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Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces: Critical Documentation Strategies for Preserving Art’s History
- Leonardo
- The MIT Press
- Volume 41, Number 2, April 2008
- pp. 147-152
- Article
- Additional Information
This essay raises issues of authenticity, authorship and medium in a discussion of performance, documentation and re-performance. Its object of analysis is Marina Abramović’s 2005 performance series, Seven Easy Pieces, including her re-performances of Bruce Nauman’s Body Pressure and VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic. Seven Easy Pieces strives to document the past through manipulation of repetition and temporality; Abramović’s re-performances act as performative documents of the past performances she cites. Lessons learned from a close analysis of re-performance and performance documentation can provide useful insights for and promote critical thought about conservation strategies for time-based art.