2.3 Every body: performance’s other bodies

By Anna Fenemore (pp.38-50)

  • Perception is “something we do” (de Guevara) and “a skillful [bodily] activity” (Noë)
    (some body observed , the spectating body)
  • As well as there being some bodies that act, react and behave as singular bodies, these bodies might also simultaneously act as a body of bodies.
    Body as a group – a communal grouping that act and react, or behave as one some of the time.
  • When in action, an individual’s sensorimotor means of surveying action recedes.

 

Pitches, J., and Popat, S. (ed.) (2011) Performance Perspectives: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

7 Thoughts about Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic

≥ It manipulates the repetition and temporality[1]

≥ It keeps a relationship with body and architecture and performance and photography[2]

≥ It demonstrates that all understanding occurs through embodied acts of attendance, which occur in time and must be repeated.[3]

≥ Abramovic’s body becomes a metonym for the performances that she re-performed[4]

≥ It addresses duration, physical stamina, myth and intensive states of mind, such as attentiveness and focus[5]

≥ It is about re-performance , habits, ritual, deprivation, purification, privacy …[6]

≥ …and exhaustion[7]

 

 

[1] Santone, J. (2008) Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces: Critical Documentation Strategies for Preserving Art’s History. Leonardo. Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 147–152
[2] ibid
[3] Shalshon, L. (2013) Enduring Documents: Re-Documentation in Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces. Contemporary Theatre Review, London: Routledge,  Vol. 23, No. 3, 432–441
[4] Powell, B.D. (2010)   Seven Easy Pieces and Performance Document(ation)s. Theatre Annual 63. The College of William and Mary. pp 64-86
[5] Emerling, J. (2010). Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present: Museum of Modern Art, New York. X-tra: Contemporary Art Quarterly, Vol. 13, pp.26-35
[6] ibid
[7] ibid

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  • Shalshon, L. (2013) Enduring Documents: Re-Documentation in Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces. Contemporary Theatre Review, London: Routledge, 23, No. 3, 432–441
  • Thomas, H. Reconstructing the Dance: In Search of Authenticity. The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. pp. 121-145