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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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Marina Abramović: Performance vs. acting
MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach talks with artist Marina Abramović and actor James Franco. To learn more about what artists have to say, take our online course, Modern and Contemporary Art, 1945-1989. Created by The Museum of Modern Art.
Want to join the conversation?
- 0:55- she says in acting you lose yourself, but you can't in performance. How can this be accurate, if she is willing to let others cut her, and she eats gold as "art"?(3 votes)
- Nothing can be art if without context. Eating gold and cutting are not art, and these are not the things recommended of course. (And infants don't only eat gold, they taste everything in their hands.) Performance art here is not to act a character, but to do something as planned. There is no way you can lose yourself if you are performing letting others cut you or eating gold (and this is not a performance it is part of her teaching), you cannot lose yourself because you ARE being cut and you actually eat gold. You aren't actually cut or eating gold if you are acting Abramovic in a theater.(2 votes)
- ~2:00- wouldn't re-performance be acting?(3 votes)
- For example you re-perform "Rhythm 0," the audience may or may not cut you or do whatever people did to Abramovic, so the content is already different, and you don't feel the same as Abramovic did, the audience won't feel them same as the audience in Abramovic's performance either. You don't act as her, because you need to be yourself to be cut (if any) or being passive, cold or "dead," and those are your own manipulation of your own mind and body, not acting at all.(2 votes)
- Which do you think is better? Performance vs. acting?(3 votes)
- I think performance beacause you can le out your inner you.(1 vote)
- Was that a pile of bones In one pic?(1 vote)
- 1:42, the picture that shows a figure of a woman in white resting on/playing with bones, is that a performance? From where?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- For me it was huge
surprise when you say to me, "I have to know James." Because you know, James
is Hollywood actor. So how is he connected to
performance in any way? And then I met him and
I was very surprised. James, when we meet, that
you knew about performance. - There is an incredible difference between acting and performing. Both of you talk very loud. Both of you are very present. You are a very performance-driven actor. And you are a very theatrical performer. I basically said, "James,
you have to meet Marina "to understand that it's
completely the opposite "of what you are doing." - It's true on one level, but this is also true on another
level when you really act. And you get into this
character in such a deep level that you become the character. And there's even danger
that you lose yourself, like your person, your everything. And performance I can't. But in acting, you actually have to. - When I've heard you talk
about your performances, although you're not playing a character there is kind of a performance mindset or something that you go into, right, where you can do things that normally, in your life, you're afraid of or that you don't normally do
or that kind of thing, right? And that's a different, I think, a different kind of head space. - To me, the most interesting is this new element comes out. Kind of border between
performance and acting. What's real; what's not real. So in a way, that creates new dialogue. That creates some new
territory to explore. With theater and acting
you create a distance which you don't create in performance. Performance is no distance. It's like, go to the bones. But to the theater you can
actually play the character even as your own self,
but you have the distance. - Does the kind of documentation become a consideration in pieces
and that kind of thing? - Yeah, it used to be documentation. It used to be photographs,
remaining objects, it used to be video and film. I think the new thing
about this exhibition is it's really about re-performance. - [Klaus] So it's really
about having a score, and having a person there for
2 1/2 hours, for one hour, for eight hours, and it's authorized. - Normally it would be
just for the opening, maybe one performance and that's it. But now will be the
full time, three months. That's really, I think, revolutionary. - I think the performances will be present as if they were a sculpture. - One of your rules with
Ulay, and I think maybe for a lot of things you
do, there's no rehearsal. Is that right?
- [Marina] Yes. - So, to a certain extent you've set up a circumstance, but then the situation itself kind of
imposes itself on you, right? You don't know exactly what's
going to happen. And... - Yeah, is new as for me
as the public watching it. And that's kind of credible fresh because there's no rehearsal. But there's another reason
why I can't rehearse. Because I will never have
that kind of stamina. Because public give you this extra energy. If I rehearse any of these pieces, in half of the piece I
will say, "I can't do it." I think the same does it when
you really do live acting, with the front of public theater. There's something with the public that gives you this extra thing. This is going on for three months. And it's really endurance
kind of experiment. And actors are not used to this. And how this time change you because if you will do something for three months I don't know if it's acting
anymore; become real life. - But in many aspects of Marina's shows are complete experiment. So I think we are both a bit nervous and intensely curious
because it's an experiment. But every experiment you do it and then you don't know the outcome. So... - Because in the end they really can say "Okay, we done it." But we don't know yet.