February’s installment of the Sunday Film Screening Series on 2.23.2014 will feature two works on famous contemporary performance artist, Marina Abramović.

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Art21 Exclusive: Singing Lessons: Marina Abramović, 2013
Filmed in 2011, Marina Abramović prepares for her role in “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović”, an opera based on her own life. Directed by Bob Wilson and featuring original music by Antony Hegarty, “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2011 and traveled to New York City’s Park Avenue Armory in 2013. In the film, Abramović takes one of her first ever singing lessons at the Manhattan studio of vocal coach Nora York. Abramović discusses her desire to become a better singer despite being told as a child that she “didn’t have an ear for music.”

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present, 2011, A Show of Force Film
The feature-length documentary film Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present follows the artist as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major retrospective of her work at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. To be given a retrospective at one of the world’s premiere museums is, for any living artist, the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more — it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: ‘But why is this art?’ The film is a mesmerizing cinematic journey inside the world of radical performance, and an intimate, engaging portrait of an endlessly intriguing woman who draws no distinction between life and art.

About the artist: A pioneer of performance as a visual art form, Marina Abramović uses her body as both subject and medium in performances that test physical, mental, and emotional limits—often pushing beyond them and even risking her life—in a quest for heightened consciousness, transcendence, and self-transformation. Characterized by repetitive behavior, actions of long duration, and intense public interactions, Abramović’s work engages universal themes of life and death as recurring motifs, while drawing on the artist’s personal biography and reflecting contemporary events.

About Art21 Over the past decade, Art21 has established itself as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary art and artists through its Peabody Award-winning biennial television series, Art in the Twenty-First Century. The nonprofit organization has used the power of digital media to introduce millions of people of all ages to contemporary art and artists and has created a new paradigm for teaching and learning about the creative process. In addition to its PBS-broadcast series, Art21 produces short-format documentary series, viewable on multiple online platforms. The Exclusive short-format video series – with almost 200 episodes to date released biweekly on Art21.org – highlights featured artists from the Art21 roster using a blend of both new and previously unreleased footage.

Learn more at:
>   art21.org/films
>   art21.org/films/exclusive