The Abramovic Method was born from the artist's reflections on three major performances from the last decade: The House With the Ocean View (2002), Seven Easy Pieces (2005) and The Artist is Present (2010). These performances left a deep imprint on Abramovic's perception of her work in relation to the public. "In my experience, as developed in a career of over 40 years, I have arrived at the conclusion that the public plays a very important and indeed crucial role in performance," she explains. "The performance has no meaning without the public because, as Duchamp said, it is the public that completes the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that public and performer are not only complementary but almost inseparable."
It will thus be the public, guided and prompted by the artist, that experiences her "interactive installations" in The Abramovic Method. These works, which combine furniture with embedded minerals, allow for the public to interact with them though standing, sitting or lying down on the sculptures. These objects present a physical and mental pathway that transforms the spaces of the PAC into an experience made up of darkness and light, absence and presence, and altered perceptions of space and time. Through this pathway, people are offered the chance to expand their senses, to observe, and to learn to listen, both to others and to themselves.
This is the Abramovic Method through which the artist trained herself, a process that reached its peak in the performance The Artist is Present at the MoMA (2010), in which she performed daily during public hours for duration of the exhibition. For this, her longest solo piece to date, she sat in silence at a table, inviting visitors to take the seat across from her for as long as they chose within the timeframe of the museum's hours of operation. Interacting solely through eye contact, the involvement of the vistors completed the perfomance and allowed for the participants to have a personal experience with the artist and the piece itself.
Tuesday 20 March, in Galleria Lia Rumma, Marina Abramovic opens a second exhibition With Eyes Closed I See Happiness, another key to the reading of the "Method".
Wednesday 21 March, at Dal Verme Theater, the lecture by Marina Abramovic "The past, future and present of performance art"
Thursday 22 March, at the Apollo spazioCinema, the film "Marina Abramovic. The Artist is Present"
PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea
Via Palestro 14, Milan
Through 10 June 2012
