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The Performative Body of Marina Abramovi

Rerelating (in) Time and Space

University Of Bologna vor4831{at}iperbole.bologna.it

Can a performance be analysed as a textual practice? Starting from this question, the article tries to describe the effets du sens (meaning effects) of some of the work of Marina Abramovi, a Serbian performer and visual artist. From the 1970s, when the so-called body art emerged as a visual genre, offering the artist’s body as a naked site of inscription, up to the present, when performing has become a more playful and direct transmission of energy between the doer and the viewer, the work of Abramovi represents an effective and powerful example of the body-as-a-text in which subjectivity can be re-expressed and reinvented through the transformations of the relation between time and space. In the strong relationship created between the performer and the audience, what is enacted is a translation–transduction of material and cognitive meanings that results in a redefinition of a subjective and, simultaneously, collective experience of identity.

Key Words: Marina Abramovi • body • energy • gender • identity • performance • subjectivity • textual practices • translation

European Journal of Women's Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3, 295-307 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1350506804044464


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