Image courtesy of Acute Art

Curatorial Programming
in process

Marina Abramović’s RISING addresses the effects of climate change by transporting viewers to witness rising sea levels. Wearing an immersive headset, viewers enter an intimate virtual space, where they come face-to-face with the artist, who beckons from within a glass tank that is slowly filling with water from her waist to her neck.

Users are invited to make contact with the virtual Abramović, and then find themselves surrounded by a dramatic scene of melting polar ice caps.

Abramović urges viewers to reconsider their impact on the world around them, asking them to choose whether or not to save her from drowning by pledging to support the environment, which lowers the water in the tank.

Abramović’s pioneering performance career has centred around time-based work, which uses both hers and the public’s body as a canvas. She has continually pushed the boundaries with durational work that has defined contemporary performance. With Rising, the artist’s presence is brought into another dimension.