Abramović, Marina. Echanger les rôles and Relation dans l’espace. Abramović, Marina. Sur la Voie. Musée National d’Art Moderne Georges Pompidou. Paris: 1990. (p50-65)
The first piece reviewed, Echanger les rôles, is a performance from 1975. At that time, Marina Abramović had been working as an artist for ten years. She found a woman that work as a prostitute in Amsterdam, and proposed to her that they exchange roles: the other woman would occupy her place as an artist, in a gallery, and Abramović would be in the window that she uses for exhibit herself. This piece raises questions about the role of the woman, and the role of the worker woman (as an artist, as a prostitute); the use of the space; the idea of exhibition and the women as spectacle, among others.
The second piece is also a performance from 1976, created for the Venice Biennal, called Relation dans l’espace. Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay walk in opposite directions in a space, both naked. When they collide, they interact, but they never each completely find each other. Both are looking for their place in that space and with the other person, but its impossibility made their search each time more violent. They are naked as a way to show their absence of discourses and the truth of their intentions, but the piece shows their frustration when they can not merge one into another or with the space, both situations outside to the body.
bonus track (trissssssssste)