We no longer present Marina Abramovic (born in 1946), any more than we present Robert (or Bob, depending on the case and the times) Wilson (born in 1941): both are big names in the artistic avant-garde since the 1970s, versatile in the expression of their art, which has reached a wide audience. Their confrontation was both risky and inevitable: it took place in 2011 during a show whose plot is the life of the Serbian living in the United States, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic.
But how was the all-ego and the very strong personality of Abramovic, famous for his performances and his extremist happenings, going to agree with the conceptual and poetic universe of the director - visual artist, designer of lights (essential) of his shows and also a former dancer – known for his horror of naturalism?
To tell the truth, it seems to have happened like a charm, if we are to believe the interested parties themselves, filmed as part of the documentary Bob Wilson's Life and Death of Marina Abramovic (2012), by Giada Colagrande, on Netflix , as well as British transgender singer Anohni, still known by her birth name and gender at the time of filming, Antony Hegarty, and American actor Willem Dafoe.
For the occasion, Marina Abramovic made herself small and humble, but with this affectation of which she has the secret. She cries in front of the camera, dwells on her childhood wounds, recounts her life as a martyr who became holy after finding the path to freedom and happiness. No: not happiness, which she finds too boring and limited. She seeks further, in listening and self-control and the "return to simplicity". Otherwise, she said, "we're going to get lost."
Disciples
Having become a guru, the Serb has developed the "Abramovic method" (challenged in 2010 by a long investigation by the New Yorker) and spreads it thanks to disciples trained to spread the good word in the future, especially to music audiences. classic. What Andreas Gräfenstein filmed for Marina Abramovic, the art of listening (2019), a documentary rebroadcast by Arte.
La Abramovic only doing things on a large scale, we have made the floor of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt a bare stage where part of the public comes, by dint of bodily relaxation, withdrawal from the surrounding world, parasitic noises and tools technologies, prepare to create a vacuum to welcome the fullness of music.
It all feels like new age deja vu, and the seriousness surrounding the experience sometimes brings to mind the hilarious parody made by the pranksters of Documentary Now (on Netflix), where Cate Blanchett plays Izabella Barta, an artist ( as sado as maso) with a strong accent that only creates a void by filling itself with itself...
The problem is that, when we hear the violinist Carolin Widmann play a Sonata by Eugène Ysaÿe imperfectly, we are quickly reminded of reality. On the other hand, when the cellist Nicolas Altstaedt plays a Sarabande by Bach, it is he who creates the mystery, the silence around him, which no amount of preparatory relaxation can ever match.
