BOOK:The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem, Museum of Fine Arts Boston Publications

 

Marilyn Arsem has created over 180 Performances since 1975, and in the process she has helped to define the genre itself. Her work spans from solo gallery performances to large-scale, site-specific works. Many of her works are durational in nature, and minimal in actions and materials. She is a member and founder of Mobius, Inc., a Boston-based collaborative of interdisciplinary artists. She taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for 27 years, establishing one of the most extensive programs internationally in visually-based Performance Art. The iBook “The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem” was updated in November 2016, and now includes a chapter on Arsem’s 100-day performance at the MFA, “100 Ways to Consider Time”. The Enhanced ibook features 8 videos, 4 audio clips, and 21 slideshows that give the viewer a sneak peak of her work, the book stars with “The Nature of Performance Art” by Marilyn Arsem and contains essays by Edward Saywell and Liz Munsell. The monograph embraces e-books’ capacity to convey key aspects of durational, live art through multimedia. It has rare videos and slideshows of her past performances, as well as audio interviews with the artist. Marilyn Arsem discusses Performance on her own terms in a preface and a final chapter about her current work, Liz Munsell and Edward Saywell (both MFA curators), contextualize her practice and recurring themes in an introduction and entry-based chapters on women’s work, cultures of violence, natural resources, and time and mortality. In “100 Ways to Consider Time” (9/11/15-19/2/16), Marilyn Arsem did 100 different 6-hour performances on the nature of time, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At the Venice International Performance Art Week (10-17/12/16), Marilyn Arsem presents an Opening Reading including her manifesto “THIS Is Performance Art” (2011), as well as documentation of her latest performance. The new version of “The Performance Art of Marilyn Arsem” can be downloaded for free until end of December 2016 through the iBooks store.-Dimitris Lempesis