Marina Abramović:
Performing the Gallery/Performing the Museum

Tuesday, October 27, 2009,
doors at 6pm, talk begins promptly at 7pm
Public Discussion with MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ
Inauguration of ABRAMOVIC STUDIO AT LOCATION ONE
presented by Jovana Stokić

The discussion will focus on Abramović’s investigations of transformative quality of time in context of a gallery exhibition. The exclusive video material from Abramovic’s innovative group exhibition in Manchester Whitworth Art Gallery, held July 3 – 19 2009, will be shown. For this groundbreaking event, the Whitworth emptied every gallery space in order to create room for this unique work to develop and breathe. The show began with an hour-long performance initiation with Marina Abramović, leading up to a series of extraordinary encounters between artists and audience. Quite unlike anything staged before in a museum or a gallery, it provided a transformative gallery-going experience.

The evening inaugurates Abramović Studio at LOCATION ONE. Beginning October 2009 the studio, curated by Jovana Stokić, involves artists from Location One residency program in engaging with performance art. The ABRAMOVIĆ STUDIO within Location One is dedicated to exploring long-durational performance works through open-ended forms of workshops, panels and discussions. Marina Abramović, will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at MoMA in the spring of 2010 titled “Artist is Present” in which she will be performing continuously throughout the whole duration of the exhibition.

Marina Abramović
Since the beginning of Marina Abramovic’s career, during the early 1970s, where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works. In 2005, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy Pieces by the Guggenheim at their International Gala in 2006 and by the AICA USA with the “Best Exhibition of Time Based Art” award in 2007. Marina Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery.

Jovana Stokić
Belgrade-born, New York-based art historian and critic Jovana Stokić holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at the New York University. Her dissertation, titled “The Body Beautiful: Feminine Self-Representations 1970 – 2007,” analyzes works of several women artists – Marina Abramovic, Martha Rosler, Joan Jonas — since the 1970s, particularly focusing on the notions of self-representation and beauty. Jovana has curated several thematic exhibitions and performance events in the US, Italy, Spain and Serbia. Her recent exhibition “Best Regards form the Blind Spot,” focused on videos by Marina Abramovic, and younger women artists from the region of Serbia and Montenegro. Jovana was a fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, a researcher at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the curator of the Kimmel Center Galleries, New York University. She has most recently written an essay for Marina Abramović’s MoMA exhibition catalogue.