This photo from the Abramović opening is kind of touching. Her performance in the MoMA atrium is not supposed to include any interaction with those who sit across from her.
Ulay, Marina Abramović’s partner from 1975-1988, sits with her during her performance. This was the first time they “performed” together since The Great Wall Walk (1988), when they each walked over 1,200 miles (2,000 km) along the Great Wall of China starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle to say their goodbye.
Somebody in the comments asks the obvious: “I thought there was to be no interaction with the art.” To which the moderator responds: “Correct, no interaction, but this was her partner in life and art for 12 years who she has had almost no contact with since 1988…”
Marina Abramović is having a retrospective here at MoMA. It’s the first time a performance artist has had such a show, which will include reenactments of her pieces by other performers. The main event is a new endurance piece:
Marina Abramović will perform in the Atrium at MoMA throughout the
duration of the exhibition, starting before the Museum opens each day
and continuing until after it closes.
The New Yorker has an article (subscriber-only) on the exhibition that I haven’t read yet. There’s also a podcast interview with Judith Thurman, who wrote the article, that provides some useful context.
Due to the visual effect of viewing these from different angles, video does better justice to the works than a sequence of photos. Helpfully, Gareth Long provides such videos on his website. I’ve taken these and, with permission from the artist, edited them into a single clip. I also added a sound track, field recordings taken below Antarctic ice shelfs. The two seemed to fit somehow.
Gareth Long’s giant lenticular prints based on the iconic-yet-anachronous 1991 cover designs for JD Salinger’s books are freaking me out right now … Something an aesthete in an early Star Trek movie might have had hanging on his wall.
I’m kind of annoyed I missed the sold out Will Wright lecture last night. I had tickets and just totally forgot about it. But there’s a lot happening this weekend in my little sphere of interest, so maybe it’s good that I conserved some “going out energy.”
And of course there are a few workshops with space left at Trade School including “Caviar: Demystified,” “Collecting amidst disaster” and “Accidental Pornographies: Developing Underground Health Magazines and Stealth Distribution Models.”
This one day conference at the New Museum sounds interesting.
Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new — be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine — over the course of a single day.
$250 registration ($75 for students) until the February 23rd early bird deadline.
This is another MoMA-related bragging post, which I hope doesn’t turn into a regular feature here. Out of the dozens of questions we fielded that night I contributed (correct!) answers to exactly two, neither of which had to do with art history. Best team name goes to Glenn Lowry’s Apt (no official affiliation).
