The Paradox of Preservation: Abramović Re-performing VALIE EXPORT
VALIE EXPORT’s original act was a "guerilla" protest against the passive consumption of the female body in cinema. Wearing crotchless trousers and carrying a machine gun, she forced cinema-goers to confront a "real woman" rather than a screen image. Marina Abramovic - Artforum Marina Abramovic re-performing VALIE EXPORT Act...
The following essay examines Marina Abramović’s re-performance of VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969) as part of her landmark 2005 series, Seven Easy Pieces , at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Guggenheim Museum
In November 2005, Marina Abramović occupied the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum for seven consecutive nights, performing seven-hour iterations of seminal works from the 1960s and 70s. Among these was her re-interpretation of VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic . While EXPORT’s original 1969 action was an ephemeral, aggressive intervention in a Munich porn cinema, Abramović’s version transformed it into a durational museum installation. This shift highlights a critical tension in contemporary art: the desire to preserve the history of performance versus the medium’s inherent reliance on the "unrepeatable" live moment. 1. From Guerilla Intervention to Museum Iconography While EXPORT’s original 1969 action was an ephemeral,