Tag Archives: marina abramovic

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Willem Dafoe and Marina Abramovic examine the seminal performance artists life in Robert Wilson spectacle (photo © Lucie Jansch)

Willem Dafoe and Marina Abramović examine the seminal performance artist’s life — and death — in Robert Wilson spectacle (photo © Lucie Jansch)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Through December 21, $135, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

As the audience enters the Park Ave. Armory’s massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall to find their seats in the rising bleachers, three figures are already onstage, a trio of white-faced women representing Marina Abramović lying in coffins, motionless, hands clasped over their chests. On each seat is a copy of the Seventh Regiment Gazette newspaper, which announces, “Artist Marina Abramović Dies at 67.” Soon three dogs are onstage, sniffing at the red bones scattered around the coffins. For the next two and a half hours, episodes from the life of the seminal performance artist are depicted as only director Robert Wilson can do it: visually stunning and psychologically confounding, gorgeous and infuriating, rousing and frustrating, hysterically funny and annoyingly repetitive. Looking like a cross between Joel Grey in Cabaret,, the Joker from Batman, and the Heat Miser from The Year without a Santa Claus, Willem Dafoe narrates the story, primarily from a heavily littered platform in front of the right-hand side of the stage, calling out biographical tidbits from Abramović’s professional and personal life, some of which are then played out with a cast that includes Abramović first as her domineering mother, then as herself. Tales of her family being the first in their neighborhood in the former Yugoslavia to have a washing machine, her mother throwing an ashtray at her head, Marina considering getting a nose job, and her breakup walk with Ulay across the Great Wall of China are accompanied by music by Baby Dee, Scott Joplin, Paul Anka, and others, original compositions by William Basinski, and live performances of haunting songs by musical director, composer, and lyricist Antony, looking robust in a large, dark gown, and the Svetlana Spajić Group. The compelling second act is far more successful than the disappointing first, with a less abstract narrative and greater involvement from Dafoe. It is of course a visual spectacle, with wild costumes by Jacques Reynaud, crazy makeup by Joey Cheng, fab lighting by A. J. Weissbard, and video projections by Tomasz Jeziorski that feature snippets of some of Abramović’s durational performances. Although clear connections can be made between events in Abramović’s childhood and certain works, especially those that involve physical attacks on her body, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović is not meant to be mere biography, autobiography, or obituary; instead, it is another unique and unusual collaborative performance in a provocative career that has been experiencing a quite a resurgence over the last decade, with more to come.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARINA ABRAMOVIC

Marina Abramović’s life — and death — takes center stage with the help of Willem Dafoe, Antony, Robert Wilson, and others

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
December 13-21, $135, 7:30
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org

Performance artist extraordinaire Marina Abramović has been undergoing a career renaissance this century, highlighted by an exciting, vibrant 2010 MoMA retrospective, “The Artist Is Present,” and the 2012 documentary about the making of the exhibition. The Serbian-born, New York-based Abramović is a regular at fancy galas, and she even recently performed at Pace Gallery with Jay-Z. So what does the sixty-seven-year-old artist do, just as her life and career have become rejuvenated? Well, she stages her own funeral, of course. Actually, Abramović has decided to hand her biography over to experimental theater maestro Robert Wilson, the man behind such innovative and unique collaborations as The Black Rider with William S. Burroughs and Tom Waits, Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony with Bernice Johnson Reagon and Geoffrey Holder. In The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, the woman behind the “Rhythm” series and so many other cutting-edge works plays herself and her mother, with Willem Dafoe serving as narrator and songs by Antony Hegarty. Conceived and directed by Wilson, it is another audiovisual spectacle that has already had a documentary made about its creation; “Marina is the landscape, Bob the mind, Antony the heart, Willem the body,” director Giada Colagrande explains. The Life and Death of Marina Abramović will fill the Park Ave. Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall December 12-21; on December 15 at 6:15, armory artistic director Alex Poots will moderate an artist talk with Abramović and Dafoe in the Veterans Room as part of the Malkin Lecture Series.

COIL: MAGICAL

Anne Juren exposes her body and more in MAGICAL collaboration with Annie Dorsen at New York Live Arts

ANNE JUREN AND ANNIE DORSEN: MAGICAL
New York Live Arts, Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
January 17-18, 7:30, and January 19, 6:00, $30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org

In Magical, Anne Juren and Annie Dorsen recontextualize five seminal works in the history of feminist performance art, restaging them as theatrical entertainment for the twenty-first century. New Yorker Dorsen (cocreator of Passing Strange) and the Vienna-based Juren (founder of Wiener Tanz-und Kunstbewegung), who previously collaborated on Pièce Sans Paroles, explore ideas of illusion and transformation as Juren brings together the five radical pieces, which all date from between 1964 and 1975, taking them out of the avant-garde art gallery world and into a respected performance venue dedicated to movement artistry. They also add numerous magic tricks, designed by Steve Cuiffo, that play with reality and spectators’ perception. “Perhaps our generation has gotten a little comfortable inside the trap,” Dorsen tells Olivia Jane Smith in the program notes. “Have we won the right to self-exploit? Or self-objectivize?” The solo piece examines these questions and more in five re-creations, beginning with Carolee Schneeman’s Interior Scroll, in which Schneeman’s voice can be heard in a moving gold box, reading text that, back in 1975, came out of her vagina. Juren next appears in a kitchen as she reimagines Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, picking up a knife and making violent motions and exposing a breast and filling a cup with milk. She then takes on Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, using scissors to snip away pieces of her dress and undergarments until she is naked, then wraps part of the dress around her face and, as Marina Abramović did in Freeing the Body, starts dancing wildly, but this time to loud music that includes Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” in which Robert Plant famously screams, “Way down inside.”

After a film clip of Schneeman’s Meat Joy, Juren returns to Interior Scroll, pulling surprising things out of her vagina that deal with power, further exerting her control over the proceedings. It’s a tour-de-force sixty minutes that both honors those performance artists who came before her and forces the audience to consider issues of voyeurism, nudity, and the continually changing role of women in society. Back in the ’60s, Virginia Slims might have proclaimed, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” but Magical confirms what we all know: There’s still a long way to go. Magical continues at New York Live Arts through January 19 as part of PS 122’s Coil festival. The January 17 performance will be proceeded at 6:30 by the Come Early Conversation “The Feminist Performance Art Canon,” while the January 18 show will be followed by the Stay Late Discussion “Strategies of Illusion and Transformation in Modern Performance,” with Vallejo Gantner and Carla Peterson. Juren and Dorsen will also host a Shared Practice class on January 19 at 1:30 involving trance and improvisation in choreography.

THE CONTENDERS 2012 — MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Performance artist Marina Abramović is present in more ways than one in intimate documentary

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT (Matthew Akers, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 24, 7:30
Series continues through January 12
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.marinafilm.com

For forty years, Belgrade-born performance artist Marina Abramović has been presenting cutting-edge, often controversial live works that redefine what art is. For her highly anticipated major career retrospective at MoMA in 2010, “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present,” which was titled and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the longtime New Yorker had something extraordinary planned: For the run of the show, from March 14 through May 31, she would spend the entire time the museum was open sitting across from strangers, gazing into each other’s eyes for as long as the visitor wanted. Documentary cinematographer Matthew Akers takes viewers behind the scenes of that remarkable show in his directorial feature debut, also called Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Given unlimited access to both Abramović and MoMA, Akers follows the sixty-three-year-old artist as she prepares for the exhibition; heads to a country retreat where she trains several dozen men and women who will “re-perform” some of her older works; and reconnects with former partner and lover Ulay, with whom she first performed many of the pieces in the show. Abramović is seen relaxing in a tub, chopping vegetables, and taking a rare turn behind the wheel of a car, performing relatively menial tasks compared to her art, in which she flagellates herself, carves a star into her stomach, runs into walls, gets slapped by and slaps Ulay, and allows visitors to do whatever they want to her using various objects. The film is at its best when Abramović and Ulay open up about their relationship, get emotional over seeing the old van they used to live in, and discuss their final performance, “The Great Wall Walk,” when they started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and walked toward each other over the course of three months, then broke up. While various art critics and curators, including Biesenbach and the Whitney’s Chrissie Iles, sing Abramović’s praises, the film never delves into the more serious meaning behind her art and avoids examining its controversial nature, save for one brief news report decrying its use of nudity. But the long scenes in which Abramović and visitors look into each other’s eyes are absolutely mesmerizing; the elegant Abramović is always steady and stalwart, her concentration intoxicating, inspiring, and more than a little frightening, the opening of her eyes a work of art in and of itself, while the person opposite her tears up, smiles, or pats their heart softly, thanking her for the intense, emotional connection occurring between them, which is essentially what all art is about. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present is screening November 24 back where it all took place as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” consisting of exemplary films they believe will stand the test of time; upcoming entries include Amy Berg’s West of Memphis, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, David France’s How to Survive a Plague, and Behn Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild.

TURNING

Antony and the Johnsons and Charles Atlas celebrate sexual identity and personal freedom in beautifully poignant TURNING

TURNING (Charles Atlas, 2012)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, November 16
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.turningfilm.com

In 2004, musician and composer Antony Hegarty and film and video pioneer Charles Atlas premiered their multimedia collaboration, Turning, at the Whitney Biennial. The performance featured Antony and the Johnsons playing songs in front of a large screen on which Atlas projected live multiple images of a parade of “beauties” who one at a time slowly turned on a circular platform, standing tall and proud. The production went on an international tour, which Atlas and Antony document in a beautiful, intimate film version that made its U.S. premiere November 11 as part of the DOC NYC festival and now opens theatrically on November 16 at the IFC Center. Atlas, a former filmmaker-in-residence with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and director of the widely hailed The Legend of Leigh Bowery, takes viewers behind the scenes as the cast rehearses, puts on their costumes and makeup, gets pep talks from Antony, and opens up about their lives. Throughout the film, the women — Julia Yasuda, Catrina Delapena, Honey Dijon, Joie Iacono, Joey Gabriel, Kembra Pfahler, Nomi Ruiz, Stacey Marks, Johanna Constantine, Eliza Douglas, and Morisane Sunny Shiroma, who come from very different backgrounds and professional disciplines — share their poignant, emotional stories, addressing deeply personal issues of androgyny, transsexuality, and other aspects of sexual and gender identity. The soundtrack features Antony and the Johnsons — violinist Maxim Moston, cellist Julia Kent, bassist Jeff Langston, guitarist and violinist Rob Moose, drummer Parker Kindred, pianist Thomas Bartlett, horn player Christian Biegai, and accordionist Will Holshouser — performing such hauntingly evocative songs as “Everything Is New,” “For Today I Am a Buoy,” “Kiss My Name,” “Twilight,” and “Spiralling” as the women celebrate the freedom to be themselves in a defiant, public way. “Are you a boy / Are you a girl,” Antony, himself a former member of the underground avant-garde LGBT performance troupe Blacklips, repeats in “I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy.” In the subtly powerful Turning, such labels don’t matter as a group of women face their future with confidence and hope. Antony, Gabriel, Ruiz, Honey Dijon, Shiroma, Douglas, Marks, and Connie Fleming will be on hand for the 7:45 screening on November 16, Atlas and Constantine will attend the 7:45 screening on November 17, Atlas and MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach will be at the 7:45 screening on November 18, and Antony and performance artist Marina Abramović will be at the IFC Center for the 7:45 screening on November 20.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC IN CONVERSATION WITH MARCO ANELLI

Marco Anelli photographed every person who sat opposite Marina Abramović during her marathon staring sessions at MoMA (© Marco Anelli)

The Strand Book Store
Third Floor Rare Book Room
828 Broadway at 12th St.
Tuesday, October 16, 7:00 (must buy copy of book or $10 Strand gift card)
212-473-1452
www.strandbooks.com
www.marcoanelli.com

In the spring of 2010, Yugoslavian-born performance artist Marina Abramović sat in a chair in MoMA’s atrium for seventy-eight days, staring deeply into the eyes of individual visitors as part of the retrospective “The Artist Is Present.” It was a powerful sight to see, filled with energy and emotion. Earlier this year, Matthew Akers documented the immensely popular event in a film also titled The Artist Is Present, going behind the scenes of Abramović’s creative process. Now Italian photojournalist Marco Anelli, who specializes in photographing long-term projects, has published Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramović (September 2012, Damiani, $40), which captures every single person who sat across from Abramović and includes the amount of time they did so. (People were allowed to sit for as long as they wanted, from several minutes to many hours.) The book also features pieces by Abramović and curators Klaus Biesenbach and Chrissie Iles. On Tuesday, October 16, Abramović and Anelli, who pulled off quite a feat of duration himself, will discuss the project in a special presentation at the Strand. You must purchase a copy of the book or a $10 Strand gift card in order to attend what should be a fascinating discussion.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Performance artist Marina Abramović is present in more ways than one in intimate documentary

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT (Matthew Akers, 2012)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
June 13-26
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

For forty years, Belgrade-born performance artist Marina Abramović has been presenting cutting-edge, often controversial live works that redefine what art is. For her highly anticipated major career retrospective at MoMA in 2010, “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present,” which was titled and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, the longtime New Yorker had something extraordinary planned: For the run of the show, from March 14 through May 31, she would spend the entire time the museum was open sitting across from strangers, gazing into each other’s eyes for as long as the visitor wanted. Documentary cinematographer Matthew Akers takes viewers behind the scenes of that remarkable show in his directorial feature debut, also called Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Given unlimited access to both Abramović and MoMA, Akers follows the sixty-three-year-old artist as she prepares for the exhibition; heads to a country retreat where she trains several dozen men and women who will “re-perform” some of her older works; and reconnects with former partner and lover Ulay, with whom she first performed many of the pieces in the show. Abramović is seen relaxing in a tub, chopping vegetables, and taking a rare turn behind the wheel of a car, performing relatively menial tasks compared to her art, in which she flagellates herself, carves a star into her stomach, runs into walls, gets slapped by and slaps Ulay, and allows visitors to do whatever they want to her using various objects. The film is at its best when Abramović and Ulay open up about their relationship, get emotional over seeing the old van they used to live in, and discuss their final performance, “The Great Wall Walk,” when they started at opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and walked toward each other over the course of three months, then broke up. While various art critics and curators, including Biesenbach and the Whitney’s Chrissie Iles, sing Abramović’s praises, the film never delves into the more serious meaning behind her art and avoids examining its controversial nature, save for one brief news report decrying its use of nudity. But the long scenes in which Abramović and visitors look into each other’s eyes are absolutely mesmerizing; the elegant Abramović is always steady and stalwart, her concentration intoxicating, inspiring, and more than a little frightening, the opening of her eyes a work of art in and of itself, while the person opposite her tears up, smiles, or pats their heart softly, thanking her for the intense, emotional connection occurring between them, which is essentially what all art is about. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present opens June 13 at Film Forum for a two-week run prior to its debut on HBO on July 2, with director Akers on hand to talk about the project at the 7:50 screening opening night.