An opportunity presented today Pesaro Italian capital of culture 2024the Italian premiere of «The Life»an immersive work created by Marina Abramović (Belgrade, 1946) and produced by the studio specializing in mixed reality Tin Drum under the direction of founder Todd Eckert, offers for the first time in the history of art a two-dimensional performance, that is, simultaneously physical and digital. This is the first immersive mixed reality performance art event ever conceived. «The Life» is a unique three-dimensional cinematic experience, open to the public from 5 to 18 June 2024at the Pescheria Visual Arts Center, in the heart of Pesaro, and part of the program of Pesaro 2024 – Italian Capital of Culture «The nature of culture».
Presented at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2019, the work has taken on an itinerant form, crossing the world and revitalizing itself in different cities. In 2020 it even reached the milestone of a record auction sale at Christie’s London autumn event.
Even before the world experienced the forced isolation caused by the covid-19 pandemic, developing strategies to maintain one’s social connection, the artist posed the question of the dematerialization of the body and its transposition into a dimension disconnected from the here and now .
The debut in Pesaro is adorned with original costumes and acoustic elements designed to invite you to a reflection dedicated to the nature of memory, dimension in which the artist transits to cross space and time.
Marina Abramović «present» with a video message explaining the project declared:
«I will present my new mixed reality work entitled ‘The Life’ with Tin Drum. I know that Pesaro Capitale is focused on the relationship between science, nature and technology; my work is based on the performing arts and this is my first experiment, my first attempt to use new technologies and to broaden the idea of how the performing arts can be seen in the future, if the artist is no longer physically present”.
The immersive event is open to the public every day from 10.00 to 23.00, in the spaces of the Pescheria Visual Arts Centre. Each participant is invited to abandon all electronic devices and wear a visor foraugmented reality (AR), through which to visualize the boundaries of an empty room. At the center of the virtual environment moves thehologram of the artist Marina Abramović, whose performance can be observed freely by the audience, from any angle without a privileged point of view. The absence of barriers and impositions provides the opportunity to grasp new visions, living a unique and collective experience. The work reflects on power of art as an intangible forcesimilarly to time, and arose from the encounter between the artist and the energy of the spectator involved in the work.
Marina Abramović’s digital image allows the artist to create a performance without being physically present, creating one hybrid and transmedia space that oscillates between real and virtual.
«In a hundred years, when everyone who knew Marina Abramović is dead – explains director Todd Eckert -, there will be people who will watch ‘The Life’ and, hopefully, feel that sense of connection – of human experience. This is really the point of the work: to try to create an authentic human connection between artist and audience beyond the simple observation that dominates our current media.”
«The Life» invites us to confront the ideas of absence and duration, addressed through the positioning of the artist in a dimension beyond time.
The work, which comes to life in a horizon of the eternal present, made possible by recent technology, reflects on the dialogical possibility of art and digital.
Agostino Riitano, artistic director of Pesaro 2024 – Italian Capital of Culture – explained that through the involvement of the provocative and existentialist Marina Abramović, we want to promote visionary practices regarding current issues such as the centrality of the body, gender and category barriers.
Thus Marina Abramović, through the timelessness of her performances, makes her presence immanent and her messages eternal.
