‘Your Body is Too Heavy’: Marina Abramović Goes Digital

Marina Abramović b. 1946, Serbia Follow +

Marina Abromović, the performance artist ever so committed to transcending boundaries, is dropping a series of NFTs in the hopes of enticing a younger collector base.

She will drop three NFTs series on Ethereum blockchain over May, June, and September, each covering a facet of the artist’s life and work, respectively titled Art, Life, and Marina Abramović Method (MAM).

The 78-year-old artist said working with technology and creating her own avatar is a way ‘to develop a new relationship between the performer and the public’.

The project is realised with digital art marketplace TAEX, whose founder Inna Bazhenova said the upside for collectors lies in becoming ‘active co-creators’ of the artist’s legacy.

Abromović’s efforts to promote her branded legacy so far have included skincare products ‘transcending superficiality’ and furniture ‘transcending utility’.

After the final drop in September, collectors who amassed NFTs from each drop and a ‘Transformation Crystal’ (from playing two games) will earn a ‘5D’ token that will allow them to access ‘The Great Mint’, promising additional ‘rare’ items, in November.

Each of these ‘5D’ tokens will feature extended animations of Abramović’s signature performances. On paper, they are related to her practice, with the artist’s avatar enacting ‘impossible performances’ that ‘transcend boundaries of physicality’:

‘You will be able to carry your body to the fourth dimension, but not to the fifth dimension because your body is too heavy,’ she said. ‘You will have a crystal in your body in the fifth dimension.’

In 2021, she presented her first NFT, based on a 2001 work, The Hero, featuring individual frames from the film made to commemorate her father.

The project will preview at London‘s Moco Museum on 8 April, with the artist present, and conclude in November 2025.

TAEX was conceived during the 2022 NFT surge, which registered 1.8 billion USD in trading volume in May, before plummeting by 90 percent within six months, according to Forbes. —[O]

Main image: The MAE Project. Courtesy TAEX.