© Image Courtesy of Outernet Arts and Marina Abramović institute Marina Abramović and Willem Dafoe in 'The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas' on stage at Munich BAvarian State Opera.
The Serbian-American performance star never ceases to surprise. After her Munich opera performance of 'The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas,' Marina Abramović is turning to a less traditional venue for her next presentation in London: giant screens in a venue in the heart of the UK capital.
Next year Marina Abramović will present her new version of 'The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas' in which she pays tribute to the American-born Greek soprano by highlighting seven tragic destinies she interpreted while alive.
'For 31 years, I have wanted to make a work dedicated to the life and art of Maria Callas. I have read all of her biographies, listened to her extraordinary voice and watched her on film. A Sagittarius, like me, I have always been fascinated by her personality, her life -- and her death. Like so many of the characters she created on stage, she died for love,' had declared Marina Abramović about Maria Callas.
Marina Abramovic in Brazil: The Space in Between 2016 1 hr 28 mins In search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, Marina Abramovic travels through Brazil experiencing sacred rituals and exploring the limits between art and spirituality. In search of personal healing and artistic inspiration, Marina Abramovic travels through Brazil experiencing sacred rituals and exploring limits between art, immateriality, and consciousness.
The new presentation of 'The Seven Deaths of Maria Callas' will be part of a new visual art program launched by Marco Brambilla in a new 2,000 sqm London venue and will also coincide with the opening of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts dedicated to Serbian-American artist's works, between September and December 2021.
A new Turbine Hall?
Located right at the entrance of the Tottenham Court Road station, the new building that will host the opera was designed by Outernet, a company that presents itself as 'a global media and entertainment business comprising connected city-centre districts where music, film, art, gaming and retail experiences come to life in new breathtaking ways.' Giant floor-to-ceiling screens will turn this location into “the largest capacity entertainment venue in London since the 1940s with the highest resolution screens of anywhere in the world.”
'The Outernet Arts programme has at its heart a desire to create an intimacy between the viewer and the artist while presenting work on an unprecedented scale using state-of-the-art technology,' explained Marco Brambilla in a press release.
In an interview with The Guardian, the Italian visual artist compared this new venue to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which presented the works of American artist Kara Walker last year. ' At this scale I don't think there is anything like this in the world which is so exciting. ...Think of those epic installations which we all remember like Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project and Bruce Nauman's sound installation. The ambition of it is to create a series of installations similar to that,' he told the British daily.
Twelve years ago I arrived back in Palma de Mallorca after a month in Abadiania, Brazil. I had been to see the healer and psychic surgeon John of God for the second time with my then partner. She died on 9 February 2005. I will always believe that whatever John of God did prolonged her life, gave her some sort of peace and helped prepare me for the awful grief that followed.
But I couldn't tell you how. I thought The Space in Between: Marina Abramovic and Brazil, which starts at what we called the Casa, John of God's compound in Abadiania might give me some answers.
The film, described as 'a hardcore journey through spiritual Brazil' showed what John of God does as a psychic surgeon in unflinching detail, bringing back memories of just how bloody and raw things get in Abadiania. He's shown scraping a cornea, ramming a metal rod up someone's nose and jabbing into a woman's abdomen with the kind of knife you'd cut onions with, before sowing her up with what looks like fishing line.
'Contemporary art icon' Abramovic presented this as proof that there's no trickery in what JOG, as we ended up calling him, does. But that's to miss the point entirely.
I think it was the Amazing Randi who attacked JOG for being a fraud who pointed out that there are no nerve endings on the surface of the eye so it is possible to scrape away without causing the person any pain. Sticking a metal rod up the nose is an old circus trick, apparently. As long as you get the angle right it's possible to push it down through the sinus cavity and into the throat. Something like that.
This is why JOG allows himself to be filmed in such gory close-up. It's trickery but it's not. I believe that what JOG does, if it works, triggers his patients to heal themselves.
But then that's still only part of the story. There's something going on in Abadiania that simply can't be explained. On our first visit, an Irish filmmaker showed us a film he was making about JOG and healing. He'd been allowed to film the same stuff as Abramovic and her crew. But the really remarkable thing was when a psychologist from one of the American Ivy League universities, in Abadiania to study healing. started spontaneously to bleed and the Irish guy caught it on camera.
When the bleeding started it looked like the psychologist had been shot in the heart. He lifted up his t-shirt and hadn't a mark on him. Yet still he bled. And bled.
Either the Irish filmmaker had faked this - highly unlikely because the psychologist was a serious researcher and, in any case, he was in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight. Or something really happened.
I still have no idea. But I would say if you or someone you know is seriously physically or mentally ill, go to Abadiania if you can. Go because you have nothing to lose and who knows what might happen. Go also if you want to be in a strange and marvellous place that quite simply brings out the best in people.
Abramovic doesn't mention this aspect of Abadiania at all. She talks in a monotone about the hope in people's faces - duh! But, perhaps because, as she says, she's primarily an artist fascinated with ritual but not especially interested in true faith, she comes across as profoundly unsympathetic to the suffering and ecstasy she's witnessing. Her self-absorbtion and the impossibility of showing what is happening inside her, even on a vile-looking ayahausca trip, also makes this a film of surfaces.
I haven't ruled out the possibility that Abramovic might be acting, sort of satirising spiritual tourism and ragbag faith-hopping. I think it's highly unlikely, though. In which case the reason she gives for going to Abadiania - that she'd had her heart broken by a true love and couldn't move forward - is pretty pathetic. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd invent just to have something to say.
Marina Abramovic Brasil Serie
Going to John of God in Abadiania brings out the best in people who are staring at death, and in the people who love them facing up to the possibility of loss. So I can't help but see what Abramovic was saying about her emotional pain as an insult to those like my partner who suffered terribly through no fault of her own.
But the The Space Between did help me remember how extraordinary the work of John of God and Abadiania are, even if it didn't bring me any closer to understanding what I experienced. One of the reasons we went to Abadiania was because we watched a TV programme that claimed John of God was the real thing. Whatever Abromovic's reasons for making her film, if it inspires you to go to Abadiania, that's great.
Getting to Abadiania
If you do decide to go to Abadiania or want to suggest to someone else that they do, you'll find everything you need to know here.
Marina Abramovic Brasil Filmes
Marina Abramovic Brasil Wikipedia