Marina Abramovic, the performance artist famous for testing the limits of the body through a variety of media (Russian knives, catatonia pills, bullets, etc.), just announced that she will be installing herself in the MoMA for 586 hours next year. Abramovic will stand on a shelf suspended 50 feet high against the wall of the museum’s atrium. The shelf will be no larger than the top of a desk, and the ladders descending from it will consist of upturned knives.

For seven hours a day and five days a week, the artist will stand like a lighting fixture, staring down at the visitors who will lounge back on chaises and peer up at her through telescopes. Abramovic does not have a precise notion of what this awkward-and-dangerous high-up prolonged experiment will feel like. But she has no interest in doing a “run-through” either. Performance art is not about rehearsals. It’s mostly about successful failures. Let’s just hope Abramovic does not end up as a Princess in Flight.

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