Deeper and Deeper: Interview with Marina Abramovic
Janet A. Kaplan
Art Journal, Vol. 58, No. 2. (Summer, 1999), pp. 6-21.
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Fri Nov 9 11:08:15 2007
As this issue was in production we
learned the tragic news that Penny
McCall and her husband, David,
were killed in a car accident while
engaged in relief work in Albania.
McCall was a vigorous supporter of
many projects in the arts, including
the work of Marina Abramovic. In
salute to her generosity and vision
we dedicate this interview to her
memory.
Expiring Body, an exhibition of work by Marina Abramovic, was held at the
Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, from December 4, 1998,
through February 6 , 1999. Performing Body, a lect~re/~erformance,
was presented
on December 4, 1998, at the Philadelphia Convention Center in conjunction
with the exhibition. The following interview took place December 3 , 1998,
before the conflict in Kosovo began.
Abramovic: You absolutely need fresher lipstick. Yours is too dark. You need
something to lift you up.
Kaplan: I was going to begin by asking you how you prepare to perform.
Instead, you took out fifty-five beauty products with which to make me up so
that I would look better on the video record of this interview. Is this how you
begin?
Abramovic: A long time ago I made a piece called Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist
Must Be Beautiful. A t that time, I thought that art should be disturbing rather
than beautiful. But at my age now, I have started thinking
that
beauty is not so bad. My life is full of such contradicJanet A. Kaplan tions. Many come from my childhood. I was born in
Yugoslavia. My father and mother are divorced. As an
adult, I recently wanted t o go back to help them because
of the war. With the embargo, there is nothing in the
stores. They don't have basics. So I called my father to ask
him what he needs, and he dictates a long list-antibiotics,
bandages, penicillin, toilet paper, coffee, sugar, powdered
milk, all these basic things for survival. Then I call my
mother and ask what she needs. She says, "I need Chanel lipstick, Absolute
Red, Number 345, and hair spray." I am between these two. It took me a long
time to come to terms with this because I've always tried t o put a face in front
of the public that is very tough, very male, a going-forward-no-matter-what
performance attitude. But after I had so many problems with Ulay completing
our apotheosis on the Great Wall of China, where we split up, I decided that
now I need glamour. I need something to love. I need to see all these other
parts of me which I had absolutely never allowed to exist. I had been ashamed
of this part of me and let them go. Then I created The Biography, in which I
staged my life and played both sides, the tough one and the contradictory one,
and when I exposed my shame, this was the biggest liberation I had in my life.
and
Interview with
Marina Abramovic Kaplan: Please describe the exhibition and lecture at the Fabric Workshop
(fig, 1).
I . The Biography,
December 4,1998.
Performance. Photo courtesy The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. Photo
Aaron Igler.
Abramovic: This exhibition has three parts. It starts with a lecture called
Performing Body, for which I made a selection from twenty-five years of my
experience with the body in a performance situation, including different artists
from different backgrounds-film, dance, performance, theater-to explore
how they use their own bodies to perform. I structure the lecture as a real
human body, with works that focus on chest, hands, feet, stomach, and so on. It
starts with the head. I have a collection of many different people using just their
heads t o say something. And then I move t o the other parts of the body. I don't
actually show much of my own work, but I do show the work of others who
have inspired me. In the exhibition I show some of my own work of the last ten
years. Many people think, She's doing performance again; why are there objects
o r photographs? I use all kinds of materials as I need them, but the subject is
always the same. It's always about the body and
about performing. So the photograph is about the
noment of the performance. Then I have video
installations and the objects. There are objects for
human use, which the public can use, and objects not
for human use, for spirit use. And there are objects I
call power objects, which contain a certain energy.
My new installation has cross-cultural elements.
I went t o India and Sri Lanka for two months and
met people with special psychic powers who push
the limits of their body much farther than we in
Western culture can do. So I made Expiring Body
Image, which consists of three parts: head, torso, and
feet. For the head, I use an example from Western
culture, and I always use someone close t o me. Here,
i t is my brother, who is a doctor of philosophy. He
is talking about time, space, energy, alpha states of
mind, and death. Touching his head is the torso of an
African man in a vodun ritual who really worked with
the spirits. And then we have the feet. In Sri Lanka I
filmed a ceremony in which people in a certain state
of mind could walk on fire and not burn themselves.
In the other part of the installation, which I call
Diary, I shot repetitive moments in prayer ceremonies.
I show a sixty-year-old Tibetan woman who prayed
by prostrating herself, repeating this moment over
and over through the day. This is ten o r fifteen hours
of work. If you asked anybody even in the best physical condition t o do such a thing, i t would be impossible. But if you cross a threshold into a certain state of mind, you can push
your body over this limit. My whole research in this piece is t o find the limit.
H o w can a Western body have this experience, and how can an Eastern body
push much farther into an area unknown for us?I am interested in this because
for me performance is a means of research t o find mental and physical answers.
A t one point in my life, I didn't stop performing, but I started producing
objects. Many times as I perform I see that the public is in a voyeuristic situation.
They sit in the dark looking at something happening on stage, and they don't
really participate. For me, the most important thing is experience. Transformation only matters if you really go through something yourself. As a performer,
I'm going through this thing. But it's not really the public's experience. So I
decided t o build these transitory objects. I don't call them sculptures. They're
objects that the public can perform, like props. When they trigger their own
experience, the object can be removed. It is not something that should be per-
4
1
2. Shoes for Departure,
1990. Citrine. 9 x 2 1 x 13
(22.9 x 53.3 x 33); 9 x
2 0 x I 1 ( 2 2 . 9 ~ 5 1x28).
Photo courtesy The
FabricWorkshop and
Museum, Philadelphia.
Photo Aaron Igler.
3. Marina Abmmovic:
Works: 1990-1998.
Installationview. Photo
courtesy7he Fabric
Workshop and Museum,
Philadelphia. Photo Will
Brown.
manent. People ask me, Can we really walk on a ladder with knives?O f course
we can. It depends on our state of consciousness. If you put this ladder with
knives in front of a shaman in Brazil, he will walk on it. It's our problem that
we can't. In a way, it's t o remind you that you can push your limits. Then I have
crystal shoes (fig. 2). 1 have instructions for the public t o take off your shoes
and, with naked feet, put on the two crystal shoes, close your eyes, don't move,
and make your departure. I'm talking about a mental, not physical, departure.
So the public can enter certain states of mind helped by the material itself.
Material is very important for me. I use crystals, human hair, copper, iron. The
materials already have a certain energy.
God Punishing (fig. 3) is a large piece that consists of five large crystals and
whips made with copper and Korean virgin hair. The story goes back t o my
childhood, when I read about King Solomon. He had ships anchored at sea. A
storm destroyed all the ships and the people died. He was so angry at the gods
of the sea that he ordered his soldiers t o stand on the shore and whip the sea
385 times. As a child, this image of men whipping the sea was so absurd and
fantastic. W h o are we t o punish the gods?To translate that story into an object,
I arranged some crystals, which for me are frozen sea, and made whips from
Korean virgin hair. The public is invited t o take these whips and whip the crystals. It's important that the whips are made from the hair because we are the
gods, and we can only punish the sea with our own body.
. :--
. .
;:.;
""I
& :.;<;j/
Kaplan: Why Korean virgin hair?
Abramovic: In some Korean villages, before a virgin woman marries, she cuts off
her hair as a sacrifice. This kind of untouched innocence is important for me. So
that is the kind of hair I used to fit the myth. And then I had other things, like a
crystal brush and a table and chairs for spirit use. They are objects that can't be
used by humans because they are too small or too high. A t P.S. I I exhibited Chair
for Man and His Spirit. The chair for the spirit is fifteen meters high, and the chair
for the human is really small. I like to make objects for the invisible world so it
becomes visible in another way. The invisible world is a para-reality to us. It is
very important to be aware of that.
Kaplan: Is it your expectation that people will really participate in the work, that
they will put on the shoes, take the hair whips, and beat the crystals?
Abramovic: It's a question of culture. If you do such a piece in Holland, people
do it right away. In other cultures, say Sweden, people are very reserved. There is
the directive that you're not supposed to touch art. You're not supposed to get
close. The whole idea of the temporality of the object is very important to me, so
they have to be used and, by use, destroyed. This is totally against the idea of the
art object that has to last forever. I'm very interested in temporality. N o t just of
objects, but of our bodies, too. That's why I call this new piece Expiring Body.
Kaplan: When you perform, how do you prepare? What kinds of things do you
need to get yourself ready for performances that demand great rigor?
Abramovic: I don't do anything. It's hard to explain. I enter into the mental and
physical construction in the moment the public is there. Before that moment, I
am extremely nervous. I have stomach pain, dizziness, and can't talk to anybody.
Three days before a performance, this very uncomfortable state of mind sets in.
I can't calm myself. It just takes possession of me. But the moment the public is
there, something happens. I move from the lower self to a higher state, and the
fear and nervousness stop. Once you enter into the performance state, you can
push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.
Kaplan: So in your private life, separate from preparing for a performance, you
don't engage in ritual practice?
Abramovic: Again, it's a huge contradiction, because there are moments in my life
when I need to completely withdraw and do ritual practice. I go to a monastery
and spend three months in total retreat. I do not see anybody, and I do very radical things. But when I finish this monastery trip, I go to New York and do all the
bad things for my body-eating half a kilo of chocolate, watching bad movies. But
both of these are reality. Then I can go on to other things. I find even if I wish to
equalize spirituality in my work and my life, it's difficult to do. I used to be ashamed
of that. N o w I like to analyze this openly to show others that we all have this
problem. The thing is to learn from your own art because it is much farther along
than you are.
Kaplan: Your work has such rigor that it sets a very high moral standard. But
you're inviting the possibility that it's the performative experience itself that
allows you to do that.
diminished. For people to get the
full energy, they need to be with
you.
Abramovic: Definitely.
5. Balkan Baroque, 1997
(published 1998).
Cibachromephotograph
mounted on aluminum,
ed. 18.49x85(124.5x
2 16). Courtesy Sean Kelly
Gallery, NewYork.
Performance: In the middle of the space, I wash
1,500 fresh beef bones,
continuously singing folksongs from my childhood.
Duration: 4 days, 6 hours;
June 1997; XLVll
Biennale.Venice.
Kaplan: You've gone to a lot of
places-Aboriginal sites in Australia,
other parts of the world-that are
very remote from the context of the
gallery and museum structure in the
ways in which we see art. Do you
see part of your goal as translating
that ritual idea from one context to
the other? They seem about as opposite as they can be in the realm of
experience. In one, the people all
participate, and in the other there is
the performer and then the viewers who, even if engaged, are certainly not
engaged at the level of people involved with the same ritual.
Abramovic: In 1979, when I was working with Ulay, we felt we had exhausted
all the possibilities of the performance structure because of the tough, physical
performing elements we used. That was also the time when many of the first
performance artists had become tired of performing. It's an extremely vulnerable situation. They went back to the seclusion of their studios and started
producing things. Also, there was a huge demand from the market to have
something to sell, because in performance, there was nothing. You only sell the
memory. I found this a kind of regression. I had been a painter before, and I
thought that performance had still not been fully explored. The physical part
was explored, but there was a huge mental area that had not been touched. But
we didn't know how t o proceed with the work. The only thing we knew was
that the best answer we could look for was in nature. So we went back to the
desert and started traveling. The desert was a great place for us, because there
was a minimum of information, an extremely violent environment, heat, and
so on. You were confronted with yourself and your own life. Then we decided
to go to the Aborigines to find answers in nature. We chose the Aborigines
because the culture was absolutely nomadic, as we were. At that time, we lived
in the car and just traveled around. We didn't have any home. Also, Aborigines
don't just make ceremonies three times a year. Ceremony is their life. They
have this amazing narrative culture, the dreamtime stories. When they make
a ceremony, they spend a long time making the most beautiful objects. The
moment the ceremony is finished, the objects are left there, destroyed. And
then they start all over again. So there was no material culture. It was very close
t o how we thought about our life and performance as a way of living. Another
interesting thing about Aborigines is that they never had yes or no in their language. They don't exist because they don't doubt. They are completely connected with nature. and there is no doubt in their minds. Suicide doesn't exist in
12 SUMMER 1999
the Aboriginal world because it's not needed. It was very interesting how much
we learned, how much we were inspired by this culture. W e didn't produce any
work there; in nature, you can't make art. Nature is so perfect as it is that art
becomes an obstacle. A r t can only be done in destructive societies that have t o
be rebuilt. I see the artist as a bridge between nature and the city. W e went to
nature to get, and we went to our society to give. Going to nature was a way
to recharge. Interestingly, when we came back, everybody was painting, making
sculptures, and so on. Our answer was performance. W e found new energy
for performance, but now less physical and much more mental. W e came from
the Aborigines with this idea for the Nightsea Crossing piece, in which we just sat
for long periods of time opposite each other at a table in the museum. Nobody
would see us start o r end the performance. When the public arrived in the
museum, we were already there. When they left, we were still there. So they
would see this image with no beginning, no end. The difference between us and
the object in the museum is that the objects have another kind of energy, a static
energy, but we have a live energy. And that was really the answer to the '80s.
Working with the body, but with the mental area, opened in a different way.
Kaplan: You said somewhere that you felt that the artists performing in the
'90s don't have the same kind of rigor. There i s a toughness missing that you
felt the '70s had. But tough i s certainly a word I would associate with your
work. Do you feel that has changed for you during this decade?
Abrarnovic: No. I'm still looking for these things. When I'm afraid or don't
know something, o r when I enter into a completely unknown area, I always
think that's the moment that I want t o go through, and it's even more painful
because the pain is such a good door to cross into another state of consciousness. So for me I still think these elements are very important to perform.
There's a huge return t o body consciousness in the '90s. Lots of young
artists working with different media are using elements from the '70s, but now
they're doing it electronically. They will take one moment of the performance,
reedit it, and make a loop that brings this feeling of endless experience t o the
viewer, but actually the artist himself didn't go through that experience. That's a
big difference. You're getting this illusion of something that didn't really happen.
Now, fashion and the media take more elements from performance. If you look
at MTV, it's full of images from '70s performance. It's amazing. It's recycled and
put in a different context. One month after I made Balkan Baroque, Face magazine had four pages of girls in Calvin Klein T-shirts and the long white dresses
stained with blood, carrying bones. And it's not only me. There is a young artist
in London who slept in the gallery, and the media coverage was enormous.
Everybody was talking about how vulnerable and incredible it was. It was a
tremendous piece. In the '70s, at least ten artists slept in the gallery. One of
the best performances was Chris Burden's. But there was no reference t o that
performance in the articles.
I'm very interested in what a new body in the twenty-first century will look
like. What is interesting now is all these new things, the club culture, piercing,
cutting, looking like an accident victim. Piercing and cutting in the '70s were
done for a different reason. In the '90s it's part of fashion. So the structure and
the meaning are different.
Kaplan: What is the motive in your plan to recreate performances from the
'70s, given that it is now a displaced activity of someone else that you're
going to reexperience for yourself?
Abramovic: One day many years ago, I was invited by five girl artists in
Amsterdam to attend a performance they called Marina Positions, in which they
remade my performance Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful. This is
the piece I had done fifteen years before, in which I combed my hair with a
brush and really hurt myself, showing a very disturbing image that is the opposite of beauty. The five girls sat in a row and simultaneously repeated my
actions. In the beginning, I was angry. Why are they doing my piece?But during
the performance, I became completely excited and thought, this is fantastic. A
hundred years after Mozart's death, you can have your own interpretation of
Mozart, but you still say it's by Mozart. In that way, I think a performance should
be open like music. There's the structure of the performance that you can see,
and then you can make your own interpretation and have your own experience.
You absolutely have t o respect the originality of the piece and ask the living
artist for the permission. You can do whatever you want after that. There are
some performance pieces that I only saw in photo o r video reproduction, o r
sometimes I just heard people talk about them. I may never have experienced
them, but my idea of the piece had tremendous effects on my life. Why can't I
experience these pieces?I will show the original material, and then I will do my
interpretation, and then we can see. I think at the end of the century it's very
important to do this.
Kaplan: Do you see it in the context of a symposium, or are you thinking of
actually restaging performances?
Abramovic: I always go straight to the experience, so I'm thinking about staging
performances. I was always very impressed by Chris Burden's crucifixion piece,
Trans-fixed. What I heard in Yugoslavia, although I didn't even have a picture of
it, was that Burden crucified himself on a Volkswagen, that somebody drove the
Volkswagen through Los Angeles, and that he was arrested. That was my image.
When I talked to Burden and to the only three witnesses, I learned that only
four people saw this piece. The story was that he was in a garage with a doctor,
who pulled the nails through and crucified him on the Volkswagen. Then the
garage door was opened. The three friends pushed the car out of the garage,
took the photograph, then put the car back into the garage. There's such a huge
difference. I would ask for his permission to do the piece, but then I would do
it completely differently.
The idea of female sacrifice is quite interesting to me. I would like to be
crucified, but not on a Volkswagen, because I don't like the car. I would choose
another car. And then I would like to drive through the city, because this was
my first image of the piece. And the only person who can drive this car, from
my point of view, would be Madonna. I know it's completely insane. Another
interesting piece that I'd like to work on is Vito Acconci's Seed Bed, in which the
artist is under the elevated floor of the gallery masturbating. What is interesting
about masturbation is that you are producing something. There is a product.
But what does a woman produce in masturbating?Also Dennis Oppenheim's
Tarantula and Gina Pane's Candlebed. I also would like to do one of my own
pieces, Rhythm 0, in which I have many objects on a table, including a pistol, and
I invite the public to use any of them on me. Anyone can do anything to me. It's
an extremely risky piece, but that could be interesting for me t o repeat now in
the '90s. And then after these performances, I would open it all to discussion.
Kaplan: And would you want those artists to be included in the conversation
with the audience?
Abramovic: Yes. I would make five pieces, one after another. After each
piece, the leftover installation would remain. For example, after the Burden,
there would be the car; after the Acconci, the floor; after the Oppenheim,
the tarantula in the tube used in the performance; objects on the table in my
case; the candlebed in the case of Pane. The leftover pieces are like the afterperformance exhibition and then the symposium. It's very interesting that from
the artists I've been impressed with, except Pane, I have chosen all Americans.
Kaplan: And all men
Abramovic: That's true. That was the kind of performance that intrigued me.
I've always been asked about the man and woman thing, but I don't care if it's
a man o r a woman. The most important thing is if the piece is good. W h o is
doing it is secondary. When I'm doing performances, I don't emphasize gender.
Kaplan: What is your relationship to the feminist performance work of the
'70s and '80s-body art that was very specifically feminist-driven?
Abramovic: I don't have much relation to it because when feminism became an
issue, I was in Yugoslavia. It never touched me because I come from a family in
which my mother was a major in the army and the director of the Museum of
A r t and Revolution. In Yugoslavia women were partisans, absolutely in power,
in control, from the government level t o any other level. I always felt that I had
all this energy. When I began my career in Italy, after I left Yugoslavia, there was
not a single woman artist on the scene, but I had everything I needed. I never
felt that I didn't have things because I was a woman.
Kaplan: A lot of women focused on their bodies not because of issues of
inequality but because of the specifics of being a woman in a female body.
Is that of interest to you?
Abramovic: No. But, it's very interesting, this feeling of being feminine. I only
started after I became fifty. N o t before. In most of my performances, I use the
body naked, but for a totally different reason, because it's the most natural,
simple, architectural. All my early performances deal with the body and architecture, especially the pieces that Ulay and I made, because we were always in
relation to space and time. But not because it was male o r female. I'm more
female in my private life. I don't think so much in my work, but in my private life
very much. I'm in love with glamour, fashion, and so on, but in the '70s, it didn't
exist for me.
Kaplan: In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist you talked about there
being a cultural emergency that you felt you were working toward in terms
of consciousness. You also spoke about the destruction of the planet. Are you
addressing that cultural emergency in your work?
Abramovic: I was talking more about the role of the artist. If art comes just
from art, it loses its power and becomes decorative. I never create art to be
decorative. I don't like this idea of aesthetic beauty-a beautiful frame, nice
colors that go well with the carpet. To me art has to be disturbing. It has to ask
questions and have some kind of prediction of the future within it. It has t o
have different layers of meaning. Each generation has to take what is needed
at that time. But it should not be something that just reflects daily life, like a
newspaper. You read the newspaper today; tomorrow it's old. A r t has to have
a spiritual value and something that opens certain states of consciousness,
because we are losing ourselves so much. The main thing for me is this total
separation. W e are facing a separation of body and mind in the future that has
already begun. Heaven's Gate, the computer sect in America that committed
suicide in order t o join the spaceship hiding behind the comet, was very interesting to me. N o w we are entering the twenty-first century and, as Paul Virilio
has said, we are sitting at home with the body in one space, but we are everywhere with the mind-by the Internet, by computers, zipping through the
world. The body is becoming something very heavy, an obstacle. This separation will become so disastrous that body and mind eventually must come back
together. And art has t o have the answers.
Kaplan: So you're trying to set a moral standard?
Abramovic: I went to see two major shows in N e w York, Mark Rothko and
Jackson Pollock. I really love Pollock. His energy seems to me, looking now,
nervous and confused, even though he was very close to performance, with
his bodily involvement in paintings. But I had never seen many of Rothko's
paintings all in one place, and I was surprised at my reaction. I found him t o be a
complete artist. From the beginning he explored different states of consciousness. It was so luminous. It was such a spiritual experience t o see the progression of this work until its culmination in blacknesses. It was a kind of fulfillment.
You see how the end of life comes and all that he went through. As an artist,
you have t o know how t o live, how to die, and when to stop working.
Kaplan: What other artists do you look at?
Abramovic: Yves Klein is very important. In reference to his statement that
paintings are just the ashes of his art, that the process is what is the most
important, I like to tell this story of how I started painting. I had my first exhibition when I was twelve. When I was fourteen, my father asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I asked for oil paints. So he went to a friend of his who had
been a soldier in the army and then went to Paris to become an informel artist.
He was on vacation and came with my father to buy the colors because he
knew what we needed. W e got all these boxes of different materials. He made
a studio in my room and gave me my first painting lesson. He took the canvas,
cut it irregularly, and put it on the floor. He opened one can and threw some
liquid glue on it. Then he opened another with some sand and little pieces of
rock and then took some bitumen, yellow, red, and a little bit of white, and then
he threw turpentine and gasoline onto the canvas, put a lit match in the middle,
and everything exploded. Then he looked at me and said, "This is a sunset," and
left. If you're fourteen and this is your first painting lesson, it's very impressive.
It took weeks for the whole thing to dry. Very carefully I put it on the wall, and
I went with my parents on vacation. I came back, and since the sun had been
falling directly on this sunset, everything had melted, and it was just a pile of
dirt on the floor. There was nothing left on the canvas. Much later I understood
why it had had such an impact on me. Klein's statement that paintings are just
the ashes of art made sense to me. What is really important for me in the performance is the process. When the performance is finished, the memory is
something else, but the process is what is essential.
Kaplan: What do you find are the differences between solo and collaborative
work?
Abramovic: Earlier, when I worked alone, I reached a wall. I was so radical and
tough that I was almost facing a kind of edge. Death was the next step, because
I could not see how it could progress farther. It was almost a miracle for me
to meet Ulay. W e met on our birthday. He was born on the same day as I, and
that same day I met him and fell in love. So there was this huge erotic, emotional
relationship, and from there came the work. To me it was much higher t o work
with somebody else than t o work by myself because 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. The work came out of this. It melded this
male and female energy into something else. The most difficult thing was when
we faced emotional problems that did not have t o do with the work. W e could
not continue with the work; it was finished. The most difficult challenge was
how to return t o my own work because I had thought it is so much higher to
have two people making one work together. It took me a long time. The only
way I got over my problem was by staging my life in a theater play called The
Biography, in which I play myself and create a distance in which I can let go.
Kaplan: If I am sitting in a performance of The Biography, what do I see?
Abramovic: You see my whole life. The performance is condensed, as though
they are video clips, from beginning to end. I play these in the context of opera,
because opera is the most artificial place. In the '70s we hated theater because
of its artificiality. Performance was different. In opera you know everything is
plastic, fake, and played. But in my performances you see real blood, plus elements of antireality. I redid all my performances in a concentrated way, so that
I had t o make a climax in less than three o r four minutes. I found theatrical
means t o redo the ones I originally did with Ulay. Sometimes just by showing
the slides, sometimes just showing an empty chair.
Kaplan: Is The Biography itself documented somewhere?
Abramovic: It exists as video documentation of the theater pieces, and it's a
work in progress. I started it about eight years ago. I play it every year, twice
maximum. I'm always adding the new events of my life, so even when I am in a
wheelchair, I will still be able t o do it.
Kaplan: You mentioned that you like to teach. Is that something you continue
to do in your practice as an artist?
Abramovic: Many people teach as a way to survive. In my case, I have a need
to teach. A t the point in your life when you've gained so much experience, it's
important to be generous to the young generation. You have to open yourself
up. I have taught for a long time in academies around the world. N o w I am
teaching permanently in Braunschweig, Germany. My class is called Cleaning the
House. (Please see the description that follows this interview.) The house refers
to the body. Before you start learning from me, you have to clean your house.
To be an artist is a necessity, like breathing. You have to feel the need to create,
and that still doesn't make a good artist. It just makes you an artist.
Kaplan: Are students able to hang in there for the entire process of cleaning
the house?
Abramovic: Oh, yes. They have to. I teach them what it is to be an artist, and
that it's very important that you really know that you have to take responsibility.
I absolutely disagree with artists who say that they are only doing work for
themselves. I'm sitting in the studio and I don't care. This is total bullshit. The
moment you create the work, it's not yours anymore. It's not your property.
The artist is a servant to society. You have to have a clear-cut function, and you
have to have responsibilities.
Kaplan: Getting your work out in the public space. Is that what you mean by
responsibility?
Abramovic: You need to spend as much energy in that regard as you spent in
making the piece, in putting the piece in the right place, in the right conditions,
to be sure that the meaning is clear. A long time ago, when Christian Boltanski
was a young artist, he was showing a small piece in a gallery. I didn't know him
at that time, but I was passing through Paris, and I went to look. He was doing a
television interview, and the interviewers were very suspicious of his work. He
was showing a table with a napkin, little shoes from when he was a six-week-old
baby, a doodle, and childhood photographs. The interviewer asked, "What do
you want to do with this work?" Boltanski was extremely serious. He looked at
the camera and said, "I want to change the world, of course."
Kaplan: What do you like to read? What sort of things feed you?
Abramovic: I read a huge mixture of different things. For me it is very important t o read source books. I love all kinds of dictionaries, to see the meanings
and the roots of words. Then I like illuminated texts very much, because they
were written in a special state of mind. I like those great diaries of Saint Teresa.
She complains about her levitation. She says, "I was cooking, and then this
strange force took me off the ground, and I was above levitating. But I wanted
to finish my dinner." She is complaining that levitation was too much sometimes.
I also read a lot of anthropological texts. And then, in an airplane, I read Vanity
Fair, for contrast.
Kaplan: Do you see yourself continuing to travel to faraway places? You have
said that you feel you have to go to the East and bring it back to the West.
Abramovic: It's true. Geographical belonging is very important. I come from
the Balkans. The Balkans is literally a bridge between East and West. It's right
there, a bridge between two different worlds, a most contradictory place. You
have the Eastern notion of time, but you also have the Western notion, and it's
always in contradiction. To me, the East is a source of spirituality and also of
forgotten knowledge we no longer have. That, together with nature, is very
inspiring for me. That is where I can reach art. Then I came to the West, where
I can make my own mixture of things.
Kaplan: Your work is for the West. Your audience is in the West
Abramovic: Absolutely. The East doesn't need all this.
Kaplan: You said somewhere that you feel that every artist basically has one
good idea that he or she just keeps working with. What's your good idea?
Abramovic: I have this old professor who told me two truths, both of which
are very important for me. One truth he told this way. If you always draw with
the right hand, and you get better and better, so virtuoso that you can close
your eyes and make perfect drawings, you must immediately change to the left.
It's very important, because habit is the worst thing for the artist. When you are
producing one thing and become recognizable and everybody knows you, you
have to change. You have t o surprise yourself, because the worst is if you just
respond to the needs of the market. Then development stops. The second
thing he said is that in every artist's life, you may think you have a new idea o r
many new ideas every day. In fact, you may have one good idea, or, if you are
a genius, two. But be very careful with this. All the rest is interpretation of the
same idea, and for me, the only idea I have always had is the human body.
That's the only thing I have always been interested in. It's a large area to be
explored, and I always feel that I'm just at the beginning.
Kaplan: So you never worry about not knowing what to do?
Abramovic: I've never been bored in my life. I don't even know what that
means. And I never have doubts about being an artist. It's the only thing I've
ever wanted to be.
Kaplan: Well, unless there are other things you'd like to talk about, I thank
you.
Abramovic: Wait. A little joke. I always like jokes. Sometimes there is so little
art that has real humor, and humor is very important, because with laughing, the
truth, even the worst, is easy to take. I recently heard a performance joke that
I like very much. Q: How many performance artists does it take to screw in a
light bulb?A: I don't know. I was there for only four hours.
1 am very grateful to Marina Abramovic for her enthusiastic participation In this Interview and t o those
who facilitated it, including Mary JaneJacob. Susan Maruska, and Steven Beyer of the Fabrlc Workshop and
Museum In Philadelphia; LIIII-Marl Andresen. Ceclle Panzieri, and Sean Kelly of Sean Kelly Gallery in N e w
York: and Alexander Godschalk in Amsterdam.
physical conditioning of the
artist
In ancient times, the artist, poet,
philosopher, builder would climb
silently to the top of the mountain
and there in solitude would be confronted with what the Chinese refer
to as qi energy. This would condition their bodies and their minds to
one single point of concentration.
As a result of that particular state,
the poet would make one line
of poetry; the philosopher, new
thoughts; the builder, new constructions; the artist, new work.
In the Renaissance, one could read
in the book by Cenino Cenini how
to prepare the artist to paint the
cupola of the church.
He said three months before starting
work, the artist should stop eating
meat, two months before starting
work, the artist should stop drinking
wine, one month before starting
work, the artist should refrain from
sexual desires.
"It's not important what you do,
what is really important is the
state of mind from which you are
doing it."
That state of mind is essential for
me in the moment of performing.
That fragile passage between performer and public, when you take
a step to enter your mental and
physical construction.
This workshop is designed for students of Art to go though different
stages of experiences and investigate
their: Endurance, Concentration,
Perception, Self-control, W
ill Power.
Confrontation with the Limits
(Mental and Physical)
After the no eating and no talking
period (which varies from three to
five days), students will be asked
to make work from this newly
achieved "state of mind."
Three weeks before starting work,
the artist should put his right arm
into plaster; the day before he starts
to work, he should break the plaster,
take a brush, and with his free hand,
he should be able to make a perfect
circle on the ceiling.
Marina Abramovic
~
Cleaning the House: A Workshop the workshop
Duration: 8 days
Conditions for participation:
Those interested should be informed
of the following conditions before
they decide to participate
I . Participants should be in good
health, not suffering from any
mental or physical disorders.
anorexia, or bulimia; they should
not be pregnant and should not be
using any prescription medications.
2. During the duration of the
workshop, no intoxicants (alcohol,
cigarettes, drugs, sex) may be
consumed.
3. Four days without food, except
for large quantities of water and
herbal teas, and four days without
talking.
Waking at 7 a.m. and doing heavy
outdoor physical exercises: a combi
nation of Aborigine step dancing,
Sufi training, Hopi Indian dancing.
to the Yves Klein jump.
After this, washing and drinking
tea and doing different types of
exercises that will continue all day
for the entire four days.
1 will inform the students of the
nature of each exercise only just
before it is executed.
Walk lo km into the forest or field,
then become blindfolded and try to
find your way back home. (This
exercise is to train future artists not
to see with their eyes, but with their
whole body.)
Sit in a chair at a table and try to
write your name once, very slowly.
for one hour with a pencil moving
nonstop. (This exercise is to increase
concentration on a single subject.)
During the fifth and sixth days, the
participants are asked to make one
artwork using materials found in the
surroundings, or working only with
their own body.