Captain Oates could hardly have been more optimistic: a trip to Manchester to see four hours of performance art; a “contract” to ensure my “commitment to the full duration”. It sounded more like a case of Her Majesty’s pleasure than my own — her majesty, on this occasion, being Marina Abramovic, the Slavic queen of performance art.

Marina Abramovic Presents . . . is a group survey of works by about a dozen artists. The entire Whitworth Gallery has been emptied to accommodate their displays. As visitors arrive (be punctual or you will find the doors locked) they are dispossessed of such distracting appurtenances as handbags and mobile phones and issued with regulation clothing: a scientist’s white coat. Then they file through to the hall where, lined up in grids, they are put through “The Drill”.

The Drill lasts an hour. If Abramovic’s appearance is anything to go by it must be terribly good for you. She may be well over 60 and famous in her sphere for all manner of self-mutilations, but she is entrancingly lovely to look at and her voice pours through the microphone like some honeyed-gravel mix. Think of yoga, not square bashing. Her persuasions — and I think you will be persuaded — have a point. She takes you gently through a participatory (and only mildly embarrassing) programme that slows you down and puts you in the right frame of mind to appreciate what is to come.

For the next three hours you are free to roam. The Whitworth has become the site of scattered performances by artists who range from the long-established Alastair MacLennan (his contribution involves pigs’ heads, piles of earth and odd shoes, one of which is on his head) to such newcomers as Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich who, re-enacting the life and death of a man who survived for 20 days with an artificial body attached to his head, asks you to become an acolyte to some extraordinary cult. You ascend the steps of a temple. At the top is a mouth that appears through a little hole. You are instructed how to attend to this buccal cavity. I fed it raw vegetables while singing a lullaby. It belched — appreciatively, I hoped.

There are some pretty abstruse antics. Here is one person (pictured) lying flat as a piece of roadkill under layers of hides and fleeces; there, another preparing to leap from the banisters like a suicidal nymph.

The best were the most simple. Kira O’Reilly falls exquisitely slowly down the staircase. Yingmei Duan, a Chinese woman with a face as painful to contemplate as Masaccio’s banished Eve, drifts naked. It sounds like nothing. But see how you feel as she gravitates towards you. This one performance was worth the trip.

mif.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk To July 19

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