11th
reperformance art
I have been having an ongoing conversation about the Marina Abramović retrospective show at MoMA: The Artist Is Present and what it means both to reperform performance art and to experience performance art as reperformances.
At the MoMA retrospective, the reperformances serve as an educational tool. They give the viewer a chance to experience Marina’s work beyond the constraints of the written, filmed and photographic documents. To see the performances re-enacted next to relics of their first incarnation allows one to more vividly imagine all those not reperformed; to have a suggestion of what it would feel like to experience her earlier performances and witness such powerful acts, each never done before, and with an unknown outcome.
What I found lacking was that the reperformances did not stand on their own. Seen in the historical context of the show, they lost their unique energy, and the reverence that should be afforded by the audience was gleaned in favor of a museum-going-retrospective-viewing glance. There was something so unnerving about watching viewers casually walk by a shelf holding a woman heaving breaths nude beneath a fake skeleton. Compared to Marina’s newly conceived performance in the atrium, the reperformances fall flat.
It makes me wonder if reperformance is a valid art form that can function beyond its educational merit. Does knowing the previous outcome of a performance take away from a reperformance? Could there be a way to reperform performance art by taking a new approach to each piece, revising it, and applying a new context and intention to the work?
Here is an excerpt from the New Yorker article on the exhibition, which talks shortly about the controversial views surrounding the idea of reperformance. 
In this video clip, Marina herself talks about the necessity of reperforming peformance art
And finally, my friend and peer, artist Quito Ziegler, who I have been in conversation with about this, will be considering many of these questions in a show she is curating called The Artist is Absent. On May 29th, at 25CPW gallery, a selection of Marina’s performances will be reperformed in a much different context and under much different circumstances than they are at the MoMA.
