The Serpentine Gallery feels particularly clinical today, its white galleries filled with staff in white hospital coats. We could be scoping out Dignitas or booking in for a high-end boob job. As it is, we’re here for a more radical operation: the immortalisation of Marina Abramovic.

Over four decades, the 72-year-old Serbian has turned performance art into a mainstream pursuit. Her last Serpentine show, 512 Hours, was a ginormous hit in 2014; now the gallery is premiering her first experiment in mixed reality — indeed, the first use of this technology in art in the world. “Like first woman walking on moon,” Abramovic says at the opening, in her trademark guttural boom.

She is present today, but not present in the piece, as several signs