The Life
THE LIFE is a 19-minute Full Dimensional Film experience featuring an original performance by the legendary Marina Abramović presented in an in-the-round Mixed Reality event. A moving meditation on the nature of memory, the artist transitions between worlds, dissolving and reforming as both art and energy, time and space.
Premiering at London’s Serpentine Gallery in February 2019 THE LIFE was the first large-scale Mixed Reality exhibition ever presented to the public. Since that time the work has been shown in several cities around the world and was even successfully sold at auction during the Christie’s London 2020 fall offering (in a brief pause of covid lockdown restrictions).
The show is being presented in Pesaro in an expanded version, with original wardrobe and art elements bringing together an exciting moment in the joined history of performance and media.
The audience is fitted with an optically transparent headset through which they see a large empty room with a circular stanchioned performance space. In the company of up to 50 other guests they have an encounter with the artist. Since there is no screen – no barrier to their experience – they are free to move around the circle in order to view her performance from all angles. The piece is presented on a loop, and guests may remain with Marina for as long as they wish.
The presentation was designed to provoke questions into our sense of human connection and permanence. The technology of THE LIFE has already been surpassed in Tin Drum’s newer works, but instead of altering the original presentation, director Todd Eckert has chosen to maintain the original version.
On June 18 THE LIFE will be the focus of a public discussion between Marina Abramović and Director Todd Eckert. They’ll discuss the work and the function of technology in art and life, as well as accepting questions from the audience (which they hope to be submitted in advance through the festival).
“A hundred years from when anybody who ever knew Marina was alive, there will be people who watch THE LIFE and hopefully feel that sense of connection – of human experience. That’s really the point of the work: to try to create an authentic human connection between artist and audience beyond the simple observation which dominates our current media.”
-Todd Eckert
