Dedicated to Susan Sontag
From November 9 through November 15, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Marina Abramovic: Seven Easy Pieces, seven consecutive nights of performances in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda from 5 PM to 12 AM.
Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade during the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always been both her subject and medium, and the parameters of her early performances were determined by her endurance. In Seven Easy Pieces Abramović reenacts seminal performance works by Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, VALIE EXPORT, Bruce Nauman, and Gina Pane dating from the 1960s and í70s, interpreting them as one would a musical score and documenting their realization. The project is premised on the fact that little documentation exists for most performance works from this critical early period; one often has to rely upon testimonies from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given piece. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibility of redoing and preserving such performative work. Presented in the Rotunda over a seven-day period, the works include a new piece by Abramović on November 15 created for this project.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
November 9, 5 PM to 12 AM
Bruce Nauman, Body Pressure (1974, Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf). Nauman constructed a false wall nearly identical in size to an existing wall behind it. A pink poster with black typeface invited visitors to perform their own action by pressing against the wall.
November 10, 5 PM to 12 AM
Vito Acconci, Seedbed (1972, Sonnabend Gallery, New York). Acconci occupied the space under a false floor, masturbating and speaking through a microphone to visitors walking above in an attempt to establish an “intimate” connection with them.
November 11, 5 PM to 12 AM
VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969, Augusta-Lichtspiele, Munich). Wearing pants with the crotch removed, EXPORT walked through a cinema during a film screening, offering the spectators visual contact with a real female body. Walking up and down the aisles among the mostly male patrons, she challenged them to “look at the real thing” instead of passively enjoying images of women on the screen.
November 12, 5 PM to 12 AM
Gina Pane, Self-Portrait(s) (1973, Galerie Stadler, Paris). Pane lay on a metal bed above lit candles. She made incisions with a razor blade in the skin around her fingernails and lips while slides of women painting their nails were projected on the wall. Her back turned to the audience, she recited “They won’t see anything” while a camera recorded women’s reactions in the audience. Facing forward again, she gargled with milk and spit it into a bowl, until the milk and her blood mixed.
November 13, 5 PM to 12 AM
Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965, Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf). With his head covered in honey and gold leaf, Beuys cradled a dead rabbit, showing it pictures on the wall and whispering to it. He wore an iron sole on his right foot and a felt sole on his left.
November 14, 5 PM to 12 AM
Marina Abramović, Lips of Thomas (1975, Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck). Abramović ate a kilogram of honey and drank a liter of red wine out of a glass. She broke the glass with her hand, incised a star in her stomach with a razor blade, and then whipped herself until she “no longer felt pain.” She lay down on an ice cross while a space heater suspended above caused her to bleed more profusely.
November 15, 5 PM to 12 AM
Premiere of new performance by Marina Abramović
Funding for Seven Easy Pieces has been generously provided by the Marina Abramović Leadership Committee. In-kind support provided by Chrome Hearts.
ABOVE: Marina Abramović. Performance stills from Lips of Thomas, 1975. Photos courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. ©2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS). NY/VG Bild-Kunst. Bonn.
tags
No comments:
Post a Comment