Yes / While ‘charisma’ can be found in dramatic and theatrical parlance, the term enjoys only minimal critical attention in theatre and performance studies, with scholarly work on presence and actor training methods taking the lead in defining charisma’s supposed ‘undefinable’ quality. Within this context, the article examines the appearance of the term ‘charismatic space’ in relation to Marina Abramović’s retrospective The Artist is Present at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2010. Here Abramović uses this term to describe the shared space in which performer and spectator connect bodily, psychically, and spiritually through a shared sense of presence and energy in the moment of performance. Yet this is a space arguably constituted through a number of dialectical tensions and contradictions which, in dialogue with existing theatre scholarship on charisma, can be further understood by drawing on insights into charismatic leaders and charismatic authority in leadership studies. By examining the performance and its documentary traces in terms of dialectics we consider the political and ethical implications for how we think about power relations between artist/spectator in a neoliberal, market-driven art context. Here an alternative approach to conceiving of and facilitating a charismatic space is proposed which instead foregrounds what Bracha L. Ettinger calls a ‘matrixial encounter-event’: A relation of coexistence and compassion rather than dominance of self over other; performer over spectator; leader over follower. By illustrating the dialectical tensions in The Artist is Present, we consider the potential of the charismatic space not as generated through the seductive power or charm of an individual whose authority is tied to his/her ‘presence’, but as something co-produced within an ethical and relational space of trans-subjectivity.

In this essay I analyze the performative aspects relating to Marina Abramović's The Artist Is Present, which took place in spring 2010 at MoMA in New York, from the context of the artist and work, institution and documentation. In this performance work, for the duration of the exhibition, Abramović sits completely still opposite another chair where anyone from the audience may sit. The art arises through this participation. The audience are not only viewers, but also the observed, thus becoming part of the work and the negotiation of this exchange of living gazes. The performative pervades this work on multiple levels. The Artist Is Present reached a surprisingly large public, of over 500,000 visitors and continues to circulate in the form of blogs, documentary film and photography long after the exhibition duration. In order to conduct a performative analysis of The Artist Is Present I apply the theories of Peggy Phelan, regarding the relationships between the political and representative visibility in contemporary culture. Phelan's explanation of the unmarked field reveals the importance of the 'other' to see oneself. This is especially relevant in Abramović's performance which challenges and revolves around self reflection in the other. Phelan's theories are also pertinent in analyzing what Abramović as the performer and her work create for re-negotiations around positions and the gaze. The assertions of Carol Duncan in considering the Art Museum as a place of ritual are applied to the ritualistic context of The Artist Is Present, which may well build up a form of liminality. Duncan's claims of the museum as ritual in combination with Phelan's theories provide interesting grounds to further investigate the effect and eventual mythology of the performance work and artist. How do these contexts of institution, documentation, artist and art, which I propose contribute to a kind of myth creation, operate in a ritualized performance art work? This essay analyses these contexts together in order to find a connection between the performative aspects and the effect that they have on the viewer and receiver, which have contributed to the public success of this exhibition. Despite that we now live in an era of reproduction, perhaps the wishes of our era still revolve around a cult value? That even in this post industrial age of reproduction, new needs are recreated for mythology and cult? Or can it be that the reverse is true, that the rites and symbols speak to us before the mythology has fully arisen?

Uppsatsens ämne berör re-performance som utställningsmetod och den fysiska kroppen som utställningsobjekt. Materialet består av Marina Abramovićs retrospektiva utställningen The Cleaner (2017) på Moderna Museet och tre re-performanceverk som framförs av tränade aktörer inne på utställningsområdet. Uppsatsens syfte och frågeställningar består av att undersöka vilka egenskaper re-performance som utställningsmetod har och hur det upplevs att betrakta fysiska kroppar som utställningsobjekt. För att besvara detta används Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception (1945) och hans fenomenologiska syn på ett förkroppsligat varande. Varje re-performanceverk analyseras utifrån några utvalda fenomenologiska verktyg presenterade av Merleau-Ponty och utvecklas med hjälp av tidigare forskning som berör relationen mellan fenomenologi och performancekonst. Ur de fenomenologiska verksanalyserna framträder resultat som jag anser är talande för betraktandet av fysiska kroppar som utställningsobjekt och performance i stort, som exempelvis en förståelse av performance som ett sätt iscensätta fenomenologi genom praktik och handling. Betraktandet av performance är beroende av ett performativt assemblage som bildas, samt av empati och intersubjektivitet. Resultatet visar även att re- performance inte enbart kan benämnas som en form av konstdokumentation, utan att betraktandet av dessa även innebär ett betraktande av självständiga performanceverk.

Uppsatsens ämne berör re-performance som utställningsmetod och den fysiska kroppen som utställningsobjekt. Materialet består av Marina Abramovićs retrospektiva utställningen The Cleaner (2017) på Moderna Museet och tre re-performanceverk som framförs av tränade aktörer inne på utställningsområdet. Uppsatsens syfte och frågeställningar består av att undersöka vilka egenskaper re-performance som utställningsmetod har och hur det upplevs att betrakta fysiska kroppar som utställningsobjekt. För att besvara detta används Maurice Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception (1945) och hans fenomenologiska syn på ett förkroppsligat varande. Varje re-performanceverk analyseras utifrån några utvalda fenomenologiska verktyg presenterade av Merleau-Ponty och utvecklas med hjälp av tidigare forskning som berör relationen mellan fenomenologi och performancekonst. Ur de fenomenologiska verksanalyserna framträder resultat som jag anser är talande för betraktandet av fysiska kroppar som utställningsobjekt och performance i stort, som exempelvis en förståelse av performance som ett sätt iscensätta fenomenologi genom praktik och handling. Betraktandet av performance är beroende av ett performativt assemblage som bildas, samt av empati och intersubjektivitet. Resultatet visar även att re- performance inte enbart kan benämnas som en form av konstdokumentation, utan att betraktandet av dessa även innebär ett betraktande av självständiga performanceverk.

This master's thesis aims to investigate disability researcher Tobin Sieber's conceptualization of disability aesthetics. This concept is investigated in relation to performances by Marina Abramović, specifically Rhythm 2 (1974), Rhythm 0 (1974), Lips of Thomas (1975) and Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975). The thesis examines questions about the possibility of applying the concept of disability aesthetics to an able-bodied artist's production. A disability aesthetic is characterized by representations that shape and thematize deficiency, damage and suffering. Also, a transformative process from able-bodied to disabled. The thesis concludes that the concept is more or less applicable to Abramovic’s production, since the transformative process of representing a disability aesthetic is something temporarily linked to the performance. The thesis also discusses that further research may instead examine and formulate the aesthetics of pain.

The thesis examines challenges museum curators face when outsourced performers – whose role it is to embody the work of other artists – are included in exhibition projects. The research questions are: What are the practical, juridical and ethical challenges that come with situating outsourced performance labour in the museum setting? What does the inclusion of live performance in exhibition projects mean for the role of the museum curator? Two exhibition cases in Stockholm are studied in the thesis: Marina Abramović – The Cleaner (2017) at Moderna Museet and Dora García, I Always Tell the Truth at Bonniers Konsthall (2018–19). The material consists of digital surveys that were sent out to employed performers from each exhibition case as well as interviews that were conducted with both performers and curatorial staff. The material was examined using theories on affective labour and the theoretical notion of de-skilling and re-skilling of acquired competences.  The thesis shows that the practical challenges include the architectural conditions of museum buildings, insufficient prior knowledge on what working with performers entail, short project timespans and limited exhibition budgets. The juridical challenges include a lack of union recommendations for performance in museums and the difficulty of situating reperformances of historical works that in its form and duration may go against national labour regulations. The ethical challenges include commodification of performers’ subjectivity through instances of affective labour and mechanisms of objectification. In turn, both the outsourced performer and the museum curator turned performance curator inhabits a precarious working situation. The role of the performance curator is highly administrational and organisationally tedious in its positioning between curatorship, performing arts production and human resource management. Additionally, it entails a prodigious amount of affective labour in the reproductive mode – of emotional investments, conflict resolution and social liaison.