Marina Abramovíc: 512 Hours Serpentine Diaries
After Marina Abramovi? has closed the doors to visitors at the end of each day of her performance 512 Hours at the Serpentine Gallery she records a summary of the past eight hours by speaking directly to camera. This eloquent and moving record is a testament to “one of the most difficult things she has ever done.” The short daily films will trace the fluctuations and developments of her performance piece, which begins with an empty space and unlimited possibilities.
Marina at Midnight will launch Today Friday 13th June with The Space, a new creative online platform dedicated to new digital art. The first three installments will be broadcast on Friday, with a new diary released at midnight each night, from 13th June until 25th August on www.thespace.org; www.serpentinegalleries.org; www.illy.com; www.mai-hudson.org. The diaries will be available to watch again on all platforms.
For her Serpentine exhibition, Marina Abramovi? performs in the Serpentine Gallery from 10am to 6pm, 6 days a week for 64 days. Her only materials are herself, the audience and a selection of common objects that she will use in a constantly changing sequence of events. The public becomes the performing body, participating in the delivery of an unprecedented moment in the history of performance art.
Abramovi? is a pioneer of performance as an art form; using her own body as subject and object, she has pushed the physical and mental limits of her being. 512 Hours is the first major performance by Abramovi? since her monumental piece The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2010, in which visitors were invited to sit in silence opposite the artist and gaze into her eyes for an unspecified amount of time. Abramovi? performed this work every day for three months.
In the early 1970s, as a young artist in Belgrade, Abramovi? began exploring the relationship between artist and audience. Since 1978 she has conducted a series of workshops with art students, using a series of simple exercises to increase physical and mental awareness. Over the course of her career, Abramovi? has continued to develop these workshops, expanding their scope to reach a general public, through the Marina Abramovi? Institute.
About The Artist
Marina Abramovi? was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia. She moved to Amsterdam in 1976 and has lived in New York since 2001. Her pioneering works of performance art have made her the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide at institutions including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005) Museum of Modern Art, New York in (2010); the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2011); Kunsthalle, Vienna (2012). Abramovi?’s work was also included in Documenta VI, VII and IX (1977, 1982 and 1992); Venice Biennale 1976 and 1997, with the exhibition of Balkan Baroque in the latter earning her the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist.
Marina at Midnight is co-commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries and The Space, in collaboration with Illycaffé and Marina Abramovi? Institute (MAI)
