Marina Abramović has been fascinated by the life of the “Tigress”, as Callas was known, for decades. She has now developed the 7 Deaths of Maria Callas opera project, in which seven deaths on stage are recreated in exemplary form on the basis of the musical and scenic formative highlights of the respective operas – all arias that were immensely important for Maria Callas. In seven films and together with Willem Dafoe, Marina Abramović will die seven times and at the end of the performance, with the real death of Maria Callas in Paris in 1977, will be on the stage performing as herself.

Direction: Marina Abramović and Lynsey Peisinger

Photo of Marina Abramović by René Habermacher

A Different Way of Hearing - The Abramović Method for Music, 2019

Alte Oper, Frankfurt

A large-scale art project combining music and the Abramović Method that explored a different way of hearing in the form of a community event.

Direction: Marina Abramović and Lynsey Peisinger

The Abramović Method, 2018

Henie-Onstad kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway

Director, facilitator casting and training
The Abramović Method is a large scale, public participatory event joining people in a communal experience to connect with oneself and with each other. Inside this quiet, non-discriminatory and non-hierarchical space, the public is invited to participate in a number of exercises and to observe others as they participate

The Cleaner, 2017

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Director
A new public participatory performance piece by Marina Abramovic in the Eric Ericsson Choral Centre, in collaboration with Moderna Museet.

Sonic and Energetic Spaces, 2017

Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Bildmuseet, Umeå

A workshop conducted together with collaborator Katarina Henryson, exploring how the choir world, ensemble singing and performance art can create a unique experience using voices, sounds, movements in space and how all this can lead to communication between the singers and the audience. The audience is invited to listen and observe for a while or stay as long as they desire.

English below. Energetic and Sonic Spaces Moderna Museet Malmö, 22.10 2017 Energetic and Sonic Spaces var en workshop inspirerad av The Cleaner, ett performanceverk som framfördes i Eric Ericsonhallen i samband med att Marina Abramovics stora utställning visades på Moderna Museet i Stockholm tidare i år.

Don't Leave Me in the Boathouse, 2017

Gotland Chamber Music Festival, St Nicolai Ruin, Visby, Sweden

3,5 hour long performance piece in collaboration with Katarina Henryson, accompanied alternately with violin, clarinet, cello and piano to name but a few. A piece investigating affinity and solitude, and what can be achieved when these two conditions are placed side by side to be observed simultaneously.

AS ONE | NEON + MAI, 2016

The Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece

Co-curator, Director, casting and training of facilitators

NEON + MAI partnered to present As One in Athens which consisted of the Abramović Method, newly commissioned performance pieces by Greek artists, and an extensive public program of lectures, workshops, discussions and other public participatory events. The largest and most ambitious project dedicated to performance art in Greece to date, As One placed this contemporary art form in the spotlight in order to engage and inspire the Greek public. With this collaboration, NEON and MAI aimed to provide a platform and help foster a new generation of Greek performance artists. A number of emerging Greek artists were selected by Abramović and MAI to train and perform, and have been commissioned to develop and present new works for the project.

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Givenchy Spring Summer '16 Collection, 2015

Pier 19, New York, US

Casting and training performances, facilitate art direction

15 Rooms - Project by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach, 2015

The Long Museum, Shanghai, China

Casting and training reperformers of artworks:
Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful by Marina Abramovic
Mirror Check by Joan Jonas

Photos by Bartosz Kolonko

Kaldor Public Art Project 30, 2015

Pier 1/2, Sydney, Australia

Casting and training facilitators

Abramović and her team spent 12 days onsite at Pier 2/3, leading visitors through a series of transformative experiences that shifted their focus, challenged their perceptions, and changed the way they looked at art. Positioned just beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge and around the corner from Sydney Opera House, the vast Walsh Bay Pier became a pop-up gallery venue, housing Abramović's extraordinary project, an artists’ residency program, and ongoing public talks and special events.

Terra Comunal - MAI, 2015

SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil

Co-curator, casting and training of facilitator

At SESC Pompeia, MAI is presented the Abramovic Method; a series of talks with Abramovic; and eight Brazilian artists who will perform during the duration of the exhibition. There was also a designated space for free experimentation and collaboration where visitors will have the opportunity to explore the directions and limits of immaterial art and performance, as well as special programming that includes re-performances of Abramovic’s work by artist Andrea Boller.

Photos by Victor Nomoto and Victor Takayama

Generator, 2014

Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, United States

Casting and training facilitators

In Generator, Abramović will focus on “nothingness.” She will transform the main gallery into a space of sensory deprivation, an opportunity for forced introspection. In order to create an uninterrupted, quiet, physical and mental state, visitors will be required to leave their cellphones, watches, bags, etc. in a locker before entering the gallery. Assisted by facilitators who were trained by performance artist and Abramović collaborator Lynsey Peisinger, visitors will don noise canceling headphones and blindfolds. A maximum of sixty-eight people will be allowed in at a time.

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Photos by Jason Wyche

512 Hours, 2014

Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Collaborative work

In Summer 2014, in a unique work created for the Serpentine, the internationally acclaimed artist Marina Abramović performed in the Gallery for the duration of her exhibition: 10am to 6pm, 6 days a week, attracting a total of 129,916 visitors. Creating the simplest of environments in the Gallery spaces, Abramović’s only materials were herself, the audience and a selection of props. On arrival, visitors both literally and metaphorically left their baggage behind in order to enter the exhibition: bags, jackets, electronic equipment, watches and cameras were not permitted to accompany them. The public became the performing body, participating in the delivery of an unprecedented moment in the history of performance art.

Photos by Marco Anelli

The Scream, 2013

Ekebergparken, Oslo, Norway

Training and casting

October 24, 2013 marked the inauguration of Marina Abramovic project at Ekebergparken, a sculpture and national heritage park in Oslo, Norway. To realize the project, Abramovic travelled to Oslo in August of 2013 to collaborate with a cast of 300 of Oslo’s inhabitants to create a special, site-specific performance as an homage to Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1895). This work consisted of a frame that visitors to the park are invited to stand behind and scream as in the Munch painting. The inauguration of the sculpture included a performance, Abramovic's first in Scandinavia, in which members of the public were invited to enact the scream behind the frame, culminating with Abramovic herself. Both the sculpture and performance use the same landscape where Munch found inspiration and sketched his first idea for The Scream.

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An Artist's Life Manifesto, MOCA Gala, 2011

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, US

Casting, training, and direction for reperformances

The Artist is Present, 2011

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia

Training and Casting Reperformances

A major retrospective tracing the prolific career of performance artist Marina Abramović will go on show at Moscow’s Garage Center for Contemporary Culture from 8 October to 4 December 2011.

Works with Robert Wilson

The Old Woman, 2013

Assistant Director
Adaptation by Darryl Pinckney, based on "The Old Woman" by Daniil Kharms

Developed with, and starring, legendary dancer and performer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and co-starring Oscar-nominated actor and founding member of The Wooster Group Willem Dafoe, The Old Woman is an adaptation of the eponymous work by recently rediscovered Russian avant-garde author Daniil Kharms.

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1905, Kharms suffered through Stalinist rule for much of his life until eventually he was arrested, imprisoned and killed by Soviet soldiers in the Gulag at age 36. The shortness of Kharms's life parallels the brevity of his absurdist writings, some of which stretch to little more than a paragraph. One notable exception is The Old Woman, a brilliant, obscure and slyly political novella from the 1930s. In it, a dapper odd couple are forced to deal with the most inconsiderate (and inanimate) of houseguests; a surreal marriage of absurdism, pitch-black comedy, and vaudeville. Carrying echoes of Beckett and Ionesco in its deadpan narrative, The Old Woman loosely follows the story of a struggling writer who cannot find peace with himself.

Photo: Lucie Jansch

Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter, 2013

Assistant Director
Opera by Robert Wilson, Toshi Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Jacqueline Woodson

Considered one of the most significant American artists of the 20th century, the self-taught Clementine Hunter produced thousands of paintings drawn from her own experiences working and living on a southern plantation. It was not until her 50s that Hunter made her foray into visual art, yet she painted extensively until just days before her death in 1988 at the age of 101.

Robert Wilson first met Hunter at the age of 12 when he acquired one of her works, initiating a passionate love for Hunter's style as well as art collecting as a whole. Wilson acquired many more Hunter pieces throughout her celebrated career and first honored her with his conception of Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey in 2013. A vibrant opera, Zinnias traces the life of the beloved Hunter throughout her long and inspiring life. This work marks the second stage major collaboration of Robert Wilson with singer, composer and social activist Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Photo: Lucie Jansch

The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, 2013

Premiered 2011, Manchester International Festival, Manchester, UK
2013, Luminato Festival, Toronto, Canada
2013, Park Avenue Armory, New York, US

Performed in English.

At the intersection of theater, opera and visual art, Robert Wilson’s reimagining of performance artist Marina Abramović's extraordinary life and work begins with her difficult childhood in former Yugoslavia, and chronicles her journey to the present day. Abramović, who plays herself as well as her imposing mother, is joined by world-renowned actor Willem Dafoe and singer Antony, performing original music and songs created for this ‘quasi opera.’

Premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2011, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović played to sold-out audiences and rave reviews in Madrid, Basel, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Toronto and New York. For New York's Park Avenue Armory, Robert Wilson created a new staging that used the full sweep of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall.