The 2024 Glastonbury Festival could be plunged into silence later today (Picture: Rex/Getty)
Glastonbury Festival is known for its merry atmosphere of revelry, with music blasting out from multiple stages at once to entertain attendees – but one artist is hoping to completely change that.
At the 2024 event on Worthy Farm in Somerset, away from headliners Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay and the likes of Shania Twain, Cyndi Lauper and Avril Lavigne, Marina Abramović is hoping for silence.
And not just a few seconds of it, but seven minutes of full silence from Glastonbury’s iconic Pyramid Stage.
Yes, the same stage that has hosted the likes of David Bowie, Pulp, Sir Elton John and Bruce Springsteen, playing to crowds of tens of thousands, and anything up to the festival’s capacity of around 200,000, according to Abramović.
The Serbian artist, who is set to address Glastonbury from its main stage at 5:55pm on Friday – just ahead of PJ Harvey’s set – has admitted she is ‘terrified’ at the prospect.
Abramović, 77, is calling her slot/piece ‘Seven Minute of Collective Silence’ and sees it as a ‘public intervention’ rather than a performance as such.
A bold visual artist, Marina Abramović,is taking to the Pyramid Stage (Picture: Joe Newman)
She shares the same bill as headliner Dua Lipa, but will be looking for the opposite outcome (Picture: Getty)
It’s also, unsurprisingly, her largest-ever participatory work.
‘I don’t know any visual artists who have done something like this in front of 175,000 to 200,000 people. The largest audience I ever had was 6,000 people in a stadium and I was thinking ‘wow’, but this is really beyond anything I’ve done,’ the world-famous visual artist told The Guardian.
She’s aware that it’s ‘big risk’, which is what scares her, asking what could be more than 210,000 festivalgoers at Glastonbury to stay silent – and for so long.
The idea of Abramović’s stunt, which is being facilitated by arts organisation Circa who have previously taken over Piccadilly Circus’s billboards with artwork, is to get people to reflect on the current of the world, and what she calls ‘a really dark moment in human history’.
‘I could completely fail, or people could just sit. I don’t know, but I want to take the risk. Failing is also important, you learn from failing as well as succeeding,’ she added.
Abramović hopes to ‘go beyond the acid, beyond the mushrooms, beyond whatever is there and touch that moment in their soul and just for seven minutes stop everything’.
The world-famous visual artist admits to feeling ‘terrified’ about the stunt (Picture: Jack Hall/BFA.com/Shutterstock)
She hopes that the ‘incredible moment’ will come to pass, but also accepts it will be one of the biggest challenges of her career to ‘keep the energy of silence’.
It’s Abramović first time at Glastonbury, and the woman who in 2023 became the first female artist in to have a solo show in the Royal Academy’s main galleries in its 255-year existence is excited to discover ‘amazing new groups that I don’t know anything about’.
‘We are honoured to have Marina Abramović bring such a meaningful and profound experience to Glastonbury,’ said Glastonbury co-organiser, Emily Eavis.
‘Her work has always pushed boundaries and inspired deep reflection, and we believe this moment of collective silence will be a memorable and impactful addition to the festival.’
It is the largest participatory work in Abramović’s career (Picture: Alberto Gandolfo/LaPresse/Shutte)
Eavis, 44, is the daughter of Glastonbury Festival founder Sir Michael Eavis, 88, who delighted festivalgoers on Thursday evening by taking to the stage once more to give a traditional performance alongside his band.
They treated the crowd to a set including Frank Sinatra hits Love’s Been Good To Me and It Was A Very Good Year, as well as Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds.
His daughter praised her father’s voice as sounding ‘better than ever’ and said he had been ‘raring to go’.
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