Marina Abramović. The Cleaner is characterised in a very crucial sense by the reperformances that will be alternating on a daily basis, performed by players specially selected and trained for the event.
Imponderabilia, 1977/2018
Daily from 10.30am to 7.30pm, Thursday to 9.30pm | Piano Nobile
This performance was produced for the first time in 1977 at the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna in Bologna, where Marina Abramović and Ulay stood facing one another in a narrow passageway for 90 minutes, motionless and naked, forcing visitors wishing to enter the museum to pass between them. The performance was supposed to last six hours but the police put a stop to it. In the reperformance, two performers stand naked in a narrow passageway at the entrance to the first room on the Piano Nobile and visitors can choose whether to pass between their two bodies or to the side.
Luminosity, 1997/2018
Daily from 3.00pm to 4pm | Piano Nobile
This work prompts a reflection on the intensity of spirituality that succeeds in overriding the body’s physicality through control of movement, rhythm and gesture. The perfomer, naked, balances for thirty minutes on a bicycle saddle, her feet suspended above the ground, slowly moving her arms and legs. The intensity of the light gradually causes the volume of the space to grow.
Cleaning the Mirror, 1995/2018
Daily 2.30pm to 7.30pm, Thursday 10.30-3.30 pm and 4.30pm – 9.30pm | Piano Nobile
In the original performance Marina Abramović, seated with a human skeleton in her lap, gently and carefully attempted to clean the skeleton with a brush but she herself became increasingly dirty because she was rinsing the brush in dirty water. The six-hour reperformance echoes, among other things, the Tibetan death rituals that prepare disciples to become one with their own mortality.
Freeing Series, 1975/2018
Thursday and Saturday from 2.00pm | Strozzina
This series marked a rite of passge for Marina Abramović, “exorcising” her original environment before she left Belgrade. In Freeing the Memory the performer is seated on a chair and repeats words and phrases in his or her own language without a break. The performance ends when the performer cannot think of any more words. In Freeing the Voice the performer, lying on a mattress on the ground with his or her head arching backwards, shouts until he or she loses his or her voice. In Freeing the Body the music and rhythm of African drums move the body of the performer who, his or her swathed in a black bandana, dances and moves until he or she drops to the ground in exhaustion.
The House with the Ocean View, 2002/2018
From Tuesday 4 December through to Sunday 16 December
In the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York the artist spent 12 whole days in total silence and without eating inside a suspended structure connected to the ground by a ladder whose rungs had been replaced by sharp blades. Visitors could watch her sleeping, showering or using the toilet. The work will be presented for the first time in Italy as a reperformance.
Participatory works
Transitory Objects for Human Use
Daily | Piano Nobile
Marina Abramović’s Transitory Objects for Human Use find their sole and ultimate significance only in their interaction with the human being: only thus can the energy circulate and the object become truly “transitory.”
Counting the Rice (2015)
Daily | Piano Nobile
Is an exercise in public participation spawned by a series of workshops entitled “Cleaning the House”. Invited to isolate themselves using soundproof headphones, visitors sit at a table and separate white rice from black lentils, noting down the number of grains of each on a slip of paper. What Marina Abramović is attempting to do is to give the public a chance to reflect on the meaning of the present and on a new connection with the self, imparting a sense of calm, concentration and care.
Performers are:
Alireza Ostovar; Anna Luna Holmberg; Carlo Gambaro; Cecilia Ventriglia; Chollada Phinitduang; Clara De Pin; Daniele Tessaro; Davide Tagliavini; Enrico L’Abbate; Fabio Novembrini; Francesco Pacelli; Gianluca Trusso Forgia; Gilda Deianira Ciao; Giulia Nicoletti; Guillermo De Cabanyes; Ilaria Corsi; Lara Russo; Leonardo Sinopoli; Lucie Kother; Lucrezia Palandri; Marcella Cappelletti; Maria Novella Tattanelli; Mariana Yaremchyshyna; Marina Arienzale; Marta Capaccioli; Michela Camilli; Mauro F. Cardinali; Nejma Larichi; Pietro Pireddu; Sharon Estacio; Susannah Iheme; Tiina Lehtimaki.