Groove Theory #4 - Nothing Business

New York, March 2010. Marina Abramović sits down at MoMA for what might be the strangest job in the history of art.

Two chairs. A wooden table. Theatre lights. And her, waiting for strangers to sit across from her.

For the next three months - 700 hours total - she'll do nothing but look people in the eye. No talking. No moving.

Most visitors last five minutes. Some stay for hours. A few break down crying. Many can't handle it at all and leave almost immediately.

But here's what's interesting: this wasn't performance art in the usual sense. It was an experiment in what happens when you stop trying.

The Tension

So many of us are fighting for attention these days - more followers, better metrics, louder voices. We treat every moment like a competition for eyeballs. Meanwhile, we're on the content hamster wheel - always shipping, always creating, always on. Post daily, update constantly, fill every silence with 'value'.

When we talk about "showing up," we often treat it like a performance. Energy high, talking points ready, everything planned out.

But what if the real move is giving your attention, not getting it?

What if the moments that matter most aren't about what you do - but what you stop doing?

Step Into It

You're walking into the team meeting where tensions have been building for weeks. Or sitting down for the one-on-one with the employee who's been struggling. Maybe it's the client call where you need to deliver bad news, or the family dinner where someone's going to bring up that topic. Yurrgh.

Your instinct? Prepare more. Practice responses. Fill every potential silence with something helpful.

What if you tried the opposite?

The Groove: Presence

Presence → Bring yourself into it

Serbian artist Marina Abramović has spent 40+ years pushing her body to extremes. She's set herself on fire, taken seizure-inducing drugs, even played a knife game that left her bleeding (yes, really - look up the 'Rhythm' series if you want to feel disturbed).

But the MoMA piece was different. After decades of extreme performance, her most powerful work was about a completely different kind of performing. "The Artist is Present" wasn't about endurance or shock. It was about attention.

"People think performance is easy," she says. "You just sit there. But to be present for eight hours a day, every day, for three months? That's the hardest thing I've ever done."

She developed a process. Between visitors, she'd close her eyes and reset. Clear whatever just happened. Then open her eyes and be completely available for whoever sat down next.

No agenda. No plan. Just the willingness to be there with whatever showed up.

The result? People waited in line for twelve hours. Word spread globally. Not because she was doing something spectacular, but because she was doing nothing - completely. In a world obsessed with more content, more performance, more noise, she built a phenomenon around space and silence.

She was ahead of her time. Today we're finally catching up - NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) is trending. Calm built a $2B business around silence. 'Doing nothing' is becoming a skill people pay to learn (kinda nuts, when you think about it). Even the success of tech company Notion comes partly from white space - clean, uncluttered interfaces when everyone else was cramming features.

Presence is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. For more on Presence, revisit edition 2, with Will Guidara and Eleven Madison Park.

The Release

Your most important moments won't come from better preparation. They'll come from being more present with what's actually happening.

The 700-hour experiment proved something simple: people crave being seen more than being impressed.

Maybe the secret isn't having all the answers. Maybe it's being okay with the questions.

In your next crucial moment - the pitch, the difficult conversation, the team session that matters - try showing up with less agenda and more attention.

It matters now more than ever. People are really seeking. Seeking connection, seeking space. But here’s the thing: the Nothing has to be excellent. Anyone can be empty by accident. The real skill is designing it so well that people will wait twelve hours in line for it.

That's the opportunity - not more content, but beautifully crafted less. Where all the pieces matter.

Howard

Extended Mix: Deep Cuts

More Marina facts:

• She met her artistic partner Ulay in Amsterdam in 1976. They lived in a van for four years, creating art together and barely speaking to anyone else
• Their final collaboration was walking toward each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China. When they met in the middle after 90 days, it marked the end of their relationship - the walk itself was their breakup piece

More on presence:

• Amy Cuddy's research on presence (less woo-woo, more science)
• Cal Newport on deep attention - the cognitive equivalent of Abramović's practice
• The method: "Find a comfortable position, connect with your eyes, and see what happens."