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Course: The Museum of Modern Art > Unit 1
Lesson 7: Performance Art- Maria Hassabi | PLASTIC
- Yvonne Rainer: "The Concept of Dust, or How do you look when there's nothing left to move?"
- Jannis Kounellis, "Da inventare sul posto (To invent on the spot)"
- Marina Abramović
- Marina Abramović: What is performance art?
- Marina Abramović: Marina's first performance
- Marina Abramović: The Body as medium
- Marina Abramović: Documenting performance
- Marina Abramović: Teaching the next generation
- Marina Abramović: "Cleaning the House" workshop
- Marina Abramović: Performance vs. acting
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Maria Hassabi | PLASTIC
Artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi’s PLASTIC is a commissioned live installation in which dancers perform throughout MoMA continuously during opening hours. With no apparent beginning and end, PLASTIC reformats the duration of theatrical performance into a month-long museum exhibition. PLASTIC will be on view at MoMA February 21—March 20, 2016. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1P1Qq6A.
Want to join the conversation?
"How can a transitional space become a place of pause?" (0:25) Could it be a cultural USA thing that people don't sit on stairs? I feel there are many places world-wide where it is more accepted to sit down on the stairs to churches, buildings, stations etc.(3 votes)
That is such a good idea! It definitely made me think more about the things I use every day in a different way.(1 vote)
I don't get it... Can someone explain this one to me, please?(1 vote)
0:25Video transcript
We use the stairs
as a place of just going up, getting somewhere
or leaving from something and not spending any time. It’s not a place
that usually artworks are presented. This is a space of transition. I was interested in placing
work there for this reason. How can a transitional space
become a place of pause? So, the movement on the stairs has a very forward
direction to it. It's falling forward. The choreography
goes back and forth between this very secure place to completely falling
down and apart. Because it has so much to do
with this transferring from one place to another
and how it gets articulated. So every little thing,
even just turning the head, becomes a movement. You hold positions
for a long time, that makes the physicality
also more fragile. Your muscles start weakening
and shaking and all of that. So, you're constantly
dealing with this— it's not fear—but chance of falling, chance of everything
getting destroyed in a way. Your body, the choreography
the aesthetics and all of that.