Breathing In/Breathing Out

Rest Energy

Ulay and Abramovic draw a large bow and arrow, one holding each side. The arrowhead is pointing at Abramovic's heart. The slightest movement could be fatal. Microphones on their clothes pick up their quickening heart beats and Ulay's irregular breathing

The Way Between Two Points

El camino entre dos puntos (The way between two points) investigates Patagonia’s tainted nature. Here, where throughout the 20th century ever enhanced methods of oil recovery, have transformed an amorphous, ambivalent and hardly populated landscape into an uncanny site of man’s supposed mastery of nature, the film traces the ways of a man, who wanders the scenes aimlessly, bound by his own implication in the menacing mechanics of oil production but drawn physically to their coevally proceeding erasure by the rough and untamed nature of this seemingly self-subsisting land.

Marina Abramović & Ulay: No Predicted End

Thirty years after their separation, performance artists Marina Abramović and Frank Uwe 'Ulay' Laysiepen (1943-2020) agree to meet, for the first time on camera, for a raw and honest conversation about their life, art and legacy.

Imponderabilia

"Naked we stand opposite each other in the museum entrance. The public entering the museum has to turn sideways to move through the limited space between us. Everyone wanting to get past has to choose which one of us to face" – Marina Abramovich

Light/Dark

Ulay and Abramović take turns hitting each other in the face, gradually increasing speed and intensity with each blow. This performance is best known for being the inspiration for New Order's "True Faith" music video.

Balance Proof

Ulay and Abramović are standing holding a double-sided mirror between their bodies.

The Pink Biennal

Television special of five episodes directed by Alfredo Di Laura dedicated to the exhibition "Attivo. Performance e Dibattiti" curated by Tommaso Trini.

4 Performances by Marina Abramovic 1975-1976

Documents four of Abramovic's solo works, exercises in which her body is the vehicle for a rigorous testing of the self — violently brushing her hair and her face, vocalizing until she can no longer breathe, intoning a stream-of-consciousness flow of memories, moving to a drumbeat until she literally drops from exhaustion.

Freeing The Body

Marina Abramović Freeing the Body was performed at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, where Abramović began dancing frantically to the sounds of a bongo player. During the early part of the performance, she still has plenty of energy, and she rocks her hips and upper body vigorously to and fro. Over the course of the six hours, exhaustion sets in. Abramović falls back on a single monotonous movement, now and then visibly exerting herself in an attempt to reivigorate her body. After a final convulsive movement, in which she tries to give her all for one last time, she allows herself to collapse onto the floor and remains lying there, completely exhausted. During the performance, Abramović's head was covered by a black scarf. In this way, the audience was not distracted by Abramović as a person or personality, and attention can be focused on the body, which, due to its anonymity, has become an abstraction.

Relation in Movement

Marina: we even use our car in the performance, in '77, for the Paris Biennale in the front of the museum we made this piece called Relation In Movement, which Ulay is driving the car and I had the megaphone out of the window, and I would say the numbers of the circle as we was passing, because it was just going in a circle, on and on and on. The idea was the car collapsed or we collapsed. and after 16 hours, the motor burned out and created this minimal trace on the marble as a black circle. For us each circle was a kind of imaginary year.

Talking about Similarity

'Talking about Similarity' took place in Amsterdam, on November 30th, 1976. The performance, which lasted ca. 45 minutes, contains two parts that are very different in form, but content-wise form a whole. Ulay begins, Abramovic takes over. This makes 'Talking about Similarity' the only performance in their oeuvre in which they are not both performing at the same time.

Incision

Ulay is fixed to a wall by a fixed rubber cord, while Marina stands at the limit of Ulay's expansion.

Light / Dark

Ulay and Abramovic face each other in a kneeling position, and take turns to slap each other hard in the face. Due to the strong light shining onto their faces, they cannot see the slap coming from the dark.

Expansion in Space

In 'Expansion in Space' (1977, Dokumenta 6, Kassel), Ulay and Abramovic do not collide with each other, as they did in Relation in Space (1976), but with two free-standing pillars twice their individual body weight. Their goal is to make the pillars move by means of their naked bodies, and in this way to expand the space of action

Relation in Time

Marina Abramovic's performance 'Relation in time', with her long time partner Ulay. "We are sitting back to back, tied together by our hair, without any movement for 16 hours. Then the audience came in. We continued sitting for one hour."

City of Angels

Combining video, performance art, documentary, and tableau vivant, this short piece set in what appears to be part of the Ayutthaya Ruins in Bangkok, Thailand, begins with a panoramic shot of various Thai folks dressed in traditional garb and sleeping in the grass as a woman narrates. The rest of the piece is broken into six unbroken shots of these individuals in still poses depicting both some aspect of Thai life as well as suggesting its disquieting alienation from modernity, as the same woman narrator now sings. The final shot is again of the ensemble sleeping, suggesting that the previous montage was, indeed, a collective dream.