performance

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Art

Marina Abramović Is Recreating Her Iconic ‘The Artist Is Present’ to Raise Money for Ukrainians in Need

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art (2010). Photo by Marco Anelli. All images courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York

The latest in artist-driven projects to support Ukrainians affected by war, Marina Abramović is reviving her famous performance piece “The Artist is Present” to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. Originally presented at the Museum of Modern Art back in 2010, the iconic work will be restaged in two iterations—one for a single person and another for two—at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, where a solo show spanning decades of the Serbian artist’s work is on view through April 16. Photographer Marco Anelli documented nearly all 1,500 people who sat in silence across from Abramović 12 years ago and will also shoot these new encounters.

This recreation follows the artist’s heartfelt message of solidarity with the nation, which she released the day after Russia declared war. “An attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us. It’s an attack on humanity and has to be stopped,” she says. Abramović also recently installed a massive public work, titled “Crystal Wall of Crying,” at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv. Completed in October 2021, the outdoor monument honors Jews murdered in the region in one of the largest massacres and is one of many of her pieces focused on healing.

Bidding for “The Artist is Present: A Benefit Auction for Ukraine” is open through March 25, and all proceeds will be donated to the nonprofit Direct Relief.

Installation view of Marina Abramović: Performative

Art Design

‘Real Time’ Uses Amusing Manual Techniques To Track the Passage of Each Minute

Part of a series of performances centered on cumbersome and surreal timekeeping devices, Maarten Baas’s “Sweeper’s Clock” chronicles two men as they track each passing moment with heaps of garbage. The aerially shot film follows the pair as they push lines of trash representative of the minute and hour hands around a large circle faintly defined in the landscape, keeping time as they go.

Released in 2009, the video piece parallels other clever works in Baas’s Real Time series, including a painter manually unveiling a digital display and another showing the Dutch artist trapped inside a grandfather clock. Visitors to the international terminal of the Amsterdam airport in 2016 were also greeted with “Schiphol Clock,” an analog device suspended from the ceiling in which a man adjusted the time by hand. “The worker’s blue overalls, yellow rag, and red bucket pay homage to the famous Dutch artist, Mondrian,” Baas writes.

Watch more of the artist’s works at the intersection of art, film, and design on Vimeo. (via Laughing Squid)

Art

Ritualistic ‘Moon Drawings’ by Yuge Zhou Etch Patterns in Snow and Sand

January 2021. All images © Yuge Zhou, shared with permission

“In traditional Chinese culture, the moon is a carrier of human emotions,” writes artist Yuge Zhou. “The full moon symbolizes family reunion.” This belief grounds Zhou’s meditative series of landscape drawings that etch wide, circular patterns in the beach along Lake Michigan and in snowy parking lots near her apartment.

The Chicago-based artist postponed a visit with her family in Beijing back in 2020 and has since channeled her longing to return into her ritualistic performances. Filming aerially at dawn, Zhou traces the patterns left by the moon with her suitcase and allows the glow of nearby light poles to illuminate the concentric markings. Stills from the videos appear more like dreamy renderings than footage, an aesthetic choice that corresponds with their allegorical roots in the Han dynasty legend, “The lake reflecting the divine moon,” about the universality of longing.

Having created five works in summer and winter, Zhou likens the pieces to “mantras suspended in a time of waiting.” Until she’s able to return to China, she plans to add more drawings to her collection and continue “bringing the moon down to me on the earth.” For more of the artist’s multi-media works, visit her site and Vimeo.

February 2022

January 2020

July 2020

February 2022

August 2021

Dance

A Mesmerizing Dance Performance for the Paralympics Hand Off Ceremony Choreographed by Sadeck Waff

As part of a closing hand-off ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games and the 2024 games in Paris, choreographer Sadeck Waff worked with 128 performers in a dizzying performance focused on arms and hands. The French dancer and choreographer has become known for his limb-centric performances which you can watch more of on Instagram. Music by Woodkid. (via The Kid Should See This)

Art Dance Music

A Dramatic Performance by Juilliard Students Brings a Socially Distant Approach to Ravel’s Boléro

Maurice Ravel’s Boléro is a particularly collaborative composition in that it passes the melodic theme through a series of solos. The sequential performances highlight the distinct tones and sounds of each instrument, whether it be a flute, violin, or the anomalous saxophone. In a spectacular new project, dozens of Juilliard students who now are quarantined in their respective homes bring a socially distant approach to the classic orchestral composition. What makes it especially impressive, though, is not just appearances by famous alumni—watch for Yo-Yo Ma, Laura Linney, Patti LuPone, and Itzhak Perlman—but because it coordinates the instrumental piece in addition to a range of dramatic and choreographed elements that appear to transcend individual frames.

In a statement about the project, Juilliard said the hundreds of video clips were filmed separately before being edited and overlayed into a single composition. “Bolero Juilliard, assembled by a team of artists all working from remote locations, is part narrative, part collage. Most of all, it is a collective endeavor that captures a snapshot of a specific global moment and the possibilities of creative connection in an uncertain world,” the school said. The assembled video is “a complex online puzzle with many components being conceived, rehearsed, and produced simultaneously.”

If you enjoyed Juilliard’s project, check out this music video filmed entirely on Zoom and these quarantine dispatches. (via Kottke)

Art

Stretchy Monochrome Suits by Malin Bülow Tether Performers to Architecture and Each Other

Oslo-based artist Malin Bülow creates performative installations in which humans resist and submit to tension created by stretchy lycra suits. The monotone pieces have small openings at the stomach that allow participants to crawl in and easily conceal themselves, obscuring their features while highlighting their movements.

When affixed to buildings, the flexible fabric is manipulated and stretched during time-based performances, such as Bülow’s 2017 site-specific installation Firkanta elastisitet – Skulptur i spenn (Squared elasticity – Strained sculpture) with Store Salen at Kunstbanken, Hedmark Kunstsenter. For the installation, the artist covered the two entrances to the gallery with the suits, locking visitors inside for the full hour.

Other less claustrophobic installations have occurred outdoors, such as the 2017 iteration of the same performance at a former military building in Ski, outside of Oslo. In an alien-like performance that the artist describes as an “elastic sculpture” or “large-scale performative still life,” five dancers explore the tension of their tethers while attached to the structure.

Bülow hails from Switzerland and studied as a neurobiologist before receiving a Master’s degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway. You can see more of Bülow’s work on her website. (via Sophie Gunnol)