"Just Another Night On The Cutting Edge" Review of Marina Abramovich Rave @ Saatchi Yates

Correspondent Maria Juana dives into the "Saatchi Yates Rave", or the concept-store gallery's venture into the London underground. Marina gained acclaim for her psychologically terrorising performance art about state oppression, and now she's in the same line up as Fake Mink. If not exactly a net good, the event leant toward the absurd rather than the abyssal. God bless the dichotomy.

In London you either die a hero, or live long enough to put on an event. It seems that upon her return to the city, Marina Abramović has met the same fate. To initiate Saatchi Yates into her exhibiting repertoire, the help of the infamous, London-based collective Virus was enlisted. With its tenuous links to clubby acts on both sides of the Atlantic, I can't deny that my interest was piqued.

Marina is the kind of person I'll always have a soft spot for. Like an ex, or the celebrity crush of my teen years. Nothing awful they might do could ever truly negate how they once made me feel. I stood by her when she attempted to 'raise the vibration of Glastonbury' and consequently 'heal the world' in a custom Riccardo Tisci dress, and if these DJ rumours were true, fuck it, I'll stand by her now.

As my best friend aptly pointed out, we were witnessing "mixed-levels of swag." The well-to-do fashion kids stood in stark contrast with the abundance of quote-unquote 'normies.' Quirked-up women in their 40s and suited blokes in their late 30s lined up right alongside the London ravers and people who- if you squinted hard enough- had an instagram that hovered next to them like a ghostly and well-followed child. In fact, the whole night could have been Phillipa Snow's Trophy Lives: On the Celebrity as Art Object, adapted for a kinaesthetic learner.

As the night grew closer, the plot thinnened. There was still no lineup to be seen. Anyway: a black cab rolled up, and out stepped Marina herself. As the groups of shaggy-haired boys thrashed their not-so-quirky locks into a frenzy, I felt in the flattening flash of a fit pic, a not-quite-profound levelling of worlds.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have fun - even if Marina didn't end up making her DJ debut. That said, rumours of Lady Gaga's presence in the collectors' room replenished the intrigue. As 11pm hit the clock and the normies dissipated, the real freaks could come out (and listen to LV Sandals). Just another night being on the cutting edge, I guess.

Actually though, the music was really good. The lineup justified itself, Wraith9, Mechatok and Charlie Osbourne tore. Free WhiteClaw on tap gave brief respite from the £16 doubles I'd drunkenly spent. And as I'd so desperately prayed, Marina's aura was left intact.

It’s not hard to see why the PR team took this particular route, as plastic surgery and culture-at-large bring Charli XCX and Abramovic closer and closer together. It makes sense in the meme-marketing landscape that has been cooked up in coked-out Shoreditch new-builds over the last few years. If the intention was to entice the younger ‘alt’ crowd into buying shit from Saatchi Yates, I think that falls flat - especially since some miscreant (allegedly) robbed one of the £1.8k prints. It becomes part of their larger project of art-as-clout-proximity/socially-mediated experience that the gallery are pushing through their buy-in membership system.

According to my elementary calculations, this exhibition would see a gross profit of £2.16m. This largely mystified night kicked off a mega-sale of her works- with 600 blue stills and 600 red stills up for grabs. It's a huge chunk of change to try and make in one go. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know there’s a 2008-style financial bubble about to burst. From an outside financial perspective, it seems like Saatchi Yates’ diversification through their infamous membership scheme needs some interim revenue-smoothing. It’s typical crypto-mentality, applied to pop-culture: buy low and sell high. And get out before the bubble bursts.