The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2021
WeTransfer puts Marina Abramović's Method online for lockdown; 130M+ views follow
WePresent turns Marina Abramović's performance-art Method into its first digital edition — video-led exercises for a locked-down world, viewed 130M+ times.
WeTransfer
What it had to solve
In June 2021 WeTransfer launched the first ever digital iteration of The Abramović Method, a series of mindfulness exercises developed through Marina Abramović's years of performance-art research. The pandemic had most people at home, so WePresent, WeTransfer's digital arts platform, commissioned new video material to bring the artist's practice to them.
How it works
In June 2021, with much of the world still in pandemic lockdown, WeTransfer launched the first ever digital iteration of The Abramović Method: a series of mindfulness exercises cultivated through Marina Abramović's years of performance-art research.
WePresent, WeTransfer's digital arts platform, commissioned a series of new videos in which the artist shares her wisdom on cultivating inner strength, concentration and endurance. The exercises were packaged as an interactive online experience, so a practice rooted in her research could be done alone by a user at home.
The experience was shared with WeTransfer's 87 million monthly active users during the pandemic, when most people had to stay at home, and it has been viewed over 130 million times.
The work stands in D&AD's awards archive as a digital-experience case: the first digital iteration of a Method Abramović had refined over years of performance-art research, delivered to a homebound world at a moment of isolation.
Why it lands
- A mass need existed at a fixed moment: the pandemic kept most people at home with little access to live art or structured mindfulness.
- Instead of profiling Abramović, WePresent translated her Method itself into exercises the audience could do — the deliverable was the practice, not a documentary about it.
- Distribution was built into the launch: sharing the experience with WeTransfer's 87 million monthly active users gave the work an audience no gallery could assemble in lockdown.
- The scale came from utility at the right time: more than 130 million views for an experience people could use alone.
What it did
The experience was viewed over 130 million times, turning exercises cultivated through years of performance-art research into mass public access during lockdown, and it now stands in D&AD's awards archive as a digital-experience case.
What you can take
Give people the method, not content about it: digitize the artist's actual exercises and share them at the moment millions are isolated, and need plus access creates reach.
Since then
D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive as a digital-experience case. The source records no later figures, so the 130-million-view count from the June 2021 launch remains the reported reach of the first digital edition of The Abramović Method.
Sources
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