Marina Abramovic Re-performing Valie Export Act... Apr 2026

VALIE EXPORT’s original act was a "guerilla" protest against the passive consumption of the female body in cinema. Wearing crotchless trousers and carrying a machine gun, she forced cinema-goers to confront a "real woman" rather than a screen image. Marina Abramovic - Artforum

The following essay examines Marina Abramović’s re-performance of VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969) as part of her landmark 2005 series, Seven Easy Pieces , at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Marina Abramovic re-performing VALIE EXPORT Act...

In November 2005, Marina Abramović occupied the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum for seven consecutive nights, performing seven-hour iterations of seminal works from the 1960s and 70s. Among these was her re-interpretation of VALIE EXPORT’s Action Pants: Genital Panic . While EXPORT’s original 1969 action was an ephemeral, aggressive intervention in a Munich porn cinema, Abramović’s version transformed it into a durational museum installation. This shift highlights a critical tension in contemporary art: the desire to preserve the history of performance versus the medium’s inherent reliance on the "unrepeatable" live moment. 1. From Guerilla Intervention to Museum Iconography VALIE EXPORT’s original act was a "guerilla" protest