Marina Abramovic and Ulay continue their exploration of a cultural time and space in Sicily. The fluid movement of the camera traverses rocky landscapes, ruins, and the memory of an ancestral culture. The murmur from a group of men rises and seems to communicate timeless legends to the stones. The voices amplify in an echoing chant, a rumbling sound, and a distant moan that goes into the earth and returns from it, causing the image to glide beyond the landscape. The gaze moves in a linear motion, owing to the ample movements of the camera, from this open space to the austere interior of a house in which dark female figures take up the path of speech in turn.

Sacred utterances, prayers for the dead: these religious women resemble so many sorrowful Pietas. Marina Abramovic and Ulay work on the contrasts, oppositions, and transitions from man to woman, interior to exterior, nature to civilisation, powerfully presenting the close bond between beings and their environment.

Stéphanie Moisdon