ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2010, I spent three months at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to observe and participate in Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist is Present, a long-durational work that formed the centerpiece of an exhibition of the same name devoted to Abramović’s performance art career. In addition to the eponymous performance, the exhibition featured live reenactments of ve of Abramović’s earlier works-the rst ever to be performed by other people in a museum setting-in an attempt to transmit the artist’s presence and make her historical performances accessible to a contemporary audience.1 Supplementing the mix of documentary photographs, video, and digital displays that lled the galleries on the sixth oor of the museum, the re-performances were enacted continuously by a team of forty performers, mainly younger dancers and artists selected and trained by Abramović herself, who worked in shifts throughout the exhibition for a total of over 700 hours.
