2003

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ: I BELIEVE THAT PERFORMANCE IS THE MOST DIRECT WAY OF COMMUNICATION

Dobrila Denegri: You have been doing performances since the early seventies. What triggered your decision to use your body as a medium? How did this switch occur, and what remained central in your way of doing art?

Marina Abramovic: I was trained as a painter, but actually I was painting since I was a child. I had my first exhibition of paintings when I was twelve. Once I finished my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, I started working with sound installations. Working with sound, with the idea of rhythm, occurred to me that I would like to use my body as a performance material, so I could establish direct contact with the audience. I believe that performance is the most direct way of communication, just as music is. In the performance, there is no object between you and the audience; it is a very direct contact, a real energy dialogue. And that is why I chose performance as my medium, as a material for my work. It doesn’t mean that the painting, drawing, sculpture and other disciplines are not as good as performance, of course. It is just a question of what you choose as an artist; by what means you express yourself the best. For my work, the central focus is the use of the body. 

DD: Looking back at this first period of your work, what would you underline as your basic interest?

MA: In the beginning, I worked alone, and I did performances where I tried to explore my limits. Actually, I was pushing my mental and physical limits further with every new performance. I was searching to see how far I can go and how much energy I can use. Most of the time, we use just a certain amount of energy, and basically, we don’t understand how our body and our mind work. Our Western civilisation is primarily based on rational grounds. What I mean is that the West doesn’t live through the body but through the brain. I was interested in going beyond that, exploring the irrational sphere, and those dimensions that involve dreams and things like that. At that time, for me, it was also very important to define my function as an artist, to find out how I can function as an artist.

DD: Many artists had different ideas about their function, so how would you outline yours?

MA: Joseph Beuys would say that as an artist he is a shaman, Kazimir Malevich would say that he is a “new step”, and Mondrian was suggesting that he always searched for a true reality. 
In my work the idea of bridge was very important. I was born in Yugoslavia which is a kind of geographical bridge between the East and the West. The bridge is the place where the strongest winds blows and it is very hard to remain still in one position. So with my work I would like to bridge the Eastern knowledge and the Western knowledge. For me the meaning of the artist is to bridge different cultures.

DD: What catalyses ideas for new works? How can you recognise that that particular idea is the “right one”?

MA: I believe that as an artist, you may have only one, or at most two or three, good ideas in your entire life. This is simply the nature of ideas—they tend to repeat and manifest in different versions. If you look at the history of art, each artist generally has just one or two core ideas. Therefore, I think that going to the studio just to churn out more work can lead to overproduction, which I see as a form of pollution—not only environmental but also artistic. My approach is different: I don’t actively work; instead, I wait for an idea to come to me unexpectedly. This idea can arrive anytime—while going to the toilet, chopping garlic, or riding a train… anywhere. The idea must come on its own. I recognise it's a good sign when I feel fear, when I’m unsure of the outcome, and when I get that strange sensation in my stomach, telling me that this is what I must do. It’s very important to do things that scare us, because usually we stick to what we enjoy, and that leads to stagnation. We fall into a cycle of repeated actions and mistakes. But if we do things we dislike or fear, we step into a new pattern, a new dimension that can free us. For example, some performances for me have been ways to stage pain—to journey with the audience through experience and to free both myself and them from pain. The same applies to other emotions, like shame, for instance. Shame is one of the most difficult human emotions, and exposing it in front of others is even harder. But if you can manage to do so, and go through the experience collectively, reaching some kind of resolution by the end of the performance, it can be incredibly powerful and freeing. 

DD: To me, it seems that the intuitive way of working is very important to you, but there is also a very strong part of intellectual reflection behind the work. 

MA: Intuition is very important. Also, I see a body as a receiver, and that is why it has to be prepared to receive an idea. When the idea comes, it is like an urge, and only later I can rationalise why I did something, and then I recognise connections to the other pieces. 

DD: So you work more on the “preparation” of the body? What does “Cleaning the House” mean to you?

MA: It’s about ten years since I started workshops for body preparation, which I mainly do with my students. These workshops are held in isolated places, where we adhere to a particular regime of life: for about ten days, we don’t eat anything except rice, we don’t drink anything but water or herbal tea, and we do not talk. Not talking is very important because you lose so much energy in explaining. Not talking is really great! Also, we do very difficult mental and physical exercises in order to enlarge our perception, to strengthen our self-control, to explore our body limits… For example, one very important exercise is to walk for about seven kilometres blindfolded and find a way home. This is important because the artist has to see with the entire body and not just with the eyes. Workshops are usually organised in the wintertime or in circumstances of cold and bad weather. Sufi says: “The worse is the best because then you really learn”. These hard conditions are not some masochistic attitude, but they are more like a parallel to all those rich and long traditions that rituals, ceremonies, and initiation-rites have in different cultures, from Japan to Tibet, from India to Africa or India and other areas. I can tell you for example one old exercise that is practiced by certain orders of Tibetan monks: they go to cemetery where dead people were recently berried, and they sleep beside the corps, so they can witness the changes of the body, decomposition of the flash and understand how we are mortal, how we are not for ever, not permanent. Then you can understand how life is precious, and how we have to know how to enjoy life, every second of it.  
In my “Cleaning the House” workshops, we do exercises that should sharpen our perception, and each one of us has to do work using very minimal means or just his/her own body. I see the body as a house, and I think that we have to keep our house clean. This house cleaning is a metaphor for bringing the body into a state where it becomes especially receptive to a specific energy, and this state of "clear mind" makes it possible to create a work which will be sufficiently strong to touch others. As an artist, you have to have a clear mental picture; otherwise, your work will express a state of disorder and inarticulateness. Art should be the oxygen of society. "House Cleanings" are the workshops I do with my students, but they are also my own performances. It is important, however, that body preparation is not exercised only in specific periods, but that it becomes a principle of life. 

DD: What is a performance for you?

MA: Performance is such an interesting medium, you know, it is not theatre, it is not dance. It really belongs to the visual arts and to artists who came out of visual arts education. Performance is when you actually make a work in front of the audience: you step into your mental and physical construction, and in a way, you create yourself in front of the audience. You absorb their energy, transform it into your own energy and give it back. The performance has to be charismatic. It has to be so strong that it will remain unforgettable for the public as well as for yourself. It has to be true. The most important thing about the performance is to be true. Because if it is not, the audience will feel it immediately. I think that the audience is like a dog, I mean, the dog feels your fear, it feels when you are insecure, it knows when it wants to escape, and it knows when you are not one hundred per cent. The same case is with the public; they are aware, so the only way to do something in front of them is to do it 100%. You have to withdraw the audience in your performance and be there with them, here and now! 
Most of the time, we live in the past or project ourselves into the future. Now we are here, but in the next moment your mobile phone will ring, you will have to go to check your e-mail, and later to see a movie and have dinner with friends… There’s always somewhere else to go. But the only thing that is certain in our lives is this moment now. There is no other moment because the next second we can be dead – who knows! And that moment now is the only thing we have really to know to live. 
So when you stage danger or pain in the performance, you know that in that very moment, the public is going to be there with you and nowhere else.

DD: Already during the collaboration with Ulay and later alone, you continued to expand the territories of your nomadic movement. What did the encounter with other cultural traditions bring?

MA: In the ‘80s together with Ulay we went to great world deserts or places like Tibet, or Australia where we lived among the Aborigines, or we went to learn some Sufi rituals, and this experiences enabled us to understand that these cultures have a long tradition of meditative techniques which can bring the body into the a borderline state which enables a mental leap. In Western civilisation, we have never developed techniques which could shift bodily limits. For me, the performance was a vehicle which enabled me to make this leap. In the early '80s, Ulay and I decided to go to the desert and see what this kind of minimal scenery has to offer us. "Night Sea Crossing" was a performance which emerged out of this concept and consisted of seven hours of motionless sitting, which required maximum mental concentration and body control. We realised this performance in ninety non-consecutive days during the period between 1981 and 1987. 

DD: In different mythologies, we find a desert like a place in which a sort of spiritual transformation can occur. What does this kind of experience mean for your work, out of the usual patterns and commodities of “city life”?

MA: First with Ulay and now by myself, or with my students, I go to nature. In nature is really where you get the best answers. Experience of life in the desert was crucial because it is such a minimal environment; there is nothing, and so you have to really confront yourself. I often joke with this idea that Mohamed went to the desert, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, they all went to the desert as nobody and came back as somebody. So there must be something in the desert. 
Actually, a desert is a kind of lonely place where you do not have to do anything. We are afraid of doing nothing. But doing nothing is the first and most important thing, because it is then that we can reflect upon our lives. Then we can engage our minds with these deep kinds of questions. Otherwise, we are what we are doing. And we constantly have to do something, to be productive or busy with something. We surround ourselves with so much stuff. For instance, technology is invented so we can have more time for ourselves, but it’s just the opposite, and we are spending more and more time with computers, and we are depending more and more on all these super advanced technological devices. I deeply feel that the entire technology is not progress, it is a regression of our civilisation. I’m really dreaming of those old days when you would write a letter, put a stamp, go to the post office to send it and then wait ten days for it to arrive and another ten days for a reply. Now you just click on your computer and you have an email answer in a second. There is no more time for reflection. There is no time to be with yourself. So it is a really difficult condition. And I think for the artist, for anyone who does some kind of creative work, and also for anybody that do any kind of work, there has to be a time for reflection, time for doing nothing. 

DD: Talking about time, I think that there is this very peculiar aspect of performance as a time-based art, an event that you, as observer, have to witness directly, otherwise you have just second-hand information, you can see video registration or other documentary materials, but the impact is not the same…

MA: For me, this is extremely important – the fact that the public has to be there, at the same time and in the same place where the performance happens – otherwise you just miss it. This concentration of the public, this transmission of the energy – those are the things that make performance so special. It is like a sort of suspension in time. Just as I was saying earlier, in this time of permanent lack of time and constant rush, there is a need for time. For me, it is really important to, in a way, give up a rush, and go into a performance state and stay there for a long, long time. I just made in New York a piece that lasted twelve days. I was all this time in the gallery space, but for the public it was open every day for nine hours, and during this time I was not eating, not talking, just drinking plain water. The only thing I would do is to look at people who were present directly in the eyes. This was the most profound experience I have ever had. Because there was nothing between us, no objects, no conversation, not even a sound, not even music. Just the sound of the metronome pause, you know, kind of reminder of time passing: tic–tac, tic–tac… and that was all. It was an especially strong experience in a place like New York, where nobody has time. I thought that I should purify myself, purify the space so that the audience that comes in comes in the sort of place where time doesn’t exist anymore. This is a very important performance for me. Also, what is important for the performance is that it is an intense feeling for the public. If the performance is not good, the public will look at their watch and think, “When will it finish?”. If it is good, you forget the time. That is very important: the fact that there is no time in performance, just endless now, endless here and now, and nothing else is happening. That’s the magic of the performance. 

DD: You demand time from your audience?

MA: Yes, and actually I made a work about that. Since we see all like in fast-forward and in sequences, I decided to make a project where I make a contract with the public. I ask the public if they want to see my piece, they have to give me their word that they will dedicate an honour of their life to see it, and then they sign the contract, and then they can go inside the space where I’m performing. You know, you give me your time, I’ll give you my work. You don’t give me your time and attention – there’s no work. 

DD: You are always underlying your personal experience, as an element that is at the core of your work? 

MA: The most important thing about being an artist is that you must go inside of yourself. That is the thing you really know. The deeper you go inside, the more you come across another side on which people can project themselves. You have to transform your personal experience and shift it to another perspective so it can become like some kind of universal or transcendent truth. 

DD: More than once, you have been underscoring the importance of truthfulness, authenticity, and honesty in art. And what about beauty… I remember the title of one of your first performances was “Art Must Be Beautiful / Artist Must Be Beautiful”… On the other hand, I recall one of your early mottos, which went “Art without ethics is cosmetic”… So, how art should be…

MA: Yes, the performance “Art Must Be Beautiful / Artist Must Be Beautiful” I did in ’75, really long time ago. But you see, I never thought that art had to be beautiful, as many people do. It is not enough. Art has to be disturbing. Art has to ask questions. And art has to predict the future. Art has to be spiritual. 

DD: Today, it seems that art is very distant from any form of spirituality…

MA: Yes, it’s incredible how the contemporary art world is reluctant to any kind of spirituality, religion or any of these things that are taken more as a negative concept than a positive one. I believe that in my work exists a strong spiritual line, even if it is not the only one… I don’t agree with the labels which people project onto me, like New Age, in relation, for example, to a lot of work with crystals and “Transitory objects” in general. 

DD: Let’s talk more about these objects for the use of the public. How did you come to the idea of making them?

MA: The Last performance that I did together with Ulay was “The Lovers”, when we walked over the Great China Wall. We meet after 2,500 kilometres to say goodbye to each other. That was the end of our twelve-year relationship. 
After that, I started again to work by myself, and so one of the aspects that I was interested in exploring was the possibility of involving spectators more deeply in the performance. Some people thought that by working on the "Transitory Objects", I wanted to leave the performance. But it was quite the opposite, since for me "Transitory Objects" signified even greater penetration into performance, but through the creation of objects conceived for the use of the audience. These objects that were made like furniture, but with materials like crystals and highly conductive materials, like different types of metals such as iron or copper, and they would start to function like a work of art just in the moment when someone used them. It is important to underline that my “transitory objects” are not autonomous sculptures, but objects that should trigger an experience, and once this happens, they have fulfilled their purpose.
In the traditional performance the spectators have a role of observers, but I think that everyone should have a chance to acquire direct experience. I believe that the individual, physical experience is extremely important, since this is the only way to change our awareness.
This work came out from my experience of crossing the Chinese Wall and also later visits to Amazon and mineral mines in Brazil. There I would stay and look at amethysts and crystals, and recognise a kind of energy that they can transmit. I wanted people to be aware of this process of transmission of energy. So that’s why I created this installation-type of work. 

DD: On the other hand, I think that this kind of work raises consciousness about our need to take care of natural resources… 

MA: Yes, I believe that Western civilisation has lost touch with nature, and through this kind of work and approach, I use specific materials such as crystals, copper, human hair, blood, and objects charged with particular energetic and symbolic connotations to highlight the growing need to reconnect our human bodies with the “body of the planet” we inhabit.

DD: What is the most important thing for you as a performance artist in the moment when you are doing a performance?

MA: As Maria Callas said, “When you are performing, when you are in front of the audience, you have to have one part of your brain completely in control, but the other part of the brain has to be absolutely loose”. For me, it is important in performance that you can empty yourself, that you can become a transmitter of energy. That energy can go in and out, in and out through you.