Marina Abramovic has paired up with Rem Koolhaus to construct Center for the Preservation of Performance Art dedicated to performances of over 6 hours
Performance artist Marina Abramovic and iconic architect Rem Koolhaus have paired up to design and build her in Hudson, New York. This will be a museum dedicated to performance art pieces, with the condition that they must go on for ‘six hours minimum’!
For this purpose, Abramovic bought a massive ex-tennis sports centre within two hours from NYC four years ago. But the project was put on hold since she has been extremely busy – most notably with her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, ‘Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present’. But now she is ready to push forward with it once again; looking to raise $8 million to pay for the project, she is currently in conversation with numerous blue chip art collectors in search for the necessary funds. She’s also meeting with Hudson’s town mayor, to discuss plans for the construction of a hotel for international visitors to the centre.
Due to the extreme length of the proposed performance pieces, viewers will be invited to watch the works unfold in specially made wheeled chairs complete with its own light and dining tables. If/when visitors fall asleep, ‘the attendant will roll you to the sleeping area’ of the theatre. But, ‘When you wake up, raise your hand and you’ll be wheeled back’, Abramovic promised.
Hudson, New York, and the surrounding region southeast of the Catskills, is, in one sense an obvious choice for a performance museum of this kind, in that it is already has a reputation for art. It was, for example, the location chosen for the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair last summer.
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