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A Short Film About Love, 1988

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Marina Abramović, Lips of Thomas, 1975

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Seven Easy Pieces (2005), Marina Abramović undertakes a groundbreaking act of performance art preservation and reinterpretation by re-performing five seminal works by other pioneering artists alongside two of her own. This project confronts the ephemeral nature of performance art, using her own body as a living archive to revive and transmit performances that might otherwise be lost to history.

By embodying the original artists’ gestures and intentions, Abramović challenges traditional notions of originality and authorship, proposing that performance art can be both a singular moment and a shared, living legacy. Her renditions are not exact replicas but carefully considered reinterpretations that infuse new meaning and contemporary perspective, while honoring the groundbreaking spirit of the originals.

Presented within the institutional context of the Guggenheim Museum, Seven Easy Pieces asserts the cultural and historical importance of performance art, inviting reflection on memory, embodiment, and artistic lineage. Through this series, Abramović not only pays homage to her predecessors but also expands the boundaries of what performance art can communicate across time.

The seven performances, presented in order, are:

Body Pressure (Bruce Nauman, 1974)

Seedbed (Vito Acconci, 1972)

Action Pants: Genital Panic (Valie Export, 1969)

The Conditioning (Gina Pane, 1973)

How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (Joseph Beuys, 1965)

Lips of Thomas (Marina Abramović, 1975) — her iconic early work, fully restaged

Hommage to Chris Burden (Marina Abramović, 2005) — a new piece created as a tribute to Burden’s influential performances.

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Balkan Baroque (1999) is presented as a "real and imaginary biography" of Marina Abramović, the celebrated Yugoslav performance artist widely regarded as a trailblazer in her field. Directed by Pierre Coulibeuf, the film departs from conventional documentary storytelling, opting instead to weave a fragmented, non-linear narrative that reinterprets Abramović’s life and work into a distinct cinematic experience. Rather than merely documenting her biography or replicating her performances, it fuses reality with imaginative elements, creating a new lens through which to view her art and existence.

The film delves into Abramović’s personal history, shaped by her strict upbringing in Tito’s Yugoslavia under the influence of her disciplined, Communist parents. This formative environment, coupled with the chaos and brutality of the Yugoslav Wars, profoundly impacted her perspective and artistic expression. Through her performances, Abramović probes the boundaries of physical endurance and psychological resilience, themes that the film reflects in its exploration of her identity as both an artist and a product of her tumultuous cultural context.

The title Balkan Baroque is drawn from her striking 1997 Venice Biennale performance of the same name. The performance lasted six days, with Abramović working four hours each day, totaling 24 hours over the course of the piece. During this time, she sat scrubbing 1,500 bloody cow bones while singing traditional Yugoslav folk songs. This act was a haunting meditation on the Yugoslav Wars, embodying the trauma, loss, and violence of the conflict, as well as the seemingly impossible task of purging its lingering wounds. Though the film does not directly reenact this performance, it embraces its evocative themes—grief, aggression, and the struggle for redemption—as a framework to illuminate her broader artistic journey and personal narrative.

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rip my heart out

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Murphy Johnson shot by Lengua

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“He shines two fiber-optic lights through Mrs. X’s newly enlarged breasts”. Photo by J. Ross Baughman, Geo Magazine, April 1980.

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Daniele Buetti - Benetton, 1998

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Günther Uecker, ‘Stehpult’ (1988)

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PJ Harvey photographed by Maria Mochnacz in 1993, published in i-D magazine that same year. This is a rarely seen picture from the photo shoot of the Man-Size single.

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Alexander McQueen S/S 1995

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Elfie Semotan. Die schöne Jennersdorferin (Barbara Mühl for Helmut Lang). 1989

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk

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Stella McCartney F/W 2008