MIF 2011: The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

A first for Workshy Fop, we are publishing a guest review from Alex Herod, of For Books' Sake.

One of the biggest draws at MIF2011, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic brings together the self-proclaimed 'Grandmother of performance art', Abramovic, Wooster Group founder member and Hollywood A-lister, Willem Dafoe, and ethereal songbird, Antony Hegarty, under the direction of the visionary, avant-garde director, Robert Wilson. Phew! With a line-up so impressive, it's no wonder there have been disappointed mutterings amongst the critics (The Telegraph: "a travesty"). As I took my seat in the front row on Monday night, I was giddy with anticipation - surely setting myself up for similar disappointments?

But I am not a critic, these are not my mutterings, these are my memories of a performance I'll never forget.

Eye spy

“Go as you would to a museum, as you would look at a painting… Listen to the pictures” – Robert Wilson

Entering the space, the audience is greeted by a haunting tableau: 3 geisha corpses, motionless in raised coffins (Abramovic has made legal arrangements to have 3 coffins on her burial - one for her and two for 'fake' corpses - placed in 3 different cities) and 3 dogs roaming the stage, curiously sniffing at bones scattered on the floor. For a show costing around half a million, outstanding production design is possibly something people will take for granted, but the aesthetic beauty of this show - down to Wilson’s creative vision, hugely talented team and intensive rehearsal period –transcends  mere spectacle.

Video clips of skulls, of shaving and of an unblinking eye play at intervals on a large screen suspended above the stage. The visuals don't add all that much to the performance, dragging my mind away to Un Chien Andalou, but a looped shot of Marina breathing life into a skeleton is like an intimate embrace.

5 minutes in

And I was having doubts. The show opens as a strange John Waters pastiche (not a bad thing, but not what I was expecting): polka dots, back-combed hair and plastic dresses, pencil moustaches and garish make-up, girls in washing machines, domineering mothers (Abramovic as her own mother via the evil Queen in Snow White) and mock-shock gesturing… but somehow, the performers, the drawl and narration of Willem Dafoe from downstage left and the batshit-craziness of it lead to some of the most beautiful moments I’ve experienced as an audience member.

Come together

Here I must make mention of the performers and artists who make up this motley crew ensemble of Marinas and memories...

“To work with Willem and Antony is like a fascinating chemical reaction” – Marina Abramovic

Willem Dafoe is . Really, he is. As the narrator of the piece and performer with the most stage time, the weight of the show is on his shoulders. He not only carries the show, but gives it its heart and depth. He displays a vulnerability and sensitivity often missing from his on-screen roles, along with a burning intensity and some fine darkly comic chops. The last time I was so seduced by an individual performance was on seeing Ofelia Popii as Mephistopheles in Silviu Purcarete's triumphant production of Faust (another show making use of live-dog-as-performer and hailing in part from Central/Southeatern Europe - maybe that's the key!) Popii's performance was truly mesmerising, and more physically and vocally demanding, but hear me now when I say Willem Dafoe is incredible! His is an accomplished and nuanced performance, but for illustrative purposes, I saw flashes of the MC in Cabaret, the Joker and Drop Dead Fred (find those reference points in any other Abramovic review and I’ll give you a fiver!). Erm. I mainly blame the shock of flame-red hair adorning his bonce, his army attire and ability to grin and wiggle in a way that was equally terrifying and beguiling… Can I have one, please?

Antony Hegarty only sings on stage a couple of times, but each time, goose bumps covered my whole body, his otherworldly vocals bringing myself (and judging from sniffling behind me) and other audience members to tears. In any other show, and coming from any other performers, some of the lyrics might have elicited stifled groans from yours truly - "Why must you cut yourself?/...Are you hungry for my guilt/are you eating my guilt?", “Salt, salt in my wounds/ To dull more pedestrian pain / To sting transcendentally” - but here they seem sincere and open, childlike yet wise.  Hegarty was unsure how to approach the project until Lou Reed advised, “Just make it personal.” He does just that, pulling together a collection of talented musicians and composers to create the perfect soundtrack for “Marina’s life and work [and] sense of her story as a woman.”

The various ‘Marina’s in the piece are played by a number of international performance artists (including Kira O’Reilly who reprises Stairfalling, a piece that I adored when I saw her perform it in 2009), all of whom bring different qualities to the role, exposing aspects of Abramovic’s life through their own practice and through negotiating the performance space as a group: Angles, ravens, chanting, congregations, Serbian folk dances, funeral songs, drag queens, lizards, mothers, daughters, lovers, corpses - that's what little girl artists are made of.

The first half of the show mainly consists of anecdotes about Marina’s deeply troubled relationship with her mother, the physical and psychological abuse manifesting itself here in a series of darkly comic, grotesque routines. Under curfew until she was in her late 20s, Abramovic returned one night to have a glass ashtray launched at her head – someone had informed her mother that Marina had been ‘hanging naked from a gallery wall’; as a child she was desperate for a new nose and flung herself into the corner of the bed in the hope it would result in reconstructive surgery, but it only resulted in a slap from her mother. Both parents slept with pistols under their pillows. The audience is told a lot about Marina’s life, her childhood, but not necessarily who she is. For me, the most emotional and revealing moment comes towards the end of the show when the once manic narrator sits, melancholic, amongst piles of crumpled paper trying to make sense of Marina’s recent history. This is the time when she truly found love, lost it, grieved for it and lost hope; she lost her parents; MOMA hosted a retrospective of her work – The Artist is Present – spanning over four decades.

A few reviews I have read said it is uncharacteristic of Abramovic to hand over control in her work (though she does often blur the boundaries of control – see the performance where she allowed an audience member to hold a loaded gun to her head). She has surrendered her story, yes, given it over to Wilson so that he might remix and reimagine it, but she hasn't handed over control. It is her story, her life, and The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic originated from her own funeral plans. She has allowed Wilson to manipulate her story so that she may see and experience her life anew, but she is present in every aspect of the performance; only this time, she isn’t alone.

“The deeper you go into yourself the more universal you become” - Marina Abramovic

As an exploration of The Artist, authorship and creativity, this show is exquisite and profound; an unashamed attempt to ‘transfer personal feelings and thoughts into a universal language’.

You have 3 days left to catch it at The Lowry. 3, 2, 1, GO!