Marina Abramovic Plays With Herself: Re-Performing Others, Engaging the Audience
Theresa Smalec
Vito Acconci, Seedbed, 1972. Photodocumentation: black and white photographs and text in 4 panels: 3 Photo/text panels: 10 1/2 x 27 3/4 in. 1 Photo panel: 10 1/2 x 41 3/8 in. Installation dimensions: 31 1/2 x 68 3/4 in. Copyright Vito Acconci 1972. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York
Always a connoisseur of forbidden ventures, my ears perked up upon hearing that Marina Abramovic plans to masturbate at the Guggenheim Museum this fall. I learned of her intentions at "(Re)Presenting Performance," a symposium bringing together artists, theorists, and curators to explore the history of performance art, the plausibility of its repetition, and the urgency of its preservation. This was also a prelude to Abramovic’s embodied exhibition project, "Seven Easy Pieces," scheduled from October 11-17th, 2005.
Back in the 1970s, the rules of performance art were threefold: 1. No rehearsal. 2. No repetition. 3. No predictable end. In "Seven Easy Pieces," Abramovic will violate the rules that have defined this art form as singular and ephemeral. Her decision to repeat specific pieces that influenced her work by redoing their original scores provoked symposium panelists to ponder: "What does it mean to re-enact a performance that was only supposed to happen once?" This seemed like an abstract speculation until the Guggenheim’s curator addressed Abramovic with a flustered expression and whispered, "Why re-perform Vito Acconci’s Seedbed as a woman?" Nervous laughter emanated from the audience. Abramovic calmly replied, saying it was partly the "taboo element" that intrigued her, and partly the "sculptural element." Too young to have witnessed Acconci’s 1972 performance, I desperately tried to visualize the nature of the piece that people were chuckling about. Seedbed sounded seedy, but in an exhilarating way. What specific actions were required to re-embody it?
Abramovic’s selection of Seedbed is a perplexing and fertile example of re-performance. In his notorious mixing of performance and installation, Acconci lay hidden under a gallery-wide ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating while vocalizing into a loudspeaker his fantasies about visitors walking above him. His aim was to involve the public in the work’s production by creating a situation of "reciprocal interchange." In an era of newborn sexual freedom, implicating strangers in one’s private thoughts, and leaving traces of this shared presence by depositing semen on the floor, must have been radical acts. The sculptural element of a man stroking his penis, directing it towards bodies concealed from his view, may have also exposed the mechanisms of a culture that permits men to live out their fantasies at "invisible" women’s expense. But why would a female performer revive this piece in 2005, now that both public intimacy and critiques of patriarchy seem pass�? Hey, we have Anne Coulter and the Internet!
Though known for embodied works pushing the bounds of physical and mental potential, Abramovic will not re-perform Seedbed "as if" she were a man. The piece may need to be renamed, since a trail of "seed" will not remain on the floor "bed." She will, however, engage with Acconci’s endurance piece by pushing the limits of gender: can a woman masturbate all day long, relating and responding to bodies traversing the Guggenheim’s highbrow space? This alone is intriguing. Moreover, given the dueling nuances of vulnerability and dangerous power attached to women’s sexual expression, what affects might her rendition produce? Will people feel outraged, appalled, turned on? If she voices personal fantasies, will this defy her goal of faithfully embodying Acconci’s work? If she echoes Acconci’s fantasies, which revolved around him following peoples’ footsteps, movements that triggered his desires, will this thwart his ideal of reciprocal exchange, since this mode of generating arousal is not necessarily her own?
Finally, how will the politics and temporality of Seedbed change with a woman doing it? I don’t know how quickly or how many times Acconci "pulled if off," but the pacing may shift dramatically with Abramovic at work. What if her orgasms take much longer, or if she doesn’t feel stimulated? Reviving this piece in our neo-puritanical, "post-feminist" age is potentially scandalous yet potently sexy. I don’t know what impressions Abramovic’s re-performance will leave on the minds and bodies of others, but already yearn to be present for it.
