museum’s atrium for three months. Eight hours a day. Motionless. Across from her was an empty chair, and visitors were invited to sit opposite her for as long as they wished. She did not speak, nor did she move. She simply remained fully present. Visitors responded in unexpected ways. Many wept, some smiled, others trembled. In the stillness, emotions long buried (e.g., grief, vulnerability, longing, relief) rose to the surface.
The performance demonstrates a crucial insight: attention is transformative. When someone feels genuinely seen, what is hidden often becomes visible. For managers, this has immediate relevance. In organisations, people frequently conceal not only concerns and frustrations, but also ideas. Meetings are rushed and conversations are distracted. Managers half-listen while checking devices or preparing their next response.
Abramović’s work suggests a radical alternative: offer undivided presence. Create spaces where employees are not interrupted, judged, or hurried. When managers are fully attentive, without agenda, without multitasking, they begin to notice what standard reporting systems miss: subtle tensions, emotional undercurrents and most importantly great ideas. In this case, full presence may become an analytical practice. It may allow managers to detect latent problems before they escalate or support nascent signals of great innovations. It may enable them to see more.
Take Apart to Understand: Lessons from Li Binyuan’s Breakdown
In Breakdown, Li Binyuan climbs onto a four-meter-high pillar resembling a monument. Once at the top, he begins to hammer the very structure beneath his feet. Piece by piece, he dismantles the base that supports him. The structure reveals itself through its disintegration. By dismantling the pillar, Li exposes how it is built: its layers and its internal logic. What makes the performance powerful is the exemplification that in order to understand something, one need to take it apart.
For managers, this is a sharp analytical lesson. Organisations often appear as solid, monolithic entities: “the culture,” “the strategy,” “the structure.” But these abstractions are built from smaller, interconnected elements, such as routines, incentives, informal norms, power relations, and everyday habits. As long as these remain intact and unquestioned, the organisation can feel impenetrable.
To truly understand how an organisation works, managers sometimes need to disassemble it - conceptually, and at times practically. This does not necessarily mean destroying it in a literal sense. It means isolating and examining its constitutive elements to see more.
Transform to Reveal Connections: Lessons from Paula Garcia’s Noise Body
In Noise Body, Paula Garcia begins with her body uncovered and visible as it is. She then attaches powerful magnets to herself. One by one, collaborators add industrial metal fragments (bolts, shards, scrap iron) until her body is nearly engulfed by mechanical debris. As the metal accumulates, we begin to see relationships that were previously invisible: the magnetic force binding elements together. The act of transformation makes the structure of connection visible.
For managers, this carries a powerful lesson: sometimes you only understand how elements of organising are linked when you deliberately change their arrangement. Organisations are webs of interconnected components: roles, technologies, incentives, communication flows, physical spaces. Yet these links often remain hidden: we see departments, not dependencies. For instance, shifting from individual bonuses to team-based rewards often exposes how tightly interdependent tasks actually are. Employees who previously perceived their work as autonomous suddenly recognise how much they rely on others’ inputs. The redesign surfaces the network beneath the hierarchy.
Garcia’s work suggests that insight does not always come from observing a stable system. Sometimes we must alter the configuration or rearrange elements to see more of how they attract, repel, or constrain one another.
Managership as an Art of Seeing
After all, performance art is not that distant and ambiguous and can be even useful for managers of contemporary organisations in providing lessons on how to see more in their organisations. Marina Abramović teaches us that when managers slow down and offer undivided attention, hidden elements surface. Li Binyuan demonstrates that to understand a structure, you must be willing to take it apart. Paula Garcia shows that when we rearrange elements of organising, the links between them become visible.
While performance art does not provide ready-made managerial techniques, it highlights practical tips on how to sharpen managers' capacity to see. And in complex organisations, the ability to see more clearly may be the most strategic advantage of all.
