A naked woman is suspended half-way up a wall, arms stretched and legs apart, apparently kept in place by a delicately positioned bicycle seat. It looks terribly uncomfortable but nothing like the discomfort I feel.

Our eyes lock, the nude woman stares at me fixedly, as if willing me to look away. A bright light illuminates her body. She almost glows. I don’t want to break her stare, but my eyes are drawn to the bicycle seat, which seems to be laughing at the laws of gravity.
 
In the seedier parts of town, you can probably pay for this kind of thing. At the Manchester Art Gallery, there’s no fee. This is Marina Abramovic’s Luminosity, part of 11 Rooms, an exhibition of performance art, taking place during the Manchester International Festival.

Each work is housed in separate boxes, sectioned off on the gallery floor. The 11 rooms contain different performances. Maybe I was distracted by the display of flesh, or the disconcerting stare, but I got out of Luminosity before I could understand the point of pinning a naked woman to a wall. If the aim was to embarrass repressed cultural philistines like me, then it succeeded.

It was the second room I made a quick exit from. The other was Playing the Martyr. Here, a man lies snoozing in a bed, his modesty protected by satin sheets. He wakes up and begins reading from a big, bound book. He starts discussing sexual acts in language that can’t be repeated in a family newspaper.

Then he begins stroking his chest. At that point, I left him to it.

Again, I’m sure this kind of thing is available in dark corners of Manchester, if you should  look hard enough. Quite what it’s doing in an art gallery, I’m not sure. I probably lack the creativity or intelligence to understand it properly. But I wasn’t the only one dashing for the door. In the end, our friend on the bed was left on his own, which was entirely appropriate given what it looked like he was about to do.

I should have known 11 Rooms wasn’t for me. I’m not really one for “performance art”. It’s one of those phrases that makes my eyes roll and lips curl involuntarily. “Experimental theatre” induces a similar reaction. The trouble is most of the Manchester International Festival programme doesn’t seem for me. Events that have appealed fall into the paid-for category, costing up to £40. Sadly, as a member of what I like to call the “squeezed lower middle”, I can hardly afford that.

There are, though, plenty of free events at the festival, and I’m on a mission to try some out.

Infinite Freedom Exercise takes place in the glorious setting of Lincoln Square, a short stroll from Albert Square. Images are projected onto a large screen throughout the day.

It shows a single figure, dressed in generic army gear, moving continuously, in what looks like a Gulf battlefield. At first glance the soldier looks like he’s doing the slowest warm-up ever.

Apparently the movements are designed to mimic American soldiers reacting to mortar attacks. The virtual-reality nature of the images make it look like a video game. A really, really boring one.

I went at lunchtime, when concentrating was difficult because of the constant flow of workers nipping to nearby Greggs. And this wasn’t helped by the two women sitting next to me who ignored the art work in front of them and instead bitched about their boss while chain-smoking. And I thought I was a philistine.

Much, much better was Audio Obscura. This uses Piccadilly Station as a back-drop to a thrilling piece of audio art. You are given headphones and for half an hour transported into the minds of fictional people passing through the station. It’s a combination of people watching and mind-reading. 

You hear snippets of other people’s internal monologues. As you can walk around Piccadilly, you can imagine the people passing by are the ones whose thoughts you are hearing. It’s a great idea, brilliantly executed.

My only criticism would be these imagined thoughts of fictional travellers seem rather miserable and monumental. I bet most people have more mundane things going through their minds as they wait for a train. During Audio Obscura, you don’t hear people say, “there’s nothing in for tea” or “hope I recorded Corrie”.

I finished my afternoon of free events at the Whitworth Art Gallery. I got there just in time to watch 1395 Days Without Red, a new film from the artists Sejla Kameric and Anri Sala. An actress plays the part of a young woman who must walk through the centre of Sarajevo during the siege of the mid 1990s. She retraces the route known as sniper’s alley, where innocent pedestrians were often targeted. As she moves through the streets, an orchestra rehearses elsewhere in the city.  

I thought I’d never stay for the film’s full running time of one hour.

But it gripped me for 60 minutes, using music and camera work to create terrifying tension. After that, I needed refreshment so I headed back to Albert Square and the festival pavilion.

Unfortunately, I found the drinks there are not free.

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