Author: Abramovic, Marina & Ulay.ulay
Title: The lovers.
Description: [exhibition and catalog prepared by Marina Abramovic, Ulay, Dorine Mignot]. Amsterdam : Stedelijk Museum, 1989. Paperback. 204 pp. ills. (some color) ; 26 cm. (Stedelijk Museum, catalogus nr. 728). Mailorder only - Alleen verzending mogelijk. Book condition : very good. Contents : Preface / Wim Beeren -- Prologue / Frank Lubbers -- The wall. The walk. The alien / Ulay -- Great walk talk / Thomas McEvilly -- Boat emptying. Stream entering / Marina Abramovic -- Two times an individual experience / Dorine Mignot. In 1988, after several years of tense relations, Abramovic and Ulay decided to make a spiritual journey that would end their relationship. They each walked the Great Wall of China, in a piece called Lovers, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. As Abramovic described it: That walk became a complete personal drama. Ulay started from the Gobi Desert and I from the Yellow Sea. After each of us walked 2500 km, we met in the middle and said good-bye. She has said that she conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy, and attraction. She later described the process: We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending ... Because in the end, you are really alone, whatever you do. She reported that during her walk she was reinterpreting her connection to the physical world and to nature. She felt that the metals in the ground influenced her mood and state of being; she also pondered the Chinese myths in which the Great Wall has been described as a dragon of energy. It took the couple eight years to acquire permission from the Chinese government to perform the work, by the time of which their relationship had completely dissolved. ISBN 9789050060288.

Keywords: ART, Abramovic, Marina (1946-)