Marina Abramović’s “512 Hours” at the Serpentine Gallery.

You queue for a while. You get in, leave your bag in a locker and put on noise-cancelling earphones. You leave the world behind and enter the quiet white gallery.

 There are three rooms: one is empty; one has chairs and desks with little piles of grains, as well as cots; one has more chairs and two big, low plinths. People sit, stand, lie down on the cots, sit at the desks playing with the grains, walk the length of the empty room very slowly. Once you’ve had a look around, you quickly accept the unspoken rules; you’re on your own, but you adjust. I did have an urge to run zigzags among the people shuffling along in the empty room, but let go of it – there seemed to be a lot of trust going on there, so much so that once I joined the walkers, I could do it with my eyes closed. This, in a city where keeping your eye on your surroundings is so important, was an interesting experience.

 Marina and her assistants interact with the participants; they take them by the hand and lead them to other parts of the gallery. Initially, this too seemed strange to me – I disliked the idea of interrupting what could be meditation. After a while, though, this interaction turned out to be quite gentle and I have seen people decline. An even more controversial part is that sometimes the assistants lead you to one of the plinths and stand there with you, holding your hand and breathing. Their gesture is like an invitation to dance, but it’s a dance of standing still with your eyes closed, with a stranger by your side.

 It’s difficult to describe the experience, as it’s so personal and mostly about what you bring into it. I found the containing space quite safe and the interplay of aloneness/voluntary togetherness welcome. The limited amount and intensity of stimuli may be unsettling, I imagine, but I thought it was restful. You can spend as much time as you wish in the space; when I left, it turned out I was there for two hours, although when inside time seems to become a bit less important.

 And then I bumped into Marina in the loo. I loved the suspension of the everyday that the event invites – but reality calls in the end.