<P> In 1997, Abramović created a multimedia Spirit Cooking installation . This was originally installed in the Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy and included white gallery walls with "enigmatically violent recipe instructions" painted in pig's blood . According to Alexxa Gotthardt, the work is "a comment on humanity's reliance on ritual to organize and legitimize our lives and contain our bodies ." </P> <P> Abramovic also published a Spirit Cooking cookbook, containing comico - mystical, self - help instructions that are meant to be just poetry . Spirit Cooking later evolved into a form of dinner party entertainment that Abramovic occasionally lays on for collectors, donors, and friends . </P> <P> In 1976, after moving to Amsterdam, Abramović met the West German performance artist Uwe Laysiepen, who went by the single name Ulay . They began living and performing together that year . When Abramović and Ulay began their collaboration, the main concepts they explored were the ego and artistic identity . They created "relation works" characterized by constant movement, change, process and "art vital ." This was the beginning of a decade of influential collaborative work . Each performer was interested in the traditions of their cultural heritage and the individual's desire for ritual . Consequently, they decided to form a collective being called "The Other," and spoke of themselves as parts of a "two - headed body ." They dressed and behaved like twins and created a relationship of complete trust . As they defined this phantom identity, their individual identities became less accessible . In an analysis of phantom artistic identities, Charles Green has noted that this allowed a deeper understanding of the artist as performer, for it revealed a way of "having the artistic self - made available for self - scrutiny ." </P> <P> The work of Abramović and Ulay tested the physical limits of the body and explored male and female principles, psychic energy, transcendental meditation and nonverbal communication . While some critics have explored the idea of a hermaphroditic state of being as a feminist statement, Abramović herself denies considering this as a conscious concept . Her body studies, she insists, have always been concerned primarily with the body as the unit of an individual, a tendency she traces to her parents' military pasts . Rather than concerning themselves with gender ideologies, Abramović / Ulay explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space . They devised a series of works in which their bodies created additional spaces for audience interaction . In discussing this phase of her performance history, she has said: "The main problem in this relationship was what to do with the two artists' egos . I had to find out how to put my ego down, as did he, to create something like a hermaphroditic state of being that we called the death self ." </P>

Where did the performance the artist is present take place and when