Factory International’s Aviva Studios was made for work like this. It’s a space designed for scale, flexibility and form-defying experimentation, all of which apply to performance artist Marina Abramović’s ambitious, uncompromising, sprawling new show, which takes over the whole of the venue’s vast warehouse space.
The four-hour performance gives audiences a journey through the folklore and rites of the Balkans, gathering traditions from across the region. There’s dancing, singing and a variety of surprising uses of the human body, from fertility ceremonies to wedding preparations. These rituals are enacted through live performance and projected film, organised across 13 scenes designed to be experienced by freely roaming audience members. Some are durational tableaux, repeating and accumulating, while others build to a climax and then reset. And wandering through it all is Maria Stamenković Herranz as Abramović’s strict, buttoned-up mother, looking on with disapproval but curiosity.
The emphasis is as much on the Balkan as on the erotic. Yes, there are naked bodies and giant penis sculptures, but Abramović resists simple titillation. The nudity here is ritualistic, not pornographic. A chorus of roaring women bare their vaginas to the sky in a bid to scare the gods and stop the rain; naked figures dance with skeletons in an act of mourning for their dead husbands. Meanwhile, the more explicit traditions – a woman inserting fish in her vagina to create a love potion, or a groom penetrating holes in a bridge to ward off wedding night impotence – are represented through animations on a screen, narrated by a “scientist” character.
There’s as much death as there is sex, intermingling ecstasy and grief. The performance opens with a funeral lament for communist Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito, who looms over several of the scenes. Elsewhere, corpses are raised on plinths and men and women in traditional costume perform a haunting funeral dance.
The erotic and the morbid collide most powerfully in the black wedding: a striking scene in which a young, unmarried dead man is symbolically joined with a young woman. In a way that’s characteristic of the intensity and commitment of the performances throughout, black-clad dancers violently fling themselves at one another and at the ground.
Left to meander through all these strange and forceful scenes, the experience can be overwhelming at times. Cries, moans and rhythmic chants ring out across the cavernous space, often wrenching attention away from what’s happening in front of you. But as the performance goes on Abramović and her team subtly direct the audience into specific areas, building to collective spectacles that give the evening a satisfying shape, as opposed to being simply a collection of randomly ordered curiosities.
It’s rare and thrilling to see an artist working on this scale. Balkan Erotic Epic is a test of endurance for performers and spectators alike, but the compelling unpredictability makes it worth the long haul.
At Aviva Studios, Manchester, until 19 October
