ARTIST INCREDIBLY PULLS OFF 7-MINUTE SILENCE WITH 200,000 PEOPLE AT GLASTONBURY

Glastonbury Festival might have just made history after an artist managed to make its thick crowds – of up to 200,000 people – silent for seven minutes at the Pyramid Stage.

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 hoped 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 addressed Glastonbury from its main stage at 5:55pm on Friday – just ahead of PJ Harvey’s set –  wearing a white dress shaped like a peace sign.

Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis introduced the silence by bringing a gong on stage while more than a dozen Palestinian flags could be seen in the crowd.

Abramović, 77, said she saw her piece as a ‘public intervention’ and said she was terrified by the prospect, with concerns that the crowd may not participate.

Metro.co.uk’s reporter on the ground informed us that the piece was a success and the crowd did indeed keep their mouths firmly shut.

The piece was described as ‘calm, incredibly quiet’ and ‘almost eerie.’ She added: ‘People who did whisper immediately got death stares.’

‘When (Sir) Michael (Eavis) and Emily invited me to come here to the Pyramid Stage at the most important music festival in the entire world I was terrified and I was honoured,’ Abramović told the crowd.

‘What I’m proposing is something never done in any of the festivals for music’s entire history – I’m proposing you seven minutes of silence.

‘The world is in a really s****y place… we can actually all together give unconditional love to each other… we can change the world.’

Only noise from other stages nearby could be heard from the crowd during the silence, which ended with cheers as Abramović thanked the audience

It comes after Abramović admitted she was ‘terrified’ at the prospect.

Abramović called her piece ‘Seven Minute of Collective Silence’ and saw it as a ‘public intervention’ rather than a performance.

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 was aware that it was a ‘big risk’, which is what scared her and asked what could be more than 210,000 festivalgoers at Glastonbury to stay silent – and for so long.

The idea of Abramović’s stunt, which was facilitated by arts organisation Circa who have previously taken over Piccadilly Circus’s billboards with artwork, was to get people to reflect on the current state 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 hoped 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’.

She hoped that the ‘incredible moment’ would come to pass, but also accepted it would 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.’

Eavis, 44, is the daughter of Glastonbury Festival founder Sir Michael, 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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