Commissioned by Amsterdam's Metamatic Research Initiative and designed by Dutch architect Siebe Tettero, MAI-Prototype was included in The Luminato Festival's 2013 Visual Arts programming. Conceived as a satellite to her yet-to-be-built Marina Abramović Institute (MAI) in Hudson, New York, MAI Prototype will be the largest expression mounted to date of what the artist calls the Abramović Method: a way of transmiting to future generations the proper tools to understand and develop long durational performances. The mission of the Marina Abramović Institute is to cultivate new kinds of performance while functioning as a living archive, preserving and hosting performances of historic pieces.
Image of Marina Abramović in front of the prototype at Bellwoods Park, Toronto.
Abramović plans to use the space as a laboratory for exploring time-based and immaterial art. Under the design leadership of OMA-NY, lead architects Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas are creating a unique experience for not only future visitors to the Institute, but also for artistic participants in Hudson, New York.
"Marina Abramović is one of the great pioneers of Performance Art and through her work has elevated this art form into the official canon of the visual arts", said Jorn Weisbrodt, Artistic Director, Luminato Festival. "Even though she is such an auratic performer, she has also established the fact that a work of performance art does not have to die with the performer. In the MAI-Prototype, she even goes a step further and provides the audience with a two hour experience that draws from her immense body of work, and makes the audience the active part of the work of art. There is nothing you need to know to understand this piece of work, you just have to experience it and everyone will have their individual experiences."
Memory of project
The MAI-prototype will consist of seven interconnected pavilions in Trinity Bellwoods Park, in Toronto, Canada, where the audience will participate in a series of exercises and experiences based on Abramović's performance practice. MAI-Prototype empowers participants to create the experience of the performance themselves. Every 30 minutes four people will be able to join the performance. Participants will wear white lab coats and headphones to disconnect themselves from the outside world for a period of approximately two hours. Instructions will be given over the headphones in a selection of seven different languages. Live streaming of the publics experiences of the exhibition will extend MAI-Prototype to other locations throughout Toronto. Each participant will receive a certificate signed by Abramović as a memento of their involvement. After completing the performance, the participants are asked to document their experiences which will later be broadcast via social media.
Text.- Luminato Festival.
