Marina Abramovic: the latest target in the rightwing culture wars

Abramović, Londres (I e II)

INVENTAR O MUNDO

Já, por diversas vezes, Laurie Anderson, involuntariamente, desempenhou o papel de profetisa dos tempos modernos. Aconteceu, primeiro, em 1981, quando, em "O Superman (For Massenet)", vinte anos antes, “viu” e “ouviu” imagens e vozes que lhe diziam “Well, you don't know me, but I know you, and I've got a message to give to you: here come the planes, they're American planes, made in America (…) And the voice said: neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”. Eram, afinal, apenas palavras e frases de uma opera (Le Cid), de Jules Massenet, e das Histórias, de Heródoto, mas, numa manhã de Setembro de 2001 – seria essa a autêntica Odisseia no Espaço? – todos voltámos a vê-las e escutá-las, em directo, sob os céus de Nova Iorque. Em 1995, em "The Cultural Ambassador" (de The Ugly One With The Jewels), citando Don De Lillo, afirmara também que "os terroristas são os derradeiros artistas que restam pois são os únicos capazes de verdadeiramente nos surpreender", antecipando, aliás, o modo como, a quente, Karlheinz Stockhausen qualificaria o 11 de Setembro: “a maior obra de arte de todos os tempos, o sonho de qualquer músico: trabalhar durante dez anos para a realização de uma obra e morrer durante a consumação dela". Agora, a propósito de Dirtday! – último painel do tríptico que iniciou com Happiness e continuou em The End Of The Moon –, confessa que o que a motiva é não desejar que, daqui a cinquenta anos, possa existir quem olhe para trás e pense “Ainda me recordo de quando não havia um polícia em cada esquina...”

Essencialmente assente no último álbum (Homeland, 2010) mas não exclusivamente delimitado por ele, Dirtday! é um “grande filme mental, uma enorme sala onde as pessoas poderão imprimir as suas próprias marcas”, alimentado “por uma espécie de raiva e pela minha incapacidade para aceitar que não esteja toda a gente na rua a protestar contra o que lhe está a acontecer”. E, citando Carl Sagan que defendia que “toda a realidade é uma construção”, Laurie Anderson dá um passo em frente e dispõe-se a modificá-la. Porque se, no fundo, “muitas coisas que poderiam acontecer não acontecem”, isso se deve ao facto de não recorrermos às armas que temos mesmo à mão: “Os políticos são, fundamentalmente, contadores de histórias. Descrevem o mundo tal como ele é e também como pensam que deveria ser. Na qualidade de colega contadora de histórias, parece-me, realmente, uma excelente altura para reflectir sobre como as palavras podem, literalmente, criar o mundo. Precisamos de histórias para compreender o passado e avançar para o futuro; se não fosse assim, viveríamos apenas num mundo de sensações. As histórias oferecem-nos um sentido de possibilidade: se não gostamos de uma, podemos inventar outra”.

Numa conversa com Marina Abramović, em 2003, Anderson contava que uma das suas citações preferidas devia-a a Lenine que dissera que “a ética é a estética do futuro”. E interpretava-a como significando que, algum dia, “conseguiremos ser tão bons uns para os outros e comunicar de uma forma tão clara que poderemos dispensar todas aquelas coisas que, hoje, colocamos na categoria de ‘beleza’”. Já houve utopias bem mais mortíferas do que esta. Mas não nos colocaremos, seguramente, em perigo se comparecermos à chamada de Laurie Anderson que, em diálogo com Fenway Bergamot – a sua mais recente “audio drag alter-ego persona” –, nos conduzirá através do seu particularíssimo labirinto sterneano de “shaggy dog stories” onde todos os mundos são possíveis. (dia 22: Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães; dia 23: Teatro Gil Vicente, Coimbra; dia 24: Teatro Aveirense, Aveiro; dia 25: Teatro Cine, Torres Vedras; dia 26: Teatro Virgínia, Torres Novas)

MARINA ABRAMOVIC - ROLE EXCHANGE

"In 1975, Marina Abramovic had been a professional artist for 10 years. On the evening of July 2 of that year, the artist exchanged places with Suze, a woman who was a professional prostitute for 10 years as well. Both took on each other's roles for four hours – Abramovic sat in the prostitute's display window in Amsterdam's red light district, while Suze stood in for Marina Abramovic at the opening of her exhibition at De Appel. Both of them bore full responsibility for their unusual four-hour occupation. Their experiences where registered by means of two Super 8 cameras (...)".

"Like many of Marina Abramovic' works, Role Exchange deals with the female body – in this case in relation to architecture, space and the extreme social contexts in which women operate. By adopting the role of prostitute, Abramovic places herself within a space defined by explicitly masculine criteria, in which women construct an identity or fantasy catered to men's desires. On the other hand, Suze, the prostitute, performs a role within another carefully constructed social context: the art world, where such an 'intrusion' from everyday life highlights an art space's particular rituals and power structures as well. In this way, Role Exchange emphasises and shifts our perceptions, categorisations and expectations of the social environment and asks the question of authenticity – pointing out that identity is constructed by performing within the social systems in which we find ourselves". (daqui; audio)

Em exibição, actualmente, no Museu de História de Amsterdão, integrado em The Hoerengracht.

(2010)

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ BY LAURIE ANDERSON (II)

Balkan Erotic Epic - Marina Abramović (2005)

LA - One of my favorite baffling quotes comes from Lenin: “Ethics is the aesthetics of the future”. I guess it means that sometime in the future we’ll all be good to each other and communicate so clearly that we won’t need those things that we put in the beauty category. They’ll just be fetishes, relics. In my paper I talked about how belief and beauty rub up against each other to make something, and how uneasily they rest together. I used the Parthenon as an example. When the Parthenon was a place of worship, everybody brought their beautiful statues to dedicate to the gods, their kouri, to celebrate their victories, their dedications and their prayers. They propped them up all around the Parthenon, which quickly came to look like a museum, there was so much stuff there. So they all went back to the caves and the woods and the rivers where they could find the gods, because they couldn’t find them in the Parthenon anymore.

Tesla Coil - Marina Abramović

 

MA - You know, there was a very interesting breakfast in the ‘70s, which a friend of mine, Lutz Becker, invited me to. This old man was sitting there, and I didn’t realize for half of the breakfast that he was Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect. He was just out of prison and he was helping with the maquettes for a movie about Hitler that Lutz was making, called Double Headed Eagle.

LA - Lots of symmetry in that, by the way.

MA - And I asked Speer a question: “Why did you use concrete for all those buildings?” I’ll never forget his answer. He said, “When they get destroyed, they still look good”. The concrete collapse looks better than bricks: there is more momentum; they fall into big pieces. That an architect, who builds his stuff for forever, was thinking of destruction as part of the process! The other funny thing about worshipping — I was in Thailand, in one of their fantastic old temples where you can go outside and buy a little piece of gold leaf to put on a sculpture. I was looking through this huge place, and in a dusty corner was a big fuse box with all the electrical wires, which somebody had covered in gold leaf. I loved the idea of worshipping electricity as a mystery. And why not?

(aqui)

(2010)

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ BY LAURIE ANDERSON (I)

Marina Abramović, Victory, 1997, framed
color photograph mounted on aluminium

In the middle of March Marina Abramović and I sat around in my studio and talked — or riffed, since it was more like making music than talking. We went jumping from subject to subject: the future of objects, falling apart, teachers, picking up threads, audiences, nonattachment. Marina’s voice is breathless. She purrs, rolls a lot of syllables, leaves out articles. Laughs a lot. Talking with her is as intimate as being in a steam room. (...)

MA - Okay, if I can remember. So let’s start with simple questions and then we’ll come to art. When you were a child, did you have some experiences that you can’t explain rationally?

LA - I made them up. I tried to invent situations that were irrational, that had never happened before.

MA - Such as?

LA - A man is walking down the road. A Canadian goose falls right on his head; at the same moment there’s a triple rainbow and the guy has a heart attack. (...)

Marina Abramović, Art Must Be Beautiful, Artists Must
Be Beautiful, 1975, framed black-and-white photograph

MA - The thing is, I’m interested in this idea that we organize everything and then at the last minute, everything changes, takes a different turn. I like that so much. I learned about that from the Tibetans.

LA - Remember the mandala the monks created in the Museum of Natural History in the late ‘80s? It took them six weeks to make it, dropping the colored sand grain by grain. I was there when two kids came by and scuffed the whole thing up.

MA - And then?

LA - The monks laughed.

MA - Of course.

(aqui)

(2010)

STARING AT MARINA ABRAMOVIC

"At Marina Abramovic's MOMA retrospective 'The Artist is Present' the public is given the opportunity to sit across from (and generally stare at) the renowned performance artist for as long as they like. Photographer Marco Anelli takes a photo of each participant and catalogs them in a Flickr stream that currently contains over 1,300 portraits. The album captures celebrities, super fans, and average museum goers with a tolerance for 8-hour lines as they react to Marina's gaze, be it in terror, amusement, or more often than not, by crying like a baby". (aqui)

Lou Reed, 9 minutes

Isabella Rossellini, 8 minutes

Sharon Stone, 10 minutes

Björk, 4 minutes

Robert Wilson, 13 minutes

(2010)

PERFORMANCE ART

Old-school (Marina Abramovic/Ulay - Imponderabilia)

Moderna (José Sócrates/Anónimo - Trocas-te)

(2010)