An artist renowned for allowing spectators complete freedom over her body during a six-hour performance is preparing for a return to the UK stage.
Marina Abramović, a Serbian conceptual artist, gained fame for her provocative 1974 piece where she stood passively, permitting the audience to do as they wished. This performance, known as ‘Rhythm 0’, featured 72 objects including a rose, perfume, scissors, and a gun, with Abramović accepting ‘full responsibility’ for the outcome. The event began calmly but escalated, culminating in an attendee cutting her neck to drink her blood.
Reflecting on the performance, Abramović told The Guardian in 2014 that she had been ‘ready to die’, remarking: “How lucky I am.”
Following this piece, Abramović has undertaken various other performances, one of which involved achieving nine orgasms. She is now preparing for another live performance next month.
Aged 78, Abramović’s latest endeavor, ‘Balkan Erotic Epic’, is scheduled to be performed in Manchester, UK, at Factory International from October 9 to 19.
Describing it as her ‘most ambitious work’, the performance will include a cast of 70 people, involving dancers, singers, and musicians working alongside Abramović.
In a conversation with The Guardian, Abramović expressed that the show provides an opportunity to revisit her Slavic heritage and explore ‘ancient rituals and address sexuality in connection with the universe and the mysteries of our existence’.
“Through this project I would like to show poetry, desperation, pain, hope, suffering and reflect our own mortality,” she elaborated.
Factory International’s website mentions that the four-hour performance aims to ‘explore the eroticism, spirituality, and traditions of Abramović’s homeland through 13 visceral scenes’, encouraging the audience to ‘choose their own path’, with ‘pop-up encounters punctuating the action, bringing bodies together in dance, song, and ritual’.
The show features scenes such as ‘Scaring the Gods’, ‘Fertility Rite’, and ‘Massaging the Breast’, with the latter being fairly self-explanatory.
Event organizers have noted that the performance will be a four-hour ritual, offering audiences the freedom to ‘choose their own path’.
According to Factory International’s website, the piece poses a timeless question to its audience: “What are our bodies truly for?”
Following its UK run, Abramović’s performance will be showcased in cities including Barcelona, Berlin, New York, and Hong Kong.