Plymouth Arts Centre and the Marina Abramović Institute invite you to the launch of...

The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow
Thursday 21 January 2010, 6.30 – 8.30pm

Drinks reception, live art performances and publication launch
at The Brewhouse and Slaughterhouse, Royal William Yard, Plymouth. Speeches at 7pm by Marina Abramović; Ian Hutchinson, Director, Plymouth Arts Centre; Maria Balshaw, Director, Whitworth Art Gallery; and David Coslett, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth.

Catch the Silverline Ferry from the Barbican to Royal Wiliam Yard, leaving at 6pm (tickets £2.50, weather dependent).

RSVP t: 01752 206 114 e: info@plymouthartscentre.org

LIve Performances
The Slaughterhouse, Royal William Yard
Plymouth, free entry
Friday 22 January 5 – 9pm
Saturday 23 January 5 – 9pm
Sunday 24 January 2– 6pm

Plymouth Arts Centre presents The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, a curatorial collaboration with the Marina Abramović
Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow will stage, document and discuss
groundbreaking international performance art in order to examine and sustain the future of the medium. The Pigs of Today are
the Hams of Tomorrow takes place over three days at Royal William Yard with performances by six renowned artists and
artist-collectives.

This is the first curatorial project of the Marina Abramović Institute. Marina Abramović has pioneered performance art for over four decades on an international scale. Her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opens in March 2010.

The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow is a translation of the title of a conceptual piece of writing by Georg Jappe published by KunstForum International in 1978 on the contemporary state of art practice in relation to global political agendas.

Image opposite: The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, illustration by Philip Harris, 2009.

Artists
Live Performances

The Turin-born artist Davide Balliano takes inspiration from a poem by Cesare Pavese, Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes,
found on the Italian writer’s desk following his suicide in 1950. Balliano stands facing the corner of a room where two mirrors converge, sharpening knives.

Snezana Golubović, a member of Marina Abramovic’s former Independent Performance Group, re-enacts her performance/installation LOVE STEPS, 2007, first presented at the group exhibition Body & Eros at the 5th International Dance Festival at the Venice Biennale. The artist moves through the space, wearing each pair of shoes and creating what she describes as a dance that memorialises the personal experiences of each pair’s owner.

Helsinki-based artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen construct situations for interaction, participation and collaboration. Since 2005 the artists have initiated Complaints Choirs in cities around the world, including St Petersburg, Singapore, Chicago, Melbourne and Jerusalem. A group of volunteers, led by musical director Nicholas Grew and producer Lucy Walker, sing their personal and collective complaints. The Complaints Choir Plymouth perform live here for the first time.

Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. www.0100101110101101.org) are pioneers in the Internet-based net.art movement. For the exhibition,
the artists stage what they term Synthetic Performances in the virtual world of Second Life. Through their avatars, the Italian-born artists will ‘remix’ and freely reinterpret famous works from the performance-art canon, including Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void (1960).

Directly engaging with the issue of preservation, the Performance Re-enactment Society with Hugo Glendinning form an archive of
recollections of live art events. On the final day of the symposium the Society re-stage these memories to create a photographic installation and an exhibition tour of remembered works.

Francesca Steele is a British artist based in Plymouth whose work uses her own body — physical, psychological and biological
— to articulate what cannot be said in words. Her performance Routine develops her recent practice of bodybuilding, which has
transformed her physique. Over three days of endurance, she performs the compulsory poses required for competitive bodybuilding, in proximity to the viewer.

Images opposite: above: Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Complaints Choir of Chicago, 2007 Below: Davide Balliano, The Heart of Your Mother for my Dogs, 2009, photo: Alessandro Simonetti.

Live Laboratory Symposium
The Brewhouse, Royal William Yard
Plymouth
22 - 24 January 2010
Advanced booking essential, tickets £75 (£45)

Speakers: Marina Abramović, artists from the performances, Ron Athey, Maria Balshaw, Paul Clarke, Helen Cole, Geoff Cox, Adrian Heathfield, Tehching Hsieh, Dominic Johnson, Nick Kaye, Lois Keidan, Alastair MacLennan, Lee Miller, Andrew Mitchelson, Roberta Mock, Hayley Newman, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paula Orrell, Kira O’Reilly, Helen Pritchard, Jovana Stokić, André Stitt and Lois Weaver.

Three days of international speakers debating the past, present and future of live art, alongside the performances at The Slaughterhouse. The Live Laboratory Symposium will set the premise for the new Marina Abramović Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. The symposium is a progressive space in which to imagine and conceptualise the future of the medium. The Symposium has been developed in collaboration with Roberta Mock and Lee Miller, Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth

Image opposite: Francesca Steele, Routine, 2009, photo: Simon Keitch.

The Reading Room
The Brewhouse, Royal William Yard
22 – 24 January, free entry
10am – 10pm Friday 22 January
10am – 10pm Saturday 23 January
1 – 7pm Sunday 24 January

Chill-out and gen-up about performance art in The Reading Room at The Brewhouse, Royal William Yard, just round the corner from the performances at The Slaughterhouse. This resource space has books, journals, catalogues, video and online resources relevant to the events, artists and speakers at the Live Laboratory Symposium. The area also hosts the Live Documentation Lab with students from University College Falmouth (incorporating Dartington College of Art) editing documentation of performances and discussions. Ideas for the Institute are mapped in The Reading Room by Transmedia art students Brussels, Sven Goyvaerts & Filip Daniels.

Image opposite: Performance Re-enactment Society, After Yoko Ono, Grapefruit (1964), 2009, Arnolfini

Exhibition
Plymouth Arts Centre
26 January – 21 March, free entry
Open Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 8.30pm
Sunday 4pm – 8.30pm, free entry

The exhibition at Plymouth Arts Centre displays documentation of the performances at The Slaughterhouse alongside a series of
videos of previous performances by the now defunct Independent Performance Group. The presentation of Independent Performance Group material is the first time these works have been specially edited and begins the archive of the Marina Abramović Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. There is also an archival exhibition of Marina Abramović Presents… staged at the Whitworth Art Gallery as part of Manchester International Festival in summer 2009. Through the Live Documentation Lab during the symposium, students will be
collating, recording and writing about the work to form a major part of this exhibition led by artists and lecturers Tim Dollimore,
Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley, Gillian Wylde and Siobhan Mckeown. Exhibition design inspired by Theatre Director Robert Wilson.

Image opposite: Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG Re-enactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s Imponderabilia, Synthetic Performance in Second Life, 2007, courtesy Postmasters Gallery, New York.

Performance Market
Plymouth City Market
23 – 24 January, 8.30am – 4.30pm, free entry

Performance Market supports emerging artists from Devon and Cornwall to create new performance work in a supportive
environment, alongside a programme of international artists. Performances are taking place at Plymouth City Market, Frankfort Gate, amongst the shoppers and traders. Selected by Marina Abramović, artists Ania Bas, Alexandria Felicitas & Lina
Hermsdorf, I Lien Ho, Mark Leahy, Nicky Thompson, Bill Wroath, Paul Carter and Alexandra Zierle were invited to respond to the market’s activities and its context as a historic focal point.

Image opposite: Plymouth City Market

Publication
Marina Abramovic + The Future of Performance Art
£29

Plymouth Arts Centre has worked with publisher Prestel to produce: Marina Abramović + the Future of Performance Art, edited by Paula Orrell, Curator at Plymouth Arts Centre. This book, on the latest in contemporary performance art, features the work of world-renowned artist Marina Abramović and showcases eighteen international artists.

An interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Abramović outlines the challenges and goals of her new project. The publication features documentation of Marina Abramović Presents…which took place at the Whitworth Art Gallery as part of Manchester International Festival.

ISBN 978-3-7913-5028-8. Available from the The Slaughterhouse, Royal William Yard and the Box Office at Plymouth Arts Centre 01752 206 114.

Parallel Programme
Performances, events and film screenings

RED APE
Thursday 21 January, 8.30pm – 10pm
At Mills Bakery, Royal William Yard
Saturday 23 January, 10.30pm – 12.30am
At Plymouth Arts Centre
RED APE, curated by Mark Greenwood, presents guerilla performances by Alastair MacLennan, Mark Greenwood and Bean, Leo Devlin, Ula Dajerling, Sinead O’Donnell, Roddy Hunter
and gyrl grip (Lisa Newman and Llewyn Maire). RED APE is an ongoing enquiry into the relationship between duration and live performance.

LOW PROFILE
LOW PROFILE present the newest part of their ongoing project DRY RUN in a specially produced (and slightly secretive) intervention during the symposium. LOW PROFILE is collaboration between artists Rachel Dobbs and Hannah Jones. They have been working in collaboration since 2003 to make live art, performances and associated ephemera. They are currently based in Plymouth, UK.

Walk the Walls
Midnight Friday 22 January until noon Saturday 23 January
Persighetti and Whitehead invite you on a 6km slow walk through the city of Plymouth following the zigzag route of a scaled-down mapping of the Great Wall of China. The walk refers to the 1988 performance by Marina Abramović and Ulay walking the 6,000km Great Wall of China from opposite ends. You can join them at any point, register to take part by phoning 01752 206 114. Their position will be posted live at http://walkthewalls.tumblr.com/

81/2 PG
Marina Abramović’s film choice
2 February, 5.30pm, Plymouth Arts Centre
Director. Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963,
137 mins, subtitled. Cast. Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Claudia Cardinale.
Voted the 3rd best film of all time by the British Film Institute, Marcello Mastroianni stars as Anselmi, a famous Italian film director who is suffering from ‘director’s block’. 81/2 is
a film about the struggles involved in the creative process.

Underground PG
Marina Abramović’s film choice
2 February, 8.15pm, Plymouth Arts Centre
Director: Emir Kusturica, Yugoslavia, 1995,
160 mins, subtitled. Cast: Miki Manojlovic,
Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jakovic.
Underground is a wildly ambitious, energetic, tragic-comic allegory for the history of Yugoslavia. The boisterous spirit and comic exuberance of the film make it a delirious satire that is darkly hilarious even at its saddest moments.

Legacy of Performance
Saturday 6 March, 4.30 – 6.30pm
Join collaborators from Performance Market, University of Plymouth, Dartington, RED APE and LOW PROFILE to discuss
the legacy and impact of this project on Plymouth and the region.

Images opposite: (above) Nathan Walker 2009, (middle) Simon Persighetti and Tony Whitehead, (below) film still from 8 1/2.

Plymouth Arts Centre
38 Looe Street
Plymouth PL4 0EB
01752 206114
www.plymouthartscentre.org