Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

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Entrance to the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, The Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Photo by Jason Mandella. In this photo: Marina Abramović and Ulay, Relation in Movement, 1977. Video (black and white, silent), sound environment (2010), Citroën Type H bus, fourteen black-and-white photographs, and megaphone 34:50 min. Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon; video and sound environment courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery. © 2010 Marina Abramović. Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Marina Abramović and Ulay. Relation in Movement. 1977

Marina Abramović (Yugoslav, born 1946) and Ulay (German, born 1943) Video (black and white, silent)
34:50 min.
Courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York
Photo by Jason Mandella

Director, Glenn Lowry: For twelve years, beginning in 1976, Marina Abramović and her partner, artist Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, lived together and collaborated on numerous works.

Artist, Marina Abramović: We bought a car from the French police this kind of little bus Citroen bus. And, we live in that car, and when we was not performing we would go to nature and spend long times in nature. We even use our car in the performance, in '77, for the Paris Biennale in the front of the museum we made this piece called Relation In Movement, which Ulay is driving the car and I had the megaphone out of the window, and I would say the numbers of the circle as we was passing, because it was just going in a circle, on and on and on. The idea was the car collapsed or we collapsed.

And after 16 hours, the motor burned out and created this minimal trace on the marble as a black circle. For us each circle was a kind of imaginary year.