Meet the Marina Abramović-approved artists taking over the Southbank Centre

Marina Abramović takes her role as “grandmother of performance art” seriously. Not only as a pioneer of the practice, but in her maternal nurturing of the next generation of talent through her incubator, the Marina Abramović Institute. “I only wanted it to not be just about me,” she says of how she approached the curation of her latest venture, a four-day takeover of the Southbank Centre where 11 artists from around the world will perform over 28.5 hours of long durational works in the rabbit warren of Queen Elizabeth Hall’s backstage spaces.

Running in tandem with the artist’s blockbuster retrospective that just opened at the Royal Academy, Abramović sees both these undertakings as a celebration of how far performance art as a whole has come. “When performance [art] started, nobody ever helped me, nobody ever gave a shit about performance – this was not even considered as art,” she says comparing this attitude to her now becoming the first female in the RA’s history to have her own solo show. Any performance artist who followed would be hard-pressed not to be influenced by Abramović’s far-reaching career, but for the MAI roster in particular, this is their matriarch and the admiration between them is palpable and mutual. “I want to show how performance can live through the younger generation of artists.”

“Performance is a living form of art, it’s timeless art, and it’s an immaterial form of art,” she continues, “That’s the power of performance: you have to be there to experience it, and, importantly, bring all emotions into you.” Through their long durational pieces dotted through a labyrinth of rooms, artists including Carla Adra, Paul Setúbal, Carlos Martiel, Collective Absentia, Paula Garcia, Yiannis Pappas, Despina Zacharopolou, Cassils, Sandra Johnston, Aleksandar Timotic and Miles Greenberg, confront themes of oppression, racism, violence, mortality and trauma. All Abramović asks is that you hold your beer. “I would like the audience to actually give us their word of honour, when they see the performances, they will not drink [more than] one bottle of beer,” she says seriously but with a glint in her eye, acknowledging that it is “such a big part of British culture,” while elaborating. “Alcohol and art I never think is a good combination, especially if you’re dealing with performance. You need to be concentrated, you need full attention, you have to be there with your body and mind.” 

The Marina Abramović Institute takeover of Southbank Centre runs until Sunday 8 October 2023. Watch our video and learn more about some of the artists featured below. 

“I’m really interested in really brief and fleeting sensations in the body,” says Miles Greenberg, a Forbes “30 Under 30” recognised artist who performs Water In A Heatwave, a ballet on plinths, as part of the takeover. “Things like an orgasm or a panic, attack, euphoria, ecstasy, agony… These things that are sort of like quick and very ephemeral and seeing what happens, sort of laboratory-style, if you were to stretch them over the course of like seven hours or eight hours or 12 hours or 24 hours.”

Having seen “The Artist Is Present” at the MoMA aged 12, Abramović’s influence was present in his life long before they met a few years later. In particular, one of her transitory objects, a bed for reflection at the very end of that show formed the foundations of his own work. “I remember laying down on that work, and feeling my body implicated and sort of writ large for the first time. I think I owe a lot to that moment. I don’t know what it did, but I definitely know that it helped give me a lot of information as to what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to make art.” The generosity of Abramović and her institute gave Greenberg his first paid gig as an artist, and he continues to revel in the adventure. “I’m from Montreal so the circus is always really close to my heart. It feels like I’ve kind of run away to the circus.”

Paula Garcia is an artist and independent curator from Brazil who has worked with the Marina Abramović Institute since 2012. “Marina changed my life really,” she says frankly of the ongoing trust and opportunities that have stemmed from their longterm partnership. Like most performance artists, Garcia credits Abramović as a foundational reference, but their personal relationship adds another dimension of appreciation. “To be able to show your mentor your work, it’s something really special,” she says, joking, “It’s like when you are like a young soccer player, and you’re playing with Pelé.”

For both, performance is a powerful exchange of energy between the artist and audience. “It’s about real life, it’s about exchanging energy between the performers and the public,” Garcia says, excited about the feedback from the crowds coming through the doors of the Southbank Centre. “Noise Body”, where the artist is encased in a magnetic suit with tonnes of nails thrown at her in a continuous, thunderous shower of steel, creates a claustrophobic, overwhelming, and yet completely arresting sensory experience for both sides of the performance. The payoff through this mutual transfer of time and energy is as Garcia notes Abramović always says, “As much time as you give to the work is as much time you will receive back.” 

There are no photos of Despina Zacharopolou’s contribution to the Marina Abramović Institute’s takeover of the Southbank Centre this as the work sees the audience spend strictly one-on-one sessions with the artist of a duration decided by them on a signed waiver. “Dokimi/Essay/Essai” borrows Foucault’s idea of essai, describing how philosophy can be an experiment, test or method for transforming one’s life. “My work here is about the conditions under which one can philosophise.”

The idea of “how performance art can be a form of inhabited philosophy,” is the undercurrent that powers Zacharopolou’s practice while the Marina Abramović Institute has been instrumental in “[giving her] the space and time to experiment on long durational performances and realising large scale projects that wouldn’t be possible in any other environment.” Citing “Rhythm 0” as a formative inspiration, Zacharopolou draws parallels between Abramović’s seminal performance, how it “changed the relationality between a performance artist and the audience,” and what she strives to achieve in her own. “My work also includes different ways of negotiating the porosity and the width of the boundaries between the performer and the audience. So this is why this work is so important to me.”

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