marina abramović presents...

Although I missed Jeremy Deller's Procession yesterday, I did get to see Marina Abramović Presents... at the Whitworth Gallery. As you'd expect from four hours of performance from over a dozen artists in a variety of spaces there were longueurs. In fact I'm inclined to agree with the thrust of one of the things Marina Abramović said during her introduction, that longueurs should be accepted as part of the experience, and that an artist who never fails is evidently not really trying - and therefore perhaps never really succeeds.

It's tricky to review an event like this. If I give exhaustive descriptions of performances then it might be possible to take that as in some way a substitute for the actual experience, which of course it isn't. If I give only brief outline details then I run the risk of selling the artist short. If I compare one artist to another, or even use some sort of marking system, then I suggest that certain artists are directly comparable. With an event like this that's palpable nonsense, and in any case only serves to obscure the cumulative effect of the artists, the spaces, the duration. So inevitably I'll approach this in my usual haphazard impressionistic manner. I'll talk about those artists who particularly stood out for me, I'll try to explain why I think I didn't get as much from certain other artists, and I'll talk about the event as a whole.

To begin at the beginning, the first hour of the event is described in the accompanying programme (above) as The Drill. This is an introduction to the idea of a durational work, and involves some exercises of the sort that you might routinely use as an actor, part of the aim of which is presumably to make you as an audience member more at ease with entering the spaces where performances are happening. It's the kind of thing you suspect Abramović can do in her sleep, but already begins to raise questions. Since the audience have been kept outside until the exact time stated, have then been dressed in white lab coats, and sent into the first space to wait it's apparent that the performance has begun. But this doesn't seem like a performance... except maybe that's the point.

That done the audience are walked very slowly out of the first room and set loose in the building. The first performance you come across is Terence Koh, formerly known as asianpunkboy. The space is large and dark, in the light that comes from the outside he kneels wearing a minidress and tights, facing the outside. I have to say I didn't spend a huge amount of time watching this performance, so I can't really make any observations about it. Across the three hours he does move slowly in a very confined area. In a sense this is not a performance you can simply wander past, as I did, but if you devote the energy and attention to the performance it deserves then you won't have the time to devote to others. A question that arises here is applicable to a number of other performances - namely how far is the action planned, and how far is it improvised?

An interesting aspect of the event, although one I suspect Abramović might disapprove of, is observing the behaviour of yourself and other in the space. For instance, on initial arrival in the first space, most people were playing nervously with the cuffs of their lab coats. Curiously no one uses the portable canvas seats piled against the wall until instructed to do so. Once we enter the rest of the building sudden sounds often attract large groups of people to new areas. And of course, although the aim of the lab coats is apparently to render everyone the same, people take no time in personalising the way they wear their coat.

The immediately adjoining large space, and the next piece that the majority of people move on to is where Nikhil Chopra is. His performance is in character, or possibly more than one character, although the programme says he 'takes on the mantle of Yog Raj Chitrakar, a character he bases on his grandfather'. He moves around the space creating a large and changing charcoal drawing on the floor and walls. The slow transformation of the space is fascinating to return to. The charcoal lines on the walls are really quite beautiful.

I next saw Amanda Coogan, the first performance I didn't really get anything from. She waits on the staircase for some time, before leaping - attempting to fly - onto a soft mound below with a cry. In fact her vocalisations were more interesting to me than the performance itself, especially a very masculine sounding growl she made close to the end. There were a variety of references, whether conscious or otherwise, to art of the past. The act of leaping recalled the famous 1960 photomontage of Yves Klein, Leap into the Void, which purports to show the artist leaping from the first floor of a building. The painted mound and the shepherd's crook used to support her while waiting on the stairs brought to mind the Rococo fantasias of Fragonard and others. I'm not sure why it didn't work for me, to an extent I think I expected that a durational piece would be more truly durational and perhaps less a repetition of a relatively short sequence of action. But even as I write that I'm aware that some of the pieces I liked were repetitions. In fact there seemed to be two main approaches to filling the three hours. One was to execute an action that lasted for the duration of the event. On the whole these were the pieces that impressed me most. The other approach was to carry out a short sequence of actions that repeated, or to draw from a small palette of actions in no evident sequence.

Alastair MacLennan was the oldest of the artists participating, with only a couple of exceptions the others were under forty. Surprisingly I hadn't encountered his work previously. His performance/installation was the first that really made me want to go back to it, but which I felt I couldn't get a handle on. I don't want to describe the installation because I don't think it will help. It felt immediately like a Samuel Beckett play converted into an installation and durational performance. If you go be aware that it involves pigs heads, ears, a trotter, and a couple of mackerel, and was already beginning to get a little pungent by what was only the third day. I think what was so compelling about what the programme says MacLennan describes as an actuation was that it felt coherent. Like Beckett the set-up may appear absurd, unnatural, even arbitrary, and yet it also feels entirely natural. I think a large part of that has to do with the artist himself. Not just the selection and arrangement of elements, but the concentration and energy in his performance. He apparently does nothing, merely sits in a chair, hands on his knees, one with a glove on and holding some shredded paper. A boot is tied to his head and there is a stack of photos between his feet. If you think that sounds easy then you should try it for three hours, and make it seem natural. He is a very powerful presence within the room. For me this is one of the highlights.

Moving on, Yingmei Duan performs a piece called Naked. She moves slowly around the room, naked, touching herself, deliberately moving toward people within the space. She never makes contact as far as I could tell, but people often move away from her nonetheless. I'm not entirely sure how successful this is as a piece, but that may have more to do with me, and the fact that I didn't spend a great deal of time within the space.

It's perhaps a good time to confess that although I like performance art I am generally resistant to participation and attention when I'm not in a defined role as a performer. Where I might be asked to interact in even a quite passive way with a performer I become quite uncomfortable. Again while I have no problem with nudity it can feel, and probably rightly, intrusive and discomforting for a viewer. With Yingmei Duan's piece that's a large part of the meaning of it, but within some of the other performances it feels like a bit of a cliche. For someone who's performed poetry for around ten years, and frequently stripped down to my pants it's possibly a little strange to feel this way, but I never claimed to be consistent.

Ivan Civic performs Back to Sarajevo... after 10 years... A video made on his return to Sarajevo after ten years exile is projected on the wall. Within the frame of the image, fixed into, and projecting from the wall are metal rods which act as hand and footholds, allowing Civic to enter the image and move within it, while remaining separate from it. So far as I can tell he doesn't touch the ground during the performance, which is an impressive feat of concentration and physical control. A couple of parallels with work of the past, which I'm sure may be entirely accidental, came to mind. The quality of the video, and the appearance of Civic himself, especially in the film, brought to mind the films of Derek Jarman. The physical aspect of climbing for three hours made me think of Matthew Barney's work, especially Ottoshaft, as part of which he scaled parts of the performance space to block them. And yet the work has a strength and presence of its own. For me it emphasises how special and precious the normality of the people in the film, and by extension of the people around us every day, actually is. I felt like the piece is more about the people and the place than it is about the artist. For those reasons perhaps the Jarman comparison isn't far-fetched at all. I spent a lot of time at this piece.

Kira O'Reilly's is perhaps the clearest example of a single action spread across three hours. She falls extremely slowly down a large stone staircase. She is naked, but it makes sense, and although it might seem gruelling I suspect it's both more comfortable and safer than doing it clothed. Here, strangely, the physical control required is more immediately apparent than in Ivan Civic's performance. She manages to be both graceful and ungainly, the whole performance like a slow-motion dance. While this is a performance you can easily watch in its entirety I don't think it suffers from only the occasional visit. O'Reilly's performance is also the first that I feel is genuinely specific to that space. It must be to do with the limitations of the staircase, Nico Vascellari's performance in the staircase at the opposite side of the main entrance also seems to respond to the space, but I'll come to that soon.

This raises a question I have about the whole event. I can understand a performance occupying any space, but there's something a little deadening about a gallery space stripped of all art and made over exclusively to performances. Especially where access to the event is so regulated. I think I wanted something more confronting and less like going to a gallery.

Upstairs Melati Suryodarmo was represented by her sheet of glass and notices telling us that due to visa problems, or something similar, she was currently stuck in Germany. I hope she manages to reach the Whitworth soon, and that when she does someone will be able to comment on her performance.

I really didn't make anything of Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich's performance. I only got tame echoes of Beckett's Not I, of Herman Nitsch and Paul Neagu, and even of David Bowie's unloved 90's concept album Outside, but nothing to hold on to. Perhaps I needed to be a more active participant. The whole thing left me cold. Please let me know if you think I've got it wrong though, I'm happy to have alternate views on any of the artists.

Happily Jamie Isenstein is nearby for a static, yet compelling performance in which she forms part of a pile of animal skin rugs on top of a manufactured carpet. That's it. She doesn't noticeably move although it must be bloody hot under there.

The final performance/installation upstairs from Fabio Balducci and Marie Cool didn't quite work for me. But unlike Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich there are things here I liked, and I'm able to identify at least one of the aspects that didn't work. The space has a number of sculptures, mainly involving paper and string. These I like, and they're not dissimilar to some of the sculptural pieces the Whitworth have in the same space previously. There must be something in the shape and location of the space that dictates what will work there. What I was less convinced by are the actions that Marie Cool carries out. I find choreographed, unnatural movements don't especially interest me. And for some reason I can't quite identify, the performance, other than the sculptural elements, doesn't actually feel like it's responding to the space.

Downstairs again in the stairwell on the other side of the main entrance from Kira O'Reilly is Nico Vascellari. His is one of the simpler performances but I found it one of the most compelling. With a loud room tone emanating from speakers somewhere in the space he sits at the very bottom of the stairs pounding one large rock with another large rock. The sound is curiously metallic. Vascellari keeps the rhythms simple, and ensures there is a lot of space around the sounds. He isn't constantly pummelling with the stones. Its quite a feat of endurance to remain in the space with the volume and percussive impact of the noise but Icould have happily remained in there most of the afternoon. Perhaps because of its simplicity the performance is both specific to that space, and truly durational - I'd class it as one of the pieces where a single action is carried out across the three hours, although I appreciate others might disagree.

And that was all, I thought, until I realised that I hadn't visited one more space. In the gallery next to Alastair MacLennan, Eunhye Hwang was performing another piece utilising sound. She sometimes stands, sometimes sits or lies on the floor with radios tuned to static in her hands on the floor under or around her. Then by simple movements interfering with the signal alters the sound of the static. At times she will involve members of the audience. Perhaps it is the use of sound, perhaps the relative simplicity of materials, but this is another performance I greatly enjoyed and could have spent a lot of time with.

In the end while the four hours felt like a long time, it didn't feel anything like four hours long. But a childhood being bored in church and inventing imaginary architecture with the shadows in the roof vault while adults sung hymns at a funereal pace was probably good preparation in retrospect. And despite my misgivings about the space, and the whole concept of performance art taking on the role of more conventional art by default of being the only thing occupying that space, I still think it's an event that you should visit, and should ensure you experience in its entirety.