The Star of the Show

Abstract

This article explores how Marina Abramović has subtly incorporated the law to her economic and professional advantage. This chapter examines the relationship between performance art and trademark law and articulates a crucial shift from the historical and theoretical conception of performance art as ‘anti-market’ and ‘anti-institutional’ to consider the ways in which Marina Abramović has used her market sensibility to produce herself as a brand, who is world famous as the ‘grandmother of performance art’.

Working through Abramović’s early works in the 1970s, I consider the concept of the ‘contract’ in performance art criticism, to question how the ‘breach of contract’, which I paradoxically typify as an act of intervention, might threaten Abramović’s desire for authenticity and singular authorship. Shifting the focus from contract to trademark, I then consider how Abramović ironed out and codified audience intervention within her work as her practice progressed through the early 1990s and into the millennium. I focus on the image of the star or pentagram in Abramović’s oeuvre as an example of a trademark model, which signals her authenticity as a performance artist. However, this chapter also focuses on how Abramović uses the theatrical framework to uphold her status as an ‘authentic’ performance artist, whilst simultaneously marketing herself as someone who disdains the supposed falsity of the theatrical enterprise.

I suggest that the trademark model allows Abramović to produce herself, much like a trademark in the marketplace, as the ‘real’ authentic performance artist product. This trademark ensures selling power and fulfils consumer/audience expectations. It also ensures this through Abramović’s establishment of sole authorship and ownership, which in turn, allows her to produce herself as a brand.

Notes

1 O’Dell explicitly discusses examples of ‘masochistic’ performance art, for example, Chris Burden’s Shoot and Gina Pane’s The Conditioning, which focused upon ‘individual acts of bodily violence’ (1998: 3).

2 As Daniel Schulze writes in his recently published Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance, ‘the strongest claim to authenticity in the performing arts, however, has not been made by theatre but by performance art’ (2017: 62).

3 In Rhythm 5, Abramovic lay on the floor surrounded by a pentagram structure, which was then set on fire.

4 In an interview with Karen Wright in The Independent (2014), Abramović proffers, ‘I am like a brand, like Coca-Cola®, the Fulbright Foundation, Lincoln Centre, whatever you want’. http://bit.ly/2ly4Fhe

5 Abramović has often claimed, ‘Theatre is fake … The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real’ (O’Hagan, 2010).

6 For an excellent analysis of the gendered nature of this audience call and response see Ward (2012: 114).

7 The Guggenheim, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Museum of Contemporary Photography and FRAC Lorraine all own various printed editions of Lips of Thomas.