The Art Newspaper

Manchester embraces Marina Abramovic

Visitors to the Manchester International Festival participate in workshops led by the performance art grande dame

By Cristina Ruiz and Gareth Harris. Web only
Published online: 08 July 2009

manchester. A biennial which “produces the unlikely” and where “impossible things can happen” is how Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine gallery, describes the Manchester International Festival (MIF) which opened last weekend.

Obrist, one of the artistic advisors to the event, believes “every city should follow the example of Manchester” which invites high-profile artists, musicians, architects and theatre directors to produce entirely new work for the festival.

This year, the Whitworth Art Gallery has placed its entire collection of English landscapes (including more than 50 Turner watercolours, as well as works by Constable, Gainsborough, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Millais and Ruskin) into storage and turned the building into a empty stage for veteran performance artist Marina Abramovic.

Abramovic has invited 14 artists including Terence Koh, Kira O’Reilly, and Nikhil Chopra to perform for four hours every day for the course of the festival’s two and a half weeks (until 19 July).

Upon entering the gallery, visitors must surrender all trappings of contemporary living such as mobile phones and handbags, don a white laboratory coat, and join Abramovic herself for a one-hour induction into the basics of performance art.

On the day The Art Newspaper participated, this involved sipping a glass of water over the course of ten minutes in order to “appreciate the now”, shouting very loudly to “release nervous energy”, staring into the eyes of strangers for another ten minutes, and walking across the gallery in slow motion—all of which are designed to slow us down. “If you’re hot or uncomfortable or bored,” instructed Abramovic, “just accept it”.

Maria Balshaw, director of the Whitworth, describes the exhibition “Marina Abramovic presents” as a “common endurance project” for artists and for visitors. A “certificate of accomplishment” signed by Abramovic is given to those that have “successfully endured four hours participation”.

Films of all 17 performances by Abramovic at the MIF will enter the Whitworth collection.

Other key elements of the Festival, which this year cost £10m to mount, include a new chamber music hall designed by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, which has been installed at Manchester Art Gallery, and ‘Flailing Trees’ by Gustav Metzger, an installation of 21 inverted willow trees located outside Manchester Town Hall. Metzger told The Art Newspaper that the work reflects “the world being turned on its head”. The piece will be permanently installed at the Whitworth Art Gallery once the festival ends.