Reed College and PICA bring acclaimed performance and installation artist Marina Abramovic to Portland.



Marina Abramovic, Balkan Erotic Epic (detail) 2005 video projection, dimensions variable

Laurie Anderson describes Abramovic's work in Bomb Magazine:

"...Marina can actually transform and direct thoughts. She understands and uses the ecstatic. And she creates transformation out of the simplest materials, featuring her own body. An intensely physical person, she combines it with the spiritual in a completely unique way."

Abramovic will give a free public lecture tonight (March 7) at 7pm at the Vollum Lecture Hall at Reed College. Seating is limited so be sure to show up early!

This will be packed (remember the Ann Hamilton lecture had people sitting in the aisles). Portland loves lectures and these Reed ones are easilly the most popular ones in the city.

Now that was an amazing lecture. "The Great Wall Walk" really illustrated how her whole artistic practice isn't just some cry for attention (like a lot of the infinitely less satisfing performance artists in Portland and elsewhere). The whole male female dynamic told a great story for that great wall piece.

It was an integrated activity, not purely based on a spurious conceptual nugget.... instead, her talk reitereated how her entire practice is one of self discovery. The concept is just a tool in her hands but its the process which becomes so interesting.

I felt the recent film, the Balkan Erotic Epic (Screened recently at Sundance and now Portland), was a lot weaker though. It seems less personally invested and more entertaining, PBS for adults only?

The footage of the last Pope communicating to a hoard of enthusiastic american teens at madison square garden through a series of primal yelps and howls was very interesting though... She was interested in how self aware the late pope was of both the power of the "charismatic moment" and how it would be edited out o history.

Anyone else want to recount their reactions?... feel free to do so

I was struck by how tight the editing is on her DVD of performances. Art videos tend to be a bit on the slow side & I can't remember the last time I felt an artist's video was cut too much to the quick.

Abramovic seems to have an impatient nature (she had an amusing habit of repeatedly & constantly asking for a particular DVD track to be selected while whoever was working the remote scrolled through the menu, trying to oblige), which I suspect is the source of the no-nonsense editing.

Hello all, I came here as a result of a standing request for Google to send me entries on Marina Abramovic. As I started to read, I had a strange feeling of being a "lurker", so I thought I should identify myself -- a discoverer and admirer of of Abramovic since I first discovered her some 3-4 years ago. I don't have anything pertinent to add to the discusssion at this point, other than to note how fitting it is that Laurie Anderson should "introduce". I am familiar with most of the performances mentioned, although there are usually some variations in the way they're related -- but of course that should be the case! Not having seen her perform, as some of you have, puts me in the position of listener for now.