KMB-2025: Marina Abramović Lecture on Feb 10; Time to Book Tickets

KOCHI:

Internationally acclaimed Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović will deliver a lecture on ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Performance Art’ on February 10 as part of the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB).

The event will be held at Samudrika Convention Centre, Willingdon Island, from 6 pm to 8 pm. Those aged above 16 years can attend the programme. Tickets are available at Rs 1,000 for adults and Rs 500 for senior citizens and children. The seating capacity is 800. The link to book tickets is: https://events.finlo.in/ kochibiennalemarina

This lecture is on her artistic journey and the evolution of live art and performance as an art form. Abramović will delve into her artistic philosophy, the role of the body and audience in her work.

Born and raised in post-war Yugoslavia, Abramović’s prolific and radical body of work, spanning five decades, continues to shape the field of performance art. In her practice, process becomes sculptural, drawing attention to time and materiality as well as to the political, moral, and ethical dimensions of live art, unravelling the complex relationship between artist and spectator.

In her performances, choreographed movement is often replaced by ritualistic repetition and stillness. Through acts of endurance, transformation, and transcendence, she challenges the conventional aesthetic experience, creating an uncanny space of introspection and catharsis.

Her exhibition Waterfall, a meditative work that emerged from Tibetan Buddhist practitioners’ influence, in Island Warehouse, Willingdon Island as part of the KMB, has been drawing crowd ever since it opened.

The installation presents 108 portraits of Tibetan monks and nuns chanting, a ‘waterfall’ of voices. It invites people into a contemplative, meditative moment as they take one of the 12 seats placed in front of it.

Besides, the journey of MAI (Marina Abramović Institute) set up in 2012 and the history of performance art, the projects, along with archives of selected durational performance and documentation as text, sound, film, and other media, including a 12-hour video, are featured in three rooms of Coir Godown, Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi. 

Abramović, known for trailblazing works such as Rhythm 0 (1974) and The Artist Is Present (2010), using her body as medium, demonstrates how discipline, practices and challenges strengthen endurance at the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. Her long durational performances engage viewers deeply exploring the relationship between the artist and viewer.