Reenactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's Imponderabilia
Reenactments (2007–10) are actions that take place inside the video game Second Life, where Mattes’ avatars—modeled on their own bodies—restage iconic performance art pieces from the 1960s–80s, including Marina Abramović and Ulay’s Imponderabilia, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed, and Chris Burden’s Shoot. Audiences from around the world could attend and interact with the performances live online—a synthetic space where the body is both present and absent, and interaction happens through code—or watch them projected in a gallery. All movements, sets, and objects were designed and programmed in advance, so the avatars perform without improvisation. Originally created for PERFORMA in New York, each performance can now be carried out by anyone and repeated indefinitely. Even though everything is preprogrammed, the encounters still feel real: emotional and social exchanges emerge through mediated communication, forming a networked presence that challenges traditional ideas of performance, embodiment, and audience.