Seven Deaths by Marina Abramovic by Sozita

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

TITLE: Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths” Subtitle: Antiquity as a performing space Sozita Goudouna Abstract The material traces of antiquity, of monuments, mortality, and the ancestral sacred geography become the site for Marina Abramović's forthcoming location-driven, live performance and film entitled “Seven Deaths.” The dramatic architecture of ruins, of opera houses and monumentality is contextualised through the nexus of death and desire. Abramović's new work-in-progress project is conceived by the performance artist as a collection of instances of deaths that will occur in performative settings in seven different locations of distinct morphology and character. The dramatic narrative focuses on seven opera heroines that Maria Callas embodied, among them Tosca, Madame Butterfly, Norma, Medea, Aida, Carmen, Traviata all of whom die from love/desire or passion. The paper focuses on Abramović's new project so as to explore the material, literary, historical, and philosophical dimensions of the intersection between desire and death as it is developed in the enactment and embodiment of the seven opera heroines that died from their erotic desire. The paper is also a reflection on the ways that the dramatization of the monumentality and sacredness of spaces formulate dramatic architectures.

Keywords: Marina Abramović, Maria Callas, Opera, Death, Antiquity Seven Epic Deaths, Seven Iconic Operas, Seven Mythical Places, Seven Costumes The material traces of antiquity, of monuments, mortality, and the ancestral sacred geography become the site for Marina Abramović's forthcoming locationdriven film entitled “Seven Deaths.”

Abramović's new project is conceived by

the performance artist as a collection of instances of deaths that will occur in performative settings in seven distinguished sites. The production focuses on seven opera heroines that Maria Callas embodied, among them Tosca, Madame

Marina Abramović announced her film project for the first time at Onassis Cultural Centre in Marina Abramović In conversation with Zvonimir Dobrović: The method and performance practice. Transitions 1. Balkans: Contemporary Art Festival of the Independent Balkan Scene, Onassis Cultural Centre, 7th March, Athens, 2014. Information about the film can be found at: Blatsou, Ioanna. Marina Abramović homage to Seven Deaths. Ekathimerini, Tuesday, April 22, 2014<http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite4_1_22/04/2014_539098> [Date of Access 20/10/14] Marina Abramović discusses the film “Seven Deaths” at the Greek National Broadcaster TV Show “The Era of Images,” interviewer Katerina Zacharopoulou <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oV5xaBFP98> [Date of Access 20/10/14].

Butterfly, Norma and Medea, all of whom die from love. Marina Abramović will embody Callas as she impersonates the seven different heroines in seven different locations (including operas, ancient sites, contemporary landscapes that are yet to be confirmed), designed by seven different directors and directed by seven different directors (among them Roman Polanski, Piedro Almodovar2). Rather than working against architecture, as in her early works with the artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay), when the focus was on “emptying” or “freeing space” or at her recent shows “512 Hours” and “Generator,” for “Seven Deaths,” Abramović will work with mythical and emblematic spaces as well as with preexisting architectural structures. The following study explores the ways these dramatic architectures are formulated and the relationship of her artistic practice with architecture, while it focuses on Abramović’s new project so as to explore the material, literary, historical, philosophical and political dimensions of the intersection between desire and death as it is developed in the enactment and embodiment of the seven opera heroines that died from their erotic desire.

According to Marina Abramović’s statement at Transitions 1. Balkans: Contemporary Art Festival of the Independent Balkan Scene, Onassis Cultural Centre, 7th March, Athens, 2014.

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Figure 1. 7 Deaths of Marina Abramović: 7 Epic Deaths, 7 Iconic Operas, 7 Mythical Places, 7 Costumes. Copyright: Marina Abramović's work-inprogress film illustration.

Seven Dramatic Sites The dramatic architecture of ruins, of old opera houses and monumentality is contextualised through the nexus of death and desire. Marina Abramović’s oeuvre has focused on the relationship between the physical body and architecture, on expansive space and on the transformative relationship between “space” and “performer,” as well as, on transitory objects that trigger experience and engage the audience in live situations. An important aspect of her practice is the performer’s consistent concern with spatial and architectural experience that is primarily focused on creating a performative interrelationship between artist and audience. Shared space and closed circuit experience has been the focus of works that challenge the public to be in control rather than the performer, like the pieces that she developed and performed with Ulay (German artist, Abramović’s partner in life and co-performer for thirteen years). As she described: Our first performance, “Relation in Space,” took place at the Venice Biennale in 1976: two bodies running for one hour to each other, like two planets, and mixing male and female energy together into a third component we called ‘that self’. In ‘Interruption in Space’ we ran to each other in different directions and there was always space in between. With our full force, we ran against the wall between us. “Expansion in Space” took place at Documenta in Kassel, in 1977: we tried to expand our bodies in the space by moving two large columns of 140 and 150 kilos respectively, twice the weight of our own bodies. The piece was very important because there was an audience of almost one thousand people. It was the first time that we experienced what the energy of the audience means and we went over our limits – physically and mentally. (Abramović, 2002: 33) 8

In “Expansion in Space,” Marina and Ulay moved simultaneously towards the mobile columns hitting them repeatedly with their bodies and moving them towards the stationery columns. The piece “Imponderabilia” (1977), at the Galleria Comunale d’ Arte Moderna in Bologna, also focused on the shared space between performer and viewer as well as on interior architectural elements. The performers stood naked in the main entrance facing each other, so that visitors passing through the entrance of the museum would have to pass from the two naked bodies and would also have to face one of the naked performers. The performers have also experimented with landscape architecture in their research on the themes of love and symbiotic relationship during the project “The Great Wall Walk” (1988) that was originally performed for ninety days along The Great Wall of China. To Abramovic, walking towards Ulay was like a magnetic force attracting the lovers and driving them towards each other. On the contrary, the project asserted the dramatic ending of their relationship in this landmark space, the Great Wall of China.3 The themes of love and death are recurring in Marina’s oeuvre, however, “Seven Deaths” involves architecture in a very different way, given that the performer does not interact with the viewer, or with another performer, as she often does and most recently in the projects “512 Hours,” “The Artist is Present” and the “Generator.” The dramatic space is not constructed as the space in between the performer and the active emancipated spectator. In the same way the work is not created in an experimental and improvised manner as Abramović has “staged” her presence during the creation of performative events. As she argues, (Abramović, 2002: 27) ‘in performances…it is very important not to rehearse, not to repeat, and not to have a predicted end.’ Moreover, in “Seven Deaths” the artist does not enact herself but represents another performer, Maria Callas, and the heroines Callas embodied.

Marina Abramović. The Great Wall Walk. 1988/2008. Originally performed for 90 days along The Great Wall of China. 16mm film (colour, silent) transferred to two-channel video. 16:45 min. © 2010 Marina Abramović. Courtesy Marina Abramović and Sean Kelly Gallery/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Acting, Performing And Dying In contrast to certain of her previous projects, “Seven Deaths” and the quasiopera “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović”

have to be rehearsed and

repeated with a predicted end, given that a script and a narrative is involved in these projects, even if the script has the function of instructions that do not include textual representation but only stage directions, movement and action, namely, non-verbal performance directions. Whether acting or performing, Abramović seems to be more interested in the ephemerality of performance and life and in the fact that the performer can die in front of the eyes of the spectator, as Blau argued: when we speak of what Stanislavski called Presence in acting, we must also speak of its Absence, the dimensionality of time through the actor, the fact that he who is performing can die there in front of your eyes’ is in fact doing so. Of all the performing arts, the theatre stinks most of mortality. (Blau, 1982: 83) At the intersection of theater, opera, film and visual art these projects are not only performative, they are also representational and most importantly they are directed by other artists. The director Robert Wilson’s reimagined Marina Abramović's life and work in the quasi-opera, “The Life and Death of Marina

“The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” was conceived, directed and designed by Robert Wilson; cocreator, Marina Abramovic; performed by Ms. Abramovic, Willem Dafoe and Antony; musical director, composer and lyricist, Antony; composer, William Basinski; composer and lyricist, Svetlana Spajic; costumes by Jacques Reynaud; co-director, Ann-Christin Rommen; dramaturge, Wolfgang Wiens; lighting by A. J. Weissbard; sound by Nick Sagar; makeup design by Joey Cheng; video by Tomasz Jeziorski; music supervisor and music mix, Dan Bora. Presented by Park Avenue Armory, Alex Poots, artistic director. Premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2011.

Abramović,” a biographical drama5 that presents Marina in several roles, in similar ways to “Seven Deaths.” The operatic play opens with three almost identical-looking female figures that stand motionless on black coffin-like structures as the spectators enter the theatre. One of the figures is Abramović who also portrays her own mother. The narrative chronicles the journey from her difficult childhood in former Yugoslavia to the present day. The idea of playing her own life crystalized after her separation from Ulay, as Marina confided, (Abramović, 2010:19) ‘I was in such pain, mentally and physically, that I could not go back to my own work. The only way I could see a solution was if I could take some kind of distance from myself by staging my own life.’ However, in “Seven Deaths” Marina decides not to stage her own life directly but the life of another suffering woman and of seven operatic heroines. This is the first time that Marina will perform another performer or a dramatic role, since she has only performed herself and a family member, such as her mother. By impersonating these roles her performance will raise questions of acting and performing, of performance and scripted directions. As she had interrogated: First of all: what is performance? Performance is some kind of mental and physical construction in which an artist steps in, in front of the public. Performance is not a theatre piece, is not something that you learn and then act, playing somebody else. It’s more like a direct transmission of energy…The more the public, the better the performance gets, the more energy is passing through the space. (Abramovic, 2002: 27)

Every few years since 1989, Abramović has performed a work entitled “The Biography” in Europe and the United States that commences with her own birth, in 1946, and while she herself directed some of the productions, she has also collaborated with other directors for this piece. Thus, between 1989 and 1993 she attempted to develop her own retrospective theatrical production with Charles Atlas, in 1994 she also worked with Atlas on another theater-based work “Delusional” and Michael Laub directed the “Biography Remix” at the Teatro Palladium in Rome (2004) that included videos and the live presence of Abramović. The Biography Remix coincided with several turning points in Abramovic's life. She is gave up teaching and left Amsterdam after 27 years and decided to live between a flat in Rome, a loft in New York and a house in the Mediterranean.

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Figure 2. Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini at the natural setting of the film “Medea,” Cappadocia, 1969. The performance artist seems to transcend the polarity between acting and performance because of her profound desire to embody Maria Callas. For twenty years, Marina Abramović desired to make a work dedicated to the life and work of Maria Callas. She had read all of her biographies, and has always been fascinated by her personality, and by the uniqueness of her death. As she wrote: Callas died from a broken heart. She died for love. At the end of every tragic opera the woman dies. She dies for country, for sacrifice, for honour, of jealousy, of tuberculosis, and so on. The woman character dies in so many different ways; jumping from the tower, jumping from the boat in the sea, being buried alive, suicide with a knife in her heart. I would like to re-enact only the last minutes of seven operas: seven death scenes. I would be happy if I could work with different film directors, one for each scene. Each director would imprint the scene, and my performance, with her or his own vision and interpretation. (Abramović, production statement, 2014)

Abramović thinks that in the performance you have to be in control and she quotes a statement by Maria Callas, who once said, ‘When you perform, half of the brain has to be in complete control and the other half of the brain has to be at a complete loss. That is the essence of what I want to say. You have to balance these two.’

The performance artist will have to balance the control and

the loss of the brain, while she will embody the death scene as experienced by the seven opera heroines embodied by her idol, Maria Callas.

Dying In Situ The tragic heroines, as Abramović explains die for country, for sacrifice, for honour, of jealousy, of tuberculosis, and so on and they also die in a specific setting or landscape. Shakespeare's Desdemona (Othello, c.1601 – 1604) disappoints her father when she elopes with Othello, a man several years her senior. Her husband, however, is manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing she is an adulteress, and, in the last act, she is murdered by her estranged spouse. Puccini's Tosca suicides in the third Act, Scarpia calls Tosca, and shows her lover’s tortured state, Tosca begs Scarpia to save her lover's life and he demands that Tosca yield herself to him in exchange for her lover's life. As Scarpia attempts to touch Tosca, she stabs him to death with a knife. Tosca runs to Cavaradossi who is confined to prison but the firing squad shoots Cavaradossi. As soon as Scarpia’s subordinates attempt to arrest Tosca for Scarpia's murder, she kills herself by leaping from the castle.

Laurie Anderson Interviews Marina Abramović, http://bombmagazine.org/article/2561/marina-abramovi

BOMB

Magazine

available

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Figure 4: Maria Callas (Norma) and Fiorenza Cossotto (Adalgisa) at Norma, Opéra de Paris.

Bellini's Norma also sacrifices herself, by revealing that it is she who is to be the victim because she is a high-priestess who has broken her vows and became involved with the enemy, and has borne his children. As she prepares to leap into the flames, the re-enamoured Pollione joins her, declaring ‘your pyre is mine as well. There, a holier and everlasting love will begin.’ Georges Bizet's Carmen is killed because of erotic revenge in Act I. Carmen is warned that Don Jose is plotting to kill her and while Escamillo enters the bullfighting ring, a desperate Don Jose meets Carmen outside the arena. He tells her she must commit her love and fidelity to him. She explains that she no longer loves him and throws the ring he gave her. In rage Don Jose stabs Carmen in the heart with a dagger and she dies simultaneously with Escamillo's bullfighting victory.

Giacomo Puccini's Madame Butterfly stabs herself because of honour in Act II she dismisses everyone, takes out the dagger with which her father committed suicide, choosing to die with honour rather than live in shame. Verdiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Traviata (an opera inspired by La Boheme) the heroine dies from tuberculosis. The doctor tells Annina that Violetta's illness has significantly progressed and that she only has a few days left to live. Violetta reads a letter sent by Giorgio telling her that Baron was only wounded in the duel. He tells her that he confessed to Alfredo that it was his fault for her sudden separation. However, it is too late, she attempts to go to Paris with Alfredo, but she falls dead to the floor at Alfredo's feet. In Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, (Act 4) the heroine sacrifices herself for her lover. Amneris announces to Radames that she will save him if he renounces his love for Aida, but he refuses. The high priest and his court condemn Radames to death by being buried alive. Amneris begs for their mercy, but they do not budge. Radames is taken away into a dark tomb. Following his imprisonment he hears Aida breathing in the dark, she confesses her love for him and that she has chosen to die with him. The two embrace as Amneris weeps several floors above them. Medea takes revenge because of her erotic passion for Jason and kills Glauce, Creon and her children. AbramoviÄ&#x2021; will embody these opera heroines only at the final scenes of the tragic operas when these women die for country, for sacrifice, for honour, of jealousy, of tuberculosis, and so on. The heroines are dying in so many unusual ways and in so many different sites: jumping from the tower, jumping from the boat in the sea, being buried alive, suicide with a knife in her heart (harakiri).

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Figure 4: Maria Callas at “Medea” by Pier Paolo Passolini Staging the Death Drive “Seven Deaths” becomes the quintessence of the death drive (German: Todestrieb), namely, of the drive towards death, self-destruction and the return to the inorganic since the seven opera heroines are driven to death. The task of the death instinct, according to psychoanalysis, is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state, however, Abramović focuses on the interaction between the death drive (destruction) and Eros (the drive of life and creativity), thus, on the nexus between the life and the death instinct. The concept of the “death instinct,” was originally proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1920, in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he wrote of the ‘opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts.’

(Freud,1961). The death drive opposes Eros, the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other creative, life-producing drives. The death drive is also referred to as “Thanatos”7 in post-Freudian thought, complementing “Eros.” Regardless of the fact that the concept of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego are the most well known in regards to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, the theory that might be the core of the philosophy of psychoanalysis, as it is at the core of Seven Deaths, is that of the interaction between the two drives: “Thanatos” and “Eros”; “Thanatos” being the drive of death and destruction and Eros being the drive of creativity and love. In the context of Marcusian analysis, the natural union of Eros and Thanatos is the sexual drive. During the twenty-first century and even in contemporary philosophy of psychoanalysis the death drive became perhaps the most controversial aspect of Freud's theoretical corpus because of its opacity and apparent remoteness from clinical practice (Freud also acknowledged the "speculative" nature of its origins).

Nevertheless,

the

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psychoanalytic mainstream. Seven Spaces within Scenographic Strategy

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The paper did not attempt to provide an exhaustive account of the death drive or a critique of a theory that has been considered by many theorists as controversial,

but

rather

examines

its

creative

applications

art

and

performance and particularly to Abramović’s “Seven Deaths.” Death is usually performed in Marina’s oeuvre as the interrogation of life, since “live” performers move through “real time” toward their deaths as they perform. As Blau (1983: 299) asks. ‘what is the theatre but the body’s long initiation in the mystery of its vanishings?’ In Abramović's “Seven Deaths”, the fictional or mythic vanishings of the bodies of the seven heroines are depicted in conjunction with the actual/real death of Marina's “other” or “double,” namely, Maria Callas. Marina becomes Maria and the object of her desire becomes her identification with the subject Maria Callas, 7

The term was introduced by one of Freud's followers, Wilhelm Stekel.

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

ultimately during Maria's actual death due to her erotic suffering. This process will be spatially depicted through the mise-en-abyme scenic format at the introductory scene of “Seven Deaths.”

Figure 5. Rita Hayworth surrounded by mirrors in Orson Welles film “The Lady from Shanghai,” 1957.

The film commences with the depiction of the actual death of Callas at her apartment in Paris based on the structure of the mise-en-abyme, the death of each heroine is integrated in the penultimate death of the leading performer. The scene is staged a couple of minutes before Callas' death at the moment when she is in front of seven mirrors and through the looking glass seeing the seven death of the seven heroines she embodied. Each role dies in the mirror while the leading performer departs from the stage of life and like her heroines, the eight heroine (Maria Callas), represented by the ninth heroine (Marina Abramović), is driven to death, and desires to end her life due to causes of the heart.

Acknowledgments The production is currently (2014) in progress and certain features of the film might change such as script, settings, directors and set designers.

Figure 6. Maria Callas in Epidaurus

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

References Biesenbach, Klaus. (2010) Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, New York: Museum of Modern Art. Blau, H. (1982). Take Up The Bodies: Theatre at the Vanishing Point, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Nigianni, B. Marina Abramovic Presents: Architectural Experience as Critical, Selfreflective Practice, available online at http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/marinaabramovic-presents-architectural-experience-as-critical-self-reflective-practice/ Abramovic, M. (2002). Body Art. In M. Abramovic, A. Ratti (eds), (pp. 27-39). Milano: Charta. Abramovic, M. (2010). Marina Abramovic presents…,[Online], Available http://www.mif.co.uk/events/marina-abramovi-presents%E2%80%A6/ [April 2010].

Ebony, D. (2009). Marina Abramovic. An interview by David Ebony. Art in America. No5, 112-121). Freud, S. (1961) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (The Standard Edition). Trans. James Strachey. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization, 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 1987. Iles, C. (1995). Cleaning the Mirror. In Iles, C. (ed), Marina Abramovic. Objects, Performance, Video, Sound, (pp 21-25). Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford. Rico, P.J. (1998). On Bridges, Travelling, Mirrors and Silence… In Amsterdam: Interview with Marina Abramovic. In Rico, P.J. (ed), Marina Abramovic: The Bridge / El Puente, Milano: Charta. Westcott, J. (2009). Marina Abramovic. On why performance art should be long and painful. Art Review, Issue 33, Summer, 98-103.

Author identification *Dr. Sozita Goudouna is a professor, curator and the author of "Beckett's Breath: Antitheatricality and the Visual Arts" published by Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism released in the US by Oxford University Press. According to William Hutchings' review, Goudouna’s book is "surely the most ever said about the least in the entire history of literary criticism." She holds a PhD from the University of London on art and respiration.

Her internationally exhibited projects include participations at Performa Biennial in New York, Documenta, Onassis Foundation Festival, New Museum, Hunterian Museum, Benaki Museum, Byzantine Museum, EMST Contemporary Art Museum among others. She is head of operations at Raymond Pettibon Studio and visiting professor at City University New York (CUNY) and New York University. She is researcher at the Organism for Poetic Research supported by New York University and Brown University and has taught from 2015 at New York University as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Curator fellow at Performa Biennial in NYC. Prior to joining Performa she was the three year artistic director of the 1st EU funded research and exhibitions program in Athens under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. During her directorship, she curated and commissioned projects by Martin Creed, Santiago Sierra, Lynda Benglis, Roy Ascott and has collaborated in 2014 with Marina Abramovic for the production of “Seven Deaths." She is the founding director of the US non-profit “Greece in USA” for the promotion of contemporary Greek art. Sozita served as treasurer of the board of directors of AICA Hellas International Art Critics Association and as member of the board of directors at ITI International Theatre Association, UNESCO. More at: https://cuny.academia.edu/DrSozitaGoudouna

Notes 1. Marina Abramović announced her film project for the first time at Onassis Cultural Centre in Marina Abramović In conversation with Zvonimir Dobrović: The method and performance practice. Transitions 1. Balkans: Contemporary Art Festival of the Independent Balkan Scene, Onassis Cultural Centre, 7th March, Athens, 2014. Information about the film can be found at: Blatsou, Ioanna. Marina Abramović homage to Seven Deaths. Ekathimerini, Tuesday, April 22, 2014<http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite4_1_22/04/2014_539098> [Date of Access 20/10/14] Marina Abramović discusses the film “Seven Deaths” at the Greek National Broadcaster TV Show “The Era of Images,” interviewer Katerina Zacharopoulou <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oV5xaBFP98> [Date of Access 20/10/14].

2. According to Marina Abramović’s statement at Transitions 1. Balkans: Contemporary Art Festival of the Independent Balkan Scene, Onassis Cultural Centre, 7th March, Athens, 2014.

3. Marina Abramović. The Great Wall Walk. 1988/2008. Originally performed for 90 days along The Great Wall of China. 16mm film (colour, silent) transferred to two-channel video. 16:45 min. © 2010 Marina Abramović. Courtesy Marina Abramović and Sean Kelly Gallery/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

4. “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” was conceived, directed and designed by Robert Wilson; co-creator, Marina Abramovic; performed by Ms. Abramovic, Willem Dafoe and Antony; musical director, composer and lyricist, Antony; composer, William Basinski; composer and lyricist, Svetlana Spajic; costumes by Jacques Reynaud; codirector, Ann-Christin Rommen; dramaturge, Wolfgang Wiens; lighting by A. J. Weissbard; sound by Nick Sagar; makeup design by Joey Cheng; video by Tomasz

Sozita Goudouna, Death As Desire: Performing Spaces of Antiquity in Marina Abramović’s “Seven Deaths”

Jeziorski; music supervisor and music mix, Dan Bora. Presented by Park Avenue Armory, Alex Poots, artistic director. Premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2011. 5. Every few years since 1989, Abramović has performed a work entitled “The Biography” in Europe and the United States that commences with her own birth, in 1946, and while she herself directed some of the productions, she has also collaborated with other directors for this piece. Thus, between 1989 and 1993 she attempted to develop her own retrospective theatrical production with Charles Atlas, in 1994 she also worked with Atlas on another theater-based work “Delusional” and Michael Laub directed the “Biography Remix” at the Teatro Palladium in Rome (2004) that included videos and the live presence of Abramović. The Biography Remix coincided with several turning points in Abramovic's life. She is gave up teaching and left Amsterdam after 27 years and decided to live between a flat in Rome, a loft in New York and a house in the Mediterranean. 6. Laurie Anderson Interviews Marina Abramović, BOMB Magazine available at http://bombmagazine.org/article/2561/marina-abramovi 7. The term was introduced by one of Freud's followers, Wilhelm Stekel