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Marina Abramovic / Ulay
Relation in Space, 1977

Photo: Michael Strasser | © Bildrecht, Vienna, 2017

Marina Abramovic / Ulay

Collection

Seven gelatin silver prints, one text panel (also on gelatin silver paper), and folder with colophon page
each 41 x 31 cm
each 45.5 x 35.5 x 4 cm (framed)

In the first 58 minute Performance, Relation in Space, which took place in July 1976 at the Biennale in Venice, Abramovic/Ulay, both naked, walk towards each other from opposite ends of a room, touching as they pass each other, and then they repeat the movement while their bodies collide and one of them (Marina) falls over under the impact, until they are both exhausted. A statically mounted video camera simultaneously filmed the touching of the bodies in the middle of the room.

In 1976, Abramović and Ulay had very recently met and started a 12-year romantic relationship that was also inseparable from their work. Relation in Space is a performance about how a couple—and a couple of artists at that—interact. It’s egos and expectations colliding into each other, but also a question of gender: Abramović claimed the idea was to have male and female energy put together to create something they called “That Self.” Abramović and Ulay’s relationship continued to form a subject in their art throughout their relationship: Relation in Space is a first in a series of Relation works, which also includes, for example, Relation in Time, 1977, in which they tied their hair together and sat back to back for 16 hours. Famously, the couple’s last collaborative work is also their breakup: in The Great Wall Walk (1988), they each walked 2500 kilometers from either end of the Great Wall of China in order to meet in the middle and break up.

Marina Abramović (Serbian Cyrillic: Марина Абрамовић, pronounced [marǐːna abrǎːmoʋitɕ]; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian American conceptual and performance artist, philanthropist^[1] and art filmmaker.^[2] Her work explores body art, endurance art and feminist art, the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. Being active for over four decades, Abramović refers to herself as the "grandmother of performance art".^[3] She pioneered a new notion of identity by bringing in the participation of observers, focusing on "confronting pain, blood, and physical limits of the body".^[4]

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.

Artist's Website

http://www.marinaabramovic.com/home.html

Artist's Website

http://www.ulay.si

Marina Abramovic / UlayRelation in Space, 1977

Marina Abramovic / Ulay
Relation in Space, 1977