A diptych, this painting touches on a lot of aspects of our work, including both the history of performance and its live element, The Cover Artists, factory work + labor, and the relationship between digital and analog.

I hope to post various iterations as the paintings progress, but for now, here is the digital sketch of the LHS canvas. Both canvases measure 30 X 40 inches and are each comprised of 10,800 1/3 inch squares that will be individually painted.

Photos courtesy of Candida Alvarez, curator for Sub-City Projects in Chicago.

We then decided to start looking for performance that could utilize our relationship. Performances that incorporated two bodies in their original intention, and ideally works that were concerned with the nature, energy and dynamics of relationship.
So began an intense investigation of Marina Abromovic & Ulay’s collaboration from 1976-1989. We decided to start with the piece entitled Rest Energy from 1980/1. Here is what they had to say about the piece at the time it was created:

Standing across from one another in slated position.
Looking each other in the eye.
I hold a bow and Ulay holds the string with the arrow pointing directly to my heart.
Microphones attached to both hearts recording the increasing number of heart beats.

A more detailed conceptual description of the piece from The Netherlands Media Art Institute:
‘Rest Energy’ has originally been part of ‘That Self’. Ulay and Abramovic said of the series ‘That Self’: ‘Our interest is relation. With our “Relation work” we cause a third existence, which carries “Vital Energy”. This third energy existence conjured by us does not depend on us any longer, but has its own quality which we call That Self. Three as a number means nothing else but “That Self”.’ ‘That Self’ (1980) actually includes various components, which can also function as separate works. The work opens with three monochrome colour fields – red, blue and yellow – that remain on the screen for some time. This is accompanied by a sustained tone, which now and then becomes slightly higher. After this non-figurative opening, ‘That Self’ continues with four performances, especially executed for the purpose of this film.
The common starting point of these separate components is hypnosis. Ulay and Abramovic said: ‘We had training in hypnosis. Our aims were to search and explore the subconscious. We chose to realize three colour fields and four visions which were described by us under that treatment. The four visions were translated into performances for film.’ These performances are not about extending limits by means of physical exhaustion, but rather, about the power of concentration.
In ‘Point of Contact’ (January/August 1980, film studio, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and summer 1980, Dublin, Ireland), Ulay and Abramovic, both dressed in black trousers and jacket, with a white shirt underneath, stand face-to-face. They look into each other’s eyes, and, with arms bent, point their forefingers at each other. Without realizing it themselves, Ulay and Abramovic are holding their fingers at practically the same height during the six minutes of the performance. Their fingertips are almost touching. ‘Rest Energy’ (January/August 1980, Filmstudio, Amsterdam) is the second work in this series of four. Ulay and Abramovic draw a large bow and arrow, one holding each side. The arrowhead is pointing at Abramovic’s heart. The slightest movement could be fatal. Microphones on their clothes pick up their quickening heart beats and Ulay’s irregular breathing. After four minutes, they relax the tension on the bow, and Abramovic is out of danger. The third work is also short: it lasts only nine minutes. ‘Nature of Mind’ (January/August 1980, Filmstudio, Amsterdam) features Abramovic, who is wearing a green outfit. She is standing at the edge of some water with her arms stretching upwards. After some time, from a higher position, Ulay, dressed entirely in red, falls into the water, passing Abramovic and immediately disappearing under the water. While he is falling, they touch very briefly. ‘That Self’ concludes with ‘Timeless Point of View’ (January/August 1980, IJselmeer, Marken, the Netherlands). During the ten minutes of this performance, Abramovic rows away from us towards the horizon. The boat is equipped with microphones that transmit the sound of the oars and the sloshing of the water to the shore, where Ulay picks them up through headphones.

We have admired the work they did together for some time, and learned that Marina had actually written quite extensively on the idea of re-performance as a way to keep Performance Art alive and present. So we decided that we would write her a letter asking her for permission to do Rest Energy.

August 24, 2009
Dear Marina Abramovic,
My wife and I recently graduated with our MFAs from the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We are writing this letter because we would like your permission to re-perform Rest Energy. We share your philosophy of keeping past performances present through re-enactment and re-interpretation, and we are excited to explore the myriad variations possible in re- performance. We feel closer to the artist when we re-perform a work, as opposed to only studying the documentation of a piece.
We are attracted to Rest Energy for a number of reasons. We have been partners for eleven years, worked together as a full-time collaborative for three years, and we applied and were accepted into graduate school as a single entity. Early on in our art education we discovered your and Ulay’s collaborative performance work and felt an immediate affinity with it. We are excited to experience in our bodies the balance and trust elements of this work. We are also excited to produce this piece before an audience, to put the tension of our collaboration on display.
Lastly, as we discussed the possibility of re-performing this piece, we decided that we should start looking for a bow – perhaps on ebay, or in thrift stores. We had been talking about it for about three months, when our sixty-nine year old neighbor, Joaquin – without any knowledge of our work and current thoughts about needing a bow – one day out of the blue gave us a beautiful, old recurve bow that had been sitting in his basement for years gathering dust.
We would appreciate any advice you have for first time performers for this particular piece, especially concerning beginnings and endings as the only documentation we’ve seen is a still photograph. Thank you for the work you continue to do, and for taking the time to consider our requests.
Sincerely,
Beau & Lily Sage

We have yet to hear back.

“31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.”

What does it mean to re-perform a drawing? Even if the original drawing was life-sized? How does involving the body – as a viewer, as opposed to a producer – change the experience with the artwork as object?

There is a sort of object-producer dichotomy in the drawing that is absent when we perform the action. Our bodies are object. Object twice-removed…When we do reperformances, we don’t claim authorship at all. We break free from the notion of authorship, so in a very real sense, Longo is still the author; we’re just allowing him to use our material, to use us as material.

Why Longo?

We were looking for: A portrait. A couple. An object that captured the idea of identity wrapped up in the exterior. Something to model Cash & Ruby on. Something that was already present in – already visually present in the art world – while at the same time, related to our cultural consciousness. Our awareness of ourselves during the 1980s in America. A man and a woman wearing business suits. Money. The notion of surface. Radical surface. A young Caucasian man and woman, well-dressed, attractive.

Transporting ourselves from the analog to the digital. Flattening everything. Giving it all the same value. That’s what happens with the composite. We don’t put ourselves into any sort of scene: it’s a completely clean, neutral space, a non-space, digital space. The original piece of work has all sorts of potential. Our reperformance is just one type of actualization that is available for Robert Longo’s original drawing.

This video by Circlesquare takes it to the next level.