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Serbian artist spends 700 hours sitting in performance art record

02 June 2010 [16:45] - TODAY.AZ
A Serbian artist who has spent 700 hours staring at members of the public on Monday brought to an end the longest piece of performance art ever undertaken.
Since her retrospective, The Artist Is Present, opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on March 14, Marina Abramovic has sat for seven hours a day, six days a week, on a chair in the museum's atrium. Visitors were invited to sit in a chair facing her and simply return her silent gaze.
 
Celebrities including Bjork, Lou Reed, Marisa Tomei and Isabella Rossellini were among the 1,400 people who came and sat opposite the artist, who always dressed in a long cassock. Some spent an entire day sitting opposite Abramovic, who bears a strong similarity to the opera singer Maria Callas, while others managed just a couple of minutes.

Other parts of her retrospective at the museum proved similarly controversial, particularly Imponderabilia, in which visitors must squeeze past a naked man and woman who stand facing each other in a narrow doorway.

Abramovic's more challenging solo work has also included stabbing herself, playing with fire and standing motionless for six hours, having invited visitors to do anything they liked to her. At one point, a man held a gun to her neck but she remained still.


/Telegraph.co.uk/
URL: http://www.today.az/news/interesting/69119.html

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