Watch Marina Abramović perform her life and death

Marina Abramović will star in a theatrical performance staging her life, career and ultimately her imagined death in the world premiere of The Life and Death of Marina Abramović. Willem Dafoe co-stars in this biographical piece which debuts at the Manchester International Festival 2011 (MIF) this weekend and will run for 6 performances (9 - 16 July). 

Marina Abramović has pioneered performance as a visual art form. From almost suffocating in a 5-point star filled with 100 litres of ignited gasoline, to slicing her belly with a razor blade, the artist has explored her physical and emotional limits through her art. It is perhaps surprising that she should present her life on a stage, rather than within a gallery space: 'For me acting is taking on the role of somebody else, and you're pretending to have the feelings that you are showing in front of an audience. Whereas performing is real.' Yet, she explains, it is the context of the theatre that allows the necessary distance from her life, required for such a project. 

Director Robert Wilson, known for his exploration of time and space on stage, decided not to recreate Abramović’s more familiar performances, but to focus on intimate life-stories. One scene features a childhood incident where Abramović threw herself off her parent’s bed in an attempt to break her nose and have it fixed to look like Brigitte Bardot’s. However, she missed, and badly cut her cheek and was reprimanded by her mother with a slap on the other cheek.

The performance plays with audience expectations, as Abramović’s is cast in the role of her disciplinarian mother, while 12 different performers wearing latex masks will play the artist. 

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović weaves theatre, art and music into the ultimate exploration of the performance artist. 'In my work I have complete control,' Abramović explains, 'but about my life, I don't want to. For me the most interesting thing about this whole project is just letting go.' Time-based visual art practice is ephemeral by nature: in this epic production of the artist whose career has used the body as both subject and medium, art reflects the transience of life itself, confronting the artist with the ultimate end – death.

While at MIF, Abramović participates in the exhibition 11 Rooms at Manchester Art Gallery along with 10 other leading contemporary artists who will explore the fleeting nature of art. Within the gallery, 11 even-sized rooms will be created for the artists to focus on an idea or situation that both establishes and erases itself in the same instance.

Rebecca Carr