10/06/2024 – It was inaugurated in Pesaro last June 5th, THE LIFEthe immersive work of Marina Abramović produced by Tin Drum with the direction of Todd Eckert.
The event, part of the program of Pesaro 2024 – Italian capital of culture “The nature of culture”is the first mixed reality performance art event ever conceived and will be open to visitors until June 18, 2024 at the Pescheria Visual Arts Center.
The Life is the first immersive mixed reality performance art event ever conceived. Presented at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2019, the work has crossed the world, coming to life in various cities, even reaching the milestone of a record auction sale at Christie’s London autumn event in 2020. Even before the globalized world experienced the forced isolation caused by the covid-19 pandemic, developing strategies to maintain one’s social connection, the artist asked himself the question of the dematerialization of the body and its transposition into a dimension disconnected from the here and now.
In Pesaro the immersive event debuts with an expanded guise, enriched with original costumes and acoustic elements designed to invite a reflection dedicated to the nature of memory, where the artist passes through different worlds and crosses time and space.
These are the artist’s words Marina Abramović in the video message: “It is a great honor to be invited to Pesaro 2024 – Italian Capital of Culture. I will present with Tin Drum my new mixed reality work entitled The Life. 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 Life, created by Marina Abramović and produced by the studio specializing in mixed reality Tin Drum and directed by founder Todd Eckert, is an immersive work that accompanies the visitor on a journey with a ritual flavour.
Each participant is invited to get rid of any electronic device and wear an augmented reality viewer, through which they can visualize the boundaries of an empty room. The hologram of the artist Marina Abramović moves at the center of the virtual environment, whose performance can be observed by the public freely and from any angle. The absence of barriers and screens provides the opportunity to grasp new points of view, living a one-of-a-kind experience together with the artist.
The work reflects on the power of art as an intangible force, resulting from the encounter between the artist and the collective energy of the people involved in the work.
Marina Abramović’s digital image allows the artist to create a performance without being physically present, creating a space that oscillates between real and virtual and going beyond the boundaries of in-person performance to fully enter the symbolic territory of memory.
“A hundred years from now, when everyone who knew Marina Abramović is dead, 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,” explains the director Todd Eckert.
The Life invites us to confront the ideas of absence and duration, addressed through the artist’s positioning in a dimension beyond time.
The work, which comes to life in a horizon of the eternal present, puts the spotlight on the possible intersections between technology and artistic action, while cultivating the human connection that is created between artist and spectator.
Explains Agostino Riitanoartistic director of Pesaro 2024 – Italian Capital of Culture: “By hosting The Life in the cultural program of Pesaro 2024, we take on the task of giving the community paths for reconnaissance and promotion of the artistic languages that will mark our time. Marina Abramović is one of the greatest representatives of contemporary aesthetic practices, in particular those that from the 1980s to today have proposed some of the most complete, as well as complex, forms of questioning and provocation: the centrality of the body and of the consciousness of the body and of performing art is aimed at breaking down the barriers of genre, category and division between knowledge. We are convinced that among the profound meanings of being the Italian Capital of Culture is becoming the center of attraction and driving force of theories and practices useful for building a new vision and new ideas of the future.”
It enriches and completes the project conversation open to the public between Marina Abramović and Todd Eckert, scheduled for Tuesday 18 June at 9.30 pm at the Rossini Theatre. The meeting sees the artist and the director explore the genesis of The Life and the implications that the work brings to light during an open debate. Tickets are available from June 12th on vivaticket.it, at Tipico Tips or at the Rossini Theater box office.
