Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present

Since the beginning of her career in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art that documents approximately fifty of the artist's ephemeral, time- and media-based works from throughout her career. The book will also discuss a unique element of the Museum's retrospective, live performance: a new work created for the occasion, and performed by the artist herself; and recreations of Abramovic's works by other performers - the first such to be undertaken in a museum setting. The book spans over four decades of Abramovic's early interventions, and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances and collaborative performances made with the Dutch artist Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen). Its essays examine Abramovic's ideas of time, duration, and the reperformance of performance art as a way to extend it into posterity. Marina Abramovic also includes a CD, an audio recording of the artist's own voice, guiding the reader through the publication. The artist is present not only in the exhibition but also in the experience of the book.